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Blogmanac team
Jeannine Wilson (USA)
Veralynne Pepper (USA)
Pip Wilson (Australia)
Carpe diem!
Seize the day with more than 150 articles at Wilson's articles department
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and casualties of poverty and authority all around the planet
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Saturday, September 13, 2003
*Ø* Blogmanac| A Chart of Chimpy's Pork Pies About Iraq
 By now, everyone knows that Bush told a lot of pork pies (Aussie rhyming slang for for lies) about Iraq so he could invade it, which he did mainly because the Iraqis had his oil under their sand.
Nonethelesstimate, it's good to refreshulate the memory about the most deceitious State of the Union Address ever perpetulated on the American people (plus a few other sources):
"Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent.”
State of the Union Address – 1/28/2003
Not True
Zero Chemical Weapons Found
Not a drop of any chemical weapons has been found anywhere in Iraq
* Ø * Ø * Ø *
“U.S. intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein had upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents.”
State of the Union Address – 1/28/2003
Not True
Zero Munitions Found
Not a single chemical weapon’s munition has been found anywhere in Iraq
* Ø * Ø * Ø *
"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
State of the Union Address – 1/28/2003
Not True
The documents implied were known at the time by Bush to be forged and not credible.
Plenty more porkies in a cool chart at BuzzFlash
Vote to Impeach George W Bush
Impeach Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft & Rumsfeld Home Page
impeachbushbumperstickers.com
And here's another excellent site devoted to exploring Shrub's impeachable offences
And another
Yahoo! Groups impeach-bush
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*Ø* Blogmanac September 13 | a few ideas for celebrating today
Days of Gahambar Paitishahem, for Paitishahem the Corn-giver, Zoroastrian (Sep 12-16)
The feast of the harvest ingathering.
“Ghamabar Paitishem celebrates the creation of the earth and the harvesting of the summer crops.” Source
Day of Driving the Nail, Ancient Rome
“In ancient Rome a nail was driven into the wall of the temple of Jupiter every 13 September. This was originally done to tally the year, but subsequently it became a religious ceremony for warding off calamities and plagues from the city. Originally the nail was driven by the praetor maximus, subsequently by one of the consuls, and lastly by the dictator (see Livy, VII, iii).”
Evans, Ivor H, Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Cassell, London, 1988
Banquet of Venus, Vintage Festival
”The Romans honored Venus, who began her life as an Etruscan garden goddess, before she merged with the Greek Aphrodite and became the Goddess of Love.” Source: School of the Seasons
“VENUS. (Montfaucon, Antiq. Suppl. p. 413) ‘On great Festivals, when they exhibited the Lectisternia, and used to place God and Goddess on one Couch or Bed, they always put Mars and Venus together.’” Source
Runic half-month of Ken commences
Ken represents a flaming torch within the royal hall, so it’s the time of the creative fire. The positive aspects of sexuality within goddess Freyja and god Frey come into play now.
Pennick, Nigel, The Pagan Book of Days, Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont, USA, 1992
Vintage Feast, Andalusia, Spain
Featuring parades, bullfights, horse races, drinking and dancing until dawn.
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*Ø* Blogmanac September 9, 2001 | The death of the Lion of the Panjsher
If there never had been a war, I would have been a very good architect.
Ahmad Shah Masoud, The Times, London, 1999
In all the hubbub and hype of the week, it's timely to recall the event that, in my opinion, ushered in the century and the Age of the New US Imperialism.
Two days before 9-11, Ahmad Shah Masoud, warrior-intellectual hero of the resistance to Russian imperialism and Taliban lunocracy, was assassinated by suicide bombers posing as journalists. It was big news when it happened, and like many I was stunned, but like everyone else except al Qaeda, I hadn't the slightest idea what it was leading up to within 48 hours. In fact, we weren't even sure he was dead because his cadres denied it, saying he was only wounded, as they played for time to regroup and plan.
 Afghanistan: Masoud Largely Recalled As Hero, Two Years After Assassination
By J.M.Ledgard
"Thousands of mourners gathered in Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley this week to mark the second anniversary (9 September) of the death of celebrated military commander Ahmad Shah Masoud. Masoud is buried in a domed mausoleum on a hilltop near his home village of Jangalak. In Kabul, Transitional Administration Chairman Hamid Karzai and other officials, including Masoud's young son, gathered at the city's sports stadium and praised him as a hero and a martyr.
"Kabul, 11 September 2003 (RFE/RL) – His picture is everywhere in Afghanistan.
"The scraggly beard, the wool cap set back on the head, the piercing eyes – a mix of musician Bob Marley and Cuban revolutionary leader Che Guevara, a poet and a warrior ...
"“He is Ahmad Shah Masoud, the so-called 'Lion of Panjshir,' the leader of the Northern Alliance, which fought against the Soviets, resisted the Taliban, and swept to power after a U.S.-backed military campaign in late 2001.
"Masoud – one name is enough – was the most charismatic commander in a nation of commanders ...
"Masoud was murdered by suicide bombers disguised as television journalists on 9 September 2001. The assassins are suspected to have had links with Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, and his death is viewed as the precursor to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001.
"By killing Masoud, it is thought, bin Laden knew America would come after him and his Taliban hosts. He correctly guessed that Washington would prefer to do this in part through the proxy force of Masoud's Northern Alliance.
"Getting rid of Masoud, the reasoning goes, would buy bin Laden more time. Perhaps it did."
Source
Why Masoud had to die – one theory
"Analysts initially believed that the killing of Ahmed Shah Masoud, head of Afghanistan's Northern Alliance, was part of Bin Laden's preparations for Sept. 11--a move to deprive the U.S. of a potential ally on the ground when it retaliated for the suicide hijackings.
"Government officials now say Masoud's assassination was part of a more ambitious design: to establish a caliphate, or religious state, encompassing Afghanistan and parts of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Chechnya and the predominantly Muslim Xinjiang region of northwestern China.
"'Their plan was to capture [northern] Afghanistan in one week after the assassination and--maybe two to three weeks later--capture Tajikistan and Uzbekistan,' said Mohammad Arif, chairman of the National Security Directorate in the interim Afghan government."
Source
* Ø * Ø * Ø *
"Masoud is the greatest of Afghan war heroes," former US Ambassador to Pakistan Robert Oakley, who knew Masoud in the 1980s, said in 1999. "He was a magnificent fighter and not a butcher. He was a devout Muslim and not a fanatic. He not only survived the Soviets, he beat them."
I, for one, would like to see Masoud be awarded a posthumous Nobel Peace Prize
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*Ø* Blogmanac | Statute of limitations?
 "CAIRO (Reuters) - An Egyptian lawyer said Wednesday he was planning to sue the world's Jews for 'plundering' gold during the Exodus from Pharaonic Egypt thousands of years ago, based on information in the Bible.
"Nabil Hilmi, dean of the law faculty at Egypt's al-Zaqaziq University, said the legal basis for the case was under study by a group of lawyers in Egypt and Europe.
"'This is serious, and should not be misread as being political against any race. We are just investigating if a debt is owed,' Hilmi told Reuters in a telephone interview.
"The relevant passage from the Bible, Exodus 12 verses 35 to 36 reads: 'The Israelites had done as Moses told them; they had asked the Egyptians for jewelry of silver and gold, and for clothing. ... And so they plundered the Egyptians.' This translation is in the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible.
"Some Jewish commentators say that while the Biblical passage may be fact, the Hebrews were enslaved by the Egyptians and therefore had a right to claim compensation for wages."
Source
[Thanks Nora for this one.]
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*Ø* Blogmanac Our current pick book | Who Killed Daniel Pearl?
"On January 31 last year the Wall Street journalist Daniel Pearl was brutally murdered during a kidnap game that went wrong in Karachi.
"But who really killed him and why?
"France's leading philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy asserts that Pearl was killed because he knew too much. He knew that Pakistan was intimately connected with the financing of September 11; he knew that Pakistan was transfering nuclear weapons technology to al Qadea and North Korea; and he was about to break the story that the most frightening of the Islamist fundamentalist groups are alive and thriving in the United States."
Source: Late Night Live
Purchase France's Number One Bestseller
from the Wilson's Almanac Cafe Diem Store
Who Killed Daniel Pearl?
by Bernard-Henri Levy
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On the Ides of September, at midnight, two planets were seen in conjunction to such a degree that it appeared as though they had been one and the same star; but immediately they were separated from each other.
Gervase of Canterbury, recording the transit of Mars across Jupiter on September 12, 1170
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*Ø* Blogmanac September 12, 1970 | Timmy Leary's big day out
Psychonaut Timothy Leary escaped from prison with the help of the Weathermen, a radical offshoot of the Students For Democratic Society (SDS). Targeted by the Nixon administration as a dangerous subversive, the former Harvard professor had been imprisoned in February of that year for possessing a single marijuana joint. Curiously, when he entered prison he had been required to submit to the Leary psychological evaluation test which he himself had designed while working in academia.
Leary made his way to Algeria where he met up with exiled American Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver and was given asylum in the Black Panther ‘embassy’. The pro-violence Maoist Panthers thought he was nuts, so the welcome wore out fairly quickly. He sought asylum in Switzerland, but was recaptured by US DEA agents in Afghanistan in 1973, extradited back to America, and sent back to prison.
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*Ø* Blogmanac September 12, 1878 | Cleopatra's Needle erected in London
Cleopatra's Needle, the obelisk of Djehutymes III (most usually called in English Thutmose III, but also Thotmes, Thutmoses, Tuthmose, Tuthmosis, or Thothimes III), was erected on London's Thames Embankment. Originally appropriated from Egypt many decades before during the Napoleonic Wars, by Scottish General Sir Ralph Abercromby, the obelisk had departed Alexandria, Egypt aboard a specially constructed barge (the Cleopatra) on September 21st, 1877.
 Nearly lost at sea
The obelisk’s voyage from its rightful home was not without incident and it was nearly lost at sea. As the Cleopatra passed through the Bay of Biscay, a gale struck and the barge became separated from its mother ship, the Olga. While attempting to secure the barge to the Olga, a number of seamen died, and the barge went adrift. A Scottish steamer, the Fitzmaurice, discovered the drifting Cleopatra, and towed it into the port of El Ferrol, in Northwestern Spain.
The obelisk was actually constructed not for the Queen of the Nile, but for Thutmose III and is carved with hieroglyphics praising Tuthmose and commemorating his third sed festival. Later inscriptions were added by Ramesses II to commemorate his victories. On each side of the pyramidion (top triangle of the obelisk), the pharaoh is depicted as the Egyptian/Greek goddess Sphinx making offerings to the Gods of Heliopolis.
'Cleopatra's Needles' is the name applied to two Egyptian obelisks, formerly at Alexandria. One of these obelisks now lies in New York, the other in London.
The great obelisks were hewn from the rose red granite of Syene, and originally erected before the great temple of Heliopolis, sacred ‘City of the Sun’, the place where Moses was born. Thutmose III, it is believed, ruled Egypt from 1504 BCE until his death in 1450 BCE (dates vary according to sources). He was an active expansionist ruler, sometimes referred to as the ‘Napoleon of Egypt’, because he was recorded to have conquered 350 cities during his rule, conquering much of the Near East. Thutmose III was buried in tomb KV 34 in Egypt's Valley of the Kings.
Pictured: Cleopatra's Needle Being Brought to England, by George Knight, 1877
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*Ø* Blogmanac September 11, 1973 | Chileans Mark Coup's 30th Anniversary
"SANTIAGO, Chile Sept. 11 —
Chileans on Thursday marked the 30th anniversary of Gen. Augusto Pinochet's coup with appeals to national unity, but separate ceremonies reflected the divisions still prevailing in the nation.
"President Ricardo Lagos addressed hundreds of government officials at a ceremony at the presidential palace and called for a society 'without rancor and division' ...
"According to an official report by the first post-Pinochet civilian government, some 3,200 people were killed for political reasons during Pinochet's 16 1/2 year reign, including 1,200 who remain unaccounted for after being arrested."
Source
President Lagos participated in an interesting ritual to mark the anniversary of the USA-assisted September 11 coup. After Allende committed suicide rather than be arrested and tortured by Pinochet's soldiers, his body was taken out a side door of the presidential palace. That door was bricked up during Pinochet's time of residence; this week the door was reopened and the current president walked in though the door, a symbolic statement of the current freedom enjoyed in Chile. Encouragingly, President Lagos expressed his condolences regarding the September 11, 2001 tragedy in the USA.
Venezuela alleges US role in Chile , Caracas coups: Reuters AlertNet, UK - 4 hours ago
* Ø * Ø * Ø *
The Thirtieth Anniversary of 9-11
"Thirty years ago today, on September 11th 1973, terrorists attacked Chile. They overthrew the oldest functioning democracy in Latin America and installed a military dictatorship with General Augusto Pinochet at its head. The dictatorship set up concentration camps, suppressed opposition, slaughtered tens of thousands of people, and employed former Nazi Colonel Walter Rauff (who supervised extermination of Jews at Auschwitz) to assist the elimination of dissidents. This coup was the culmination of a three-year terrorist campaign to destabilize the government that included assassinations, arson, bombings and economic sabotage.
 "The terrorist organization that did this is called the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In 1970 the Chileans committed the sin of electing a democratic socialist, Salvador Allende, President in a free and fair election. Upon coming to office, Allende increased civil liberties, instituted agrarian reform, and increased spending on health, education, housing and sanitation. Many foreign owned businesses were nationalized, including the copper firms (which were mostly owned by United States companies). This threatened US political and economic domination over South America, and so the CIA launched the coup that murdered Allende and put Pinochet in power."
Source
"U.S. officials released documents on Monday acknowledging the CIA had provided covert aid 30 years ago to undermine Chile's government, but analysts say some of the most important documents have not yet been made public."
CNN on CIA's role in Chile coup November 13, 2000
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*Ø* Blogmanac | Spring is sprung, part 2
The first real warm day of the season today, unfortunately marred by hot winds and bushfire smoke. It's hot for this early in spring. The global warming skeptics should visit Australia sometime.
Updated: 12:00 PM EST on September 12, 2003
Observed at Coffs Harbour, Australia
Temperature 83 °F / 28 °C
Humidity 31%
Dew Point 50 °F / 10 °C
Wind West at 12 mph / 19.3 km/h
Wind Gust -
Pressure 29.71 in / 1006 hPa
Conditions Smoke
Visibility 5 miles / 8 kilometers
UV 7
Source: Weather Underground
Snows of Kilimanjaro, no more: Global warming blamed
 Another good place for the skeptics, of course, is ... any place on earth. Glaciers in Norway are melting, the Arctic ice is getting mushy, and two years ago half of the world's coral reefs died due to incresed ocean temperatures. We've all heard of the "Snows of Kilimanjaro". Well, they've gone. It's mainly rocks on the summit of Kilimanjaro now. Seen at left, how the majestic Tanzanian mountain as she was in 1854, and at right, as she is today.
Pictures source
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*Ø* Blogmanac | Extreme ironing
 "The sport that is 'extreme ironing' is an outdoor activity that combines the danger and excitement of an 'extreme' sport with the satisfaction of a well pressed shirt. It involves taking an iron and board (if possible) to remote locations and ironing a few items of laundry. This can involve ironing on a mountainside, preferably on a difficult climb, or taking an iron skiing, snowboarding or canoeing."
Source: Extreme Ironing Bureau
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Blogroll Us Thursday, September 11, 2003
*Ø* Blogmanac September 11 | A modest proposal
As September 11
has come to symbolise
the folly and tragedy of revenge,
we join our friends in many lands
in a day of international mourning
for the myriad wrongs in this beautiful world.
9-11 will, no doubt, be
the world's Day of Mourning for a planet and a people
that have in many ways lost their way,
so this is a good day to recommit
to helping each other find our way back.
Let 9-11 go beyond NYC, beyond even the USA,
and become World Mourning Day.
Today, as we grieve the futile deaths of many people on September 11,
let us also have a minute's silence for the ills of the world
that only people can cure.
And from September 12, as people of goodwill we can begin that work.
A Call for September 11 to be International Mourning Day
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*Ø* Blogmanac September 11 | Chinese Moon Festival
 “The date of Chinese Moon Festival (a.k.a. Mid-autumn Festival) is on the 15th moon day of 8th Chinese lunar month (Chicken month). The new moon day is the first day of a Chinese Lunar Month. Since the first day of 8th lunar month is 8-28-2003, the Moon Festival is on 9-11-2003 in China time zone. But the Moon Festival is on 9-10-2003 in USA time zones, since the new moon day is on 9-10-2003.”
Source
"To honor the Moon, women build an altar in the courtyard and sometimes put a ceramic figure of the Moon Hare or the three-legged toad of the moon in the center. Also on the altar are moon cakes and plates of pomegranates, melons, grapes, apples and peaches, all fruits that are round like the moon, and rice, wine and tea. The pomegranates and melons represent children, the apples and grapes fertility and the peaches long life. According to Li-ch'en, the melons should be cut open and the edges cut in jagged shapes like the petals of the lotus."
Source: School of the Seasons
"Chinese folklore is rich with their moon goddess, who is seen as the Lady in the Moon. One delightful Chinese moon legend, Chang O Ascends To The Moon, tells about Chang O and how she came to live in the moon palace. Another moon legend of interest is Wu Hang And The Moon Palace. In the Chinese latitudes, the woman in the moon is not viewed as Victorian since her appearance changes with light variations.”
Source
“Hou Yih built a beautiful jade palace for the Goddess of the Western Heaven or sometimes called the Royal Mother. The Goddess was so happy that she gave Hou Yih a special pill that contained the magic elixir of immortality. But with it came the condition and warning that he may not use the pill until he had accomplished certain things.
"Hou Yih had a beautiful wife named Chang-O. Chang-O was as curious as she was beautiful. One day she found the pill and without telling her husband, she swallowed it.
"The Goddess of the Western Heaven was very angry and as a punishment, Chang-O was banished to the moon where, according to the legend, Chang-O can be seen at her most beautiful on the night of the bright harvest moon.”
Source
"The Moon Goddess, known as Hengo or Chang-o rules the Jade Palace of the Moon. She swallowed the pill of immortality given to her husband, the archer Hou Yi, and then fled to the moon to avoid his wrath. Her husband later became the God of the Sun and now the two meet only once a month during the New Moon. Other creatures that live in the Moon include a rabbit who is always pictured working with a pestle, pounding up the elixir of life, a three-legged toad (sometimes said to be Chang-O) and a cassia tree, which although attacked by a woodcutter, keeps renewing itself."
Source: School of the Seasons
Full Moon
The Legend of the Moon Pie
Wu Hang and the Moon Palace
Chang-O ascends to the moon
Many Beijingers change ways of Moon Festival greetings: survey
The Moon Festival: Sharing the beauty of the moon
New flavour mooncakes dominate HK's Mid-Autumn Festival
Maui moon fest looks back at Chinese culture
Hong Kong's Mid-Autumn Celebrations Burn Brighter This Year
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*Ø* Blogmanac September | Iraq War will last less than 5 months
 So said Rumsfeld last November 14
Thank God it's all over
"If an America-led war with Iraq starts it is most likely to be short, according to the US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
"'I can't tell you if the use of force in Iraq today would last five days, or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that,' he said."
Source: BBC
Now Rummy says:
"JIM LEHRER: Rightly or wrongly, Mr. Secretary, I went back and checked the record today, the impression that was given in public statements and all that sort of thing was that when this war ended, this war was going to end, that when Saddam Hussein and his regime, you know, fell, then the rest of it was going to be kind of a mop-up. And I'm just –
"DONALD RUMSFELD: Not by me."
Source: PBS News Hour
[Hugs & kisses to Eschaton where I found the links]
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Blogroll Us Wednesday, September 10, 2003
*Ø* Blogmanac September 10, 1980 | The privileged communication case
I love this one. In Vancouver, BC, a man was acquitted on charges of starting a forest fire. The police had given evidence that the man had, while in custody fallen on his knees, raised his hands and said “Oh God, please let me get away with it, just this once.”
On September 10, the BC Appeal Court rejected the defence argument that this prayer was a privileged communication with God. A retrial was ordered, with the view that God is not a person and what is said to God is admissible as evidence.
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*Ø* Blogmanac September 10 | Some today stuff
1067 One source claims this as the date of the death of Godgifu, or Godgyfu, wife of the Earl Leofric of Mercia – better known as Lady Godiva.
However, an old encyclopaedia says: “She probably died a few years before the Domesday survey of 1085 and 1086, and was buried in one of the porches of the abbey church.” (Source)
Everyone that gets an authority into his hands tyrannizes over others; as many husbands, parents, masters, magistrates, that live after the flesh do carry themselves like oppressing lords over such as are under them, not knowing that their wives, children, servants, subjects are their fellow creatures, and hath an equal privilege to share them in the blessing of liberty.
Gerrard Winstanley, leader of the Diggers, died on September 10, 1676
Wheresoever there is a people united by common community of livelihood into oneness, it will be the strongest in the world, for they will be as one man to defend their inheritance.
Gerrard Winstanley
For surely this particular property of mine and thine hath brought in all misery upon people. For first, it hath occasioned people to steal one from another. Secondly, it hath made laws to hang those that did steal. It tempts people to do an evil action and then kills them for doing it. Let all judge if this not be a great devil.
Gerrard Winstanley
 1797 The death of English anarchist, feminist Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin). Author of the first great modern feminist tract in English, Vindication of the Rights of Woman, she was married to anarchist philosopher William Godwin. She died, aged 36, of ‘childbed fever’ after giving birth to Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Shelley), who grew up to marry English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and write Frankenstein.
Just think, nobody thought this would last.
Michael Jackson, September 10, 1994; after four months of marriage to Lisa Marie Presley
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*Ø* Blogmanac | Where's Maxwell Smart?
What next from those madcap fun guys in Washingtoon?
CIA for Kids
I dips me lid to Baz le Tuff for this one.
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*Ø* Blogmanac | Surveillance Camera Outdoor Walking Tours
If I have to move back to the city to get Meaningful Paid Employment, maybe this is something I might replicate, though I'd have to charge for my services, while these walking tours in NYC are gratis (these www.notbored.com folks are great, and cheap!). Anyway, I think it's a good idea:
Surveillance Camera Outdoor Walking Tours (SCOWT) of New York City
"Each SCOWT will include a general introduction to the emerging surveillance society as well as a choice selection of video cameras that surveill public space. Each tour lasts about 1.5 hours and is undertaken rain or shine. Free and open to the public. No reservations needed. Call (212) 561-0106 for updated information."
 This is run by people associated with the Surveillance Camera Players, a situationist group that we've talked about here before.
Situationism?
Situationism is a political theory that had an historical context but still has something to say to us today. There are intro articles about it here and here and here.
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*Ø* Blogmanac | Security tight around arms fair
"Security has been tightened around the London site for Europe's biggest arms fair as it opens on Tuesday. Among the items on display are warships, a Eurofighter Typhoon jet and an Apache attack helicopter.
"Government buyers from countries including Algeria, Angola, Colombia, Pakistan and India are expected to come and browse at the ExCel centre in Docklands.
"But critics of the show say it will attract countries with deplorable human rights records and are threatening to disrupt it.
"More than 2,600 security guards and officers are to police the site, including 25 Ministry of Defence police officers who will be inside the exhibition centre ..."
Source
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*Ø* Blogmanac | "Goodnight, Warren, we'll see ya." -- Dave Letterman
Warren Zevon is running out of life, but not inspiration
By Barry Gilbert, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
08/22/2003
[Written prior to Zevon's death September 7, 2003]
 "How can I complain?" singer-songwriter Warren Zevon said to his son, Jordan, after being diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer [Mesothelioma, associated with inhaling asbestos. -v] about a year ago. "I got to be Jim Morrison for the first half of my life and Ward Cleaver for the second."
"And that's absolutely true," Jordan Zevon says of his father's two lives, one marked by alcohol and drug addiction, and a sober one in which he got to know his son and his daughter, Ariel. "He's been such a stand-up guy. That's what I'm going to remember."
Music fans will remember a songwriter of vision, a performer of passion and a man who, in both song and behavior, seems to have been rehearsing for death his whole life. From "Werewolves of London" and "Excitable Boy" to "Poor Poor Pitiful Me" and "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead," from "Life'll Kill Ya" to "My Ride's Here," Zevon has been looking at death with a cocked eyebrow and sardonic smile for more than 25 years.
CONTINUE
RELATED STORY
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*Ø* Blogmanac | Don't count him out!
Thanks to enthusiastic Kucinich supporters, we're on a roll.
From Jeff Cohen, http://kucinich.us
Our Peace Day House Parties are taking off (see below) and last Thursday, thousands of Kucinich supporters gathered in MEETUPS in more than 200 cities and towns across the country to organize local groups and campus chapters. As a Boston volunteer wrote: "They just keep getting bigger and better." A Minneapolis activist commented: "It's empowering to know there are other motivated Kucinich supporters out there who can believe in a politics outside the corporate media."
In that night's nationally-televised DEBATE in Albuquerque, Dennis won big applause when he distinguished himself from other candidates on issues like the bloated military budget, corporate trade treaties, and getting the U.S. out of Iraq with "no more Halliburton sweetheart deals."
Dennis' barb aimed at Gov. Dean was widely quoted in the media: "You can talk about balancing the budget in Vermont, but Vermont doesn't have a military. And if you're not going to cut the military, then what are you going to do about social spending?"
On a Sunday TV politics show, one of the pundits made this observation: "Who's Howard Dean really worried about? I think he's worried about Dennis Kucinich taking off left and populist votes in Iowa in the caucuses."
On Sunday night, Dennis issued a POWERFUL REBUTTAL to the Bush speech:
"The President has been unable to produce evidence that this war was fought over weapons of mass destruction. It is not too late for him to prove that it was not fought over oil. That can be done by returning control of the oil to the Iraqi people."
(At the United Nations yesterday, Dennis reiterated these points at a news conference with receptive journalists.)
And finally, in just a few days after Dennis issued his call for supporters to celebrate the INTERNATIONAL DAY OF PEACE -- Sept. 21 -- by holding fundraising house parties, 290 people have already pledged to hold Peace Day parties in support of the Kucinich campaign. To join the Peace Day House Party movement, click here.
If you can't participate in a Peace Day party, you can help the campaign by making a GENEROUS DONATION.
And don't miss TONIGHT'S DEBATE, sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus, on Fox News Channel (no joke!) at 8-9:30pm Eastern.
Thanks again for your support.
Jeff Cohen
http://kucinich.us
PS. After President Bush requested $87 billion more for war and occupation, peace advocate, ice cream entrepreneur and Kucinich supporter BEN COHEN (no relation) explained what America could get for that amount of money: We could solve the school budget crisis in every community in America. Or we could provide health insurance for every uninsured American child for 15 years. Or we could feed all 6 million children who die from hunger worldwide for the next 7 years.
Please forward this message.
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*Ø* Blogmanac | Genetic Breakthrough Undercuts Androgeny Dogma
"For years, biologists have been predicting the imminent demise of males, about 5 million years from now.
"Remember your Biology 101 class? Women have two X chromosomes, and men have an X and a Y. And each chromosome contains the genes where each person's genetic storehouse is found.
"The extra genetic cargo that men carry on their Y chromosome regulates their sperm production, fertility, and other biological functions.
"Having that Y chromosome gives men more genetic variety than women. But having that one Y also leaves men without a back-up system. If a gene on the Y chromosome mutates, that piece of the male genetic code may disappear. That's why researchers were worrying about the longevity of the male species.
"This dismal view was turned on its head with a recent article published in the journal Nature. Dr. David Page of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported on two startling discoveries.
"First, scientists previously had believed the Y chromosome had only a handful of genes. But Page discovered the Y chromosome has a rich mosaic of 78 active genes.
"Second, the Y chromosome contains duplicates of its own code. It doesn't have to rely on a separate back-up chromosome to repair itself -- instead, it combines with itself. There you have it, the genetic basis of the self-reliant, self-made male!
"The bottom line is, the genetic code of men and women differs by 1-2%. This is the same as the genetic differences between humans and chimpanzees ..."
Source: ifeminists
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*Ø* Blogmanac | Fatherlessness
Yesterday we celebrated Fathers' Day in my home country, it's a good time to look at some men's issues, which usually take a back seat.
The epidemic of male suicide is approached in this article:
Protecting good men from themselves
In publishing a special series, "Suicide: men at risk", The Age has been conscious that this is a subject fraught with sensitivities, hurts and dangers. Few people, Age staff included, have not been touched by the suicide of someone they know. Most of us would benefit from a more open discussion about what can be done to reduce a terrible toll. In 2001, 1935 men killed themselves - more than the Australian road toll - at a rate four times greater than among women. Almost half of all suicides involve men aged 25 to 44, with men in the 45-54 and over-75 groups the next worst-affected. The incidence of youth suicide, the one aspect of the problem to have been publicly acknowledged, has fallen steadily."
Source
* Ø * Ø * Ø *
On the epidemic of fatherlessness (USA figures, but similar for Australia)
"1) BEHAVIORAL DISORDERS/ RUNAWAYS/ HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUTS/CHEMICAL ABUSERS/ SUICIDES
85% of all children that exhibit behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes (Source: Center for Disease Control)
90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes (Source: U.S. D.H.H.S., Bureau of the Census)
71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes (Source: National Principals Association Report on the State of High Schools.)
75% of all adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers come from fatherless homes (Source: Rainbows for all God's Children.)
63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes (Source: U.S. D.H.H.S., Bureau of the Census)
"2) JUVENILE DELINQUENCY/ CRIME/ GANGS
80% of rapists motivated with displaced anger come from fatherless homes (Source: Criminal Justice & Behavior, Vol 14, p. 403-26, 1978)
70% of juveniles in state-operated institutions come from fatherless homes (Source: U.S. Dept. of Justice, Special Report, Sept 1988)
85% of all youths sitting in prisons grew up in a fatherless home (Source: Fulton Co. Georgia jail populations, Texas Dept. of Corrections 1992)
California has the nation's highest juvenile incarceration rate and the nation's highest juvenile unemployment rate. Vincent Schiraldi, Executive Director, Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, "What Hallinan's Victory Means," San Francisco Chronicle (12/28/95) ... "
Source: Fatherhood and fatherlessness
Effects of fatherlessness
More on fatherlessness
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*Ø* Blogmanac | Iraq War Was One Big Fraud
'... Proponents of the invasion now say the war was justified because the U.S. and the British have 'freed' millions of people.
"They don't criticize the Bush administration for lying to them. They don't re-evaluate their support for the war, even though every "good" reason for going to war was proven false.
"No, they just change their rationale for the war.
"And many are now surprised at how difficult it is to bring democracy to Iraq and clean up the mess the war caused, even though the violence and backlash a U.S.-occupied Iraq is causing was well predicted.
"The proponents of war just chose not to listen ..."
Source
* Ø * Ø * Ø *
9-11 What really happened?
Events around the world question the official 9/11 story
"Two years after Sept. 11, 2001, films, exhibits, forums, and peace actions across the United States, in Germany and Canada are confronting the unanswered questions of 9/11. Thousands of people are gathering to call for full disclosure of what really happened - of all information about Sept. 11 that a democratic society should know. These actions are in solidarity with the demands for disclosure raised by many families of the victims themselves.
"A loose association of people demanding disclosure, the 9/11 Truth Alliance is staging these actions in New York City, San Francisco, New Hampshire and Peoria, not to mention Berlin, Germany and the Canadian cities of Vancouver, Montreal, Edmonton and Toronto.
"The events have been linked up at www.911truth.org ..."
* Ø * Ø * Ø *
An international symposium on the open questions of Sept. 11, 2001
Berlin, Germany, 7 September 2002
Read the Declaration of the symposium
Read The 9-11 Testimony We Would Like to Hear
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*Ø* Blogmanac | Ramsey Clark, Former US Attorney General, Responds to Bush
By Ramsey Clark
"Sunday night, September 7, President Bush told the American public and the world to expect more of the same from his administration. More crimes against peace and humanity, more deaths and destruction, more debts and poverty. He wants everyone to help.
"President Bush has spent $79 billion attacking Afghanistan and Iraq and seeks $87 billion more for another year of violence. What he calls 'one of the swiftest and most humane military campaigns in history' has taken more than 30,000 Iraqi lives, destroyed 'tens of billions' in facilities essential to life, electricity, water supply, sewage disposal, according to Paul Bremer, and left the whole country destitute, in turmoil, growing violence and rage. Thousands perished in Afghanistan where the destruction remains unrepaired, the people disoriented and impoverished, the highway from Kabul to Kandahar is impassable and violence is mounting ..."
Read on
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*Ø* Blogmanac| Tripping the light fantastic
Peter Hill's memoir of his time as a hippie lighthouse-keeper in the early Seventies is full of rock'n'roll, surreal characters and dark tales of suicide and singed eyebrows. Adrian Turpin meets him
"In the summer of 1973, while much of Britain's youth was busy taking drugs and marching against the Vietnam War, one of its number stood on a godforsaken rock on the west coast of Scotland and wondered what he'd given up. The words of the last person he'd seen on the mainland, the tractor-man who'd driven him to the boat, rang in his ears. 'Don't tell me they've sent another hippie. Hop on then, John Lennon. We'll make a man of you yet.'
"Even at the time, Peter Hill made an unlikely lighthouse-keeper. 'My hair hung well below my shoulders. I had a great set of Captain Beefheart records." The 19-year-old Hill resembled, in his own words, 'a miniature version of Neil Young'. His new colleagues 'probably shared a vision of the light first ceasing to turn then gradually fading to darkness as I lay stoned on the upper rim of the light listening to Van Morrison on my battery-powered cassette recorder while the Oban fishing fleet crashed into the rocks below' ..."
Book review at The Independent
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*Ø* Blogmanac | The Shrub shows he can go down like Monica
"The latest CNN-Time poll shows [Bush's] approval rating at 52 percent as of last week ...
"September 1998 was the height of the impeachment scandal. Bill Clinton's approval rating was 63 percent."
Source
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*Ø* Blogmanac | One world, ready or not
Here's a great discussion on globalisation. Don't miss this one – where else will you hear George Monbiot and Ziauddin Sardar on the same stage? It's online with audio and only recorded this week, chaired by the inimitably witty Phillip Adams.
Guests on this program:
George Monbiot
Journalist; writer; columnist for The Guardian.
Amy Dean
Chief Executive Officer of the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council; founder of "Working Partnerships USA" (WPUSA)
Martin Woolcock
Social Scientist with the Development Research Group at the World Bank; Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
Ziauddin Sardar
Writer, broadcaster, cultural critic.
Publications:
"The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order"
Author: George Monbiot
Publisher: Flamingo
"Why Do People Hate America?"
Author: Ziauddin Sardar
Publisher: Allen and Unwin, 2003
"Islam, Postmodernism and Other Futures"
Author: Ziauddin Sardar
Publisher: Pluto Press
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*Ø* Blogmanac September 9 | Feast day of Asclepigenia
Asclepigenia, (flourished 430–485 CE), a priestess of the Greek Eleusinian Mysteries and philosopher of the Neo-Platonist school, is commemorated today.
Asclepigenia live in 5th-Century Athens, daughter of Plutarch the Younger who ran the neo-platonic school there till he died in 430, when she, her brother Hiero and a colleague inherited its management. The school's philosophy was Syncretic, merging Platonic and Aristotelian philosophies.
Asclepigenia’s interests were in the esoteric principles of metaphysics that control the universe. She applied magic and theurgic principles to affect fate, applying her knowledge of Plato and Aristotle to the great religious and metaphysical questions raised by Christian ethical theory. She believed that there were five realms of reality, namely: the One, Intelligence, Matter, Soul, and Nature. We do not know her work from original sources but from references and influences in those of her pupils.
Believing that fates might be affected by the means of metaphysics, cosmology, magic, and theurgy, Asclepigenia tended more toward mysticism, magic, and contemplation of the mysteries of Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysics. Her most famous student was the philosopher, Proclus (February 8, 412 - April 17, 487).
According to Nigel Pennick (The Pagan Book of Days, Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont, USA, 1992), if the weather is good today it will continue for another 40 days.
 Asclepius
Asclepigenia was named for Asclepius (pictured), the son of Apollo by Coronis (or Arsinoe), the celebrated physician/deity who had been so successful at preventing mortal death that he was accused of encroaching on the preserve of Hades. As a consequence of his bad behaviour, Zeus killed him with a thunderbolt, and in revenge, Apollo killed the first generation of Cyclopes (the children of Uranus and Gaia) who had forged the thunderbolt.
The time of the full moon during the Greek month of Boedromion was the beginning of the Eleusinian Mysteries, which began with a procession to Eleusis, a small town about twenty-two kilometres north-west of Athens, where the ceremonies were celebrated. Held annually in honour of the goddesses Demeter and Persephone, these were the most sacred and revered of all the ritual celebrations of ancient Greece.
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More September folklore at the Scriptorium
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*Ø* Blogmanac | Matchmaker
A shaddchan (matchmaker) corners a yeshiva bochur (student) and says,
"Do I have a girl for you!".
"Not interested", replies the bochur.
"But she's beautiful!", says the shaddchan "Yeah?" says the bochur.
"Yes. And she's very rich too."
"Really?"
"And she has great yichus (ancestry)! From a very fine family." "Sounds great." says the bochur. "But a girl like that would have to be crazy to marry me."
Replies the shaddchan "Well, you can't have everything!"
[Thanx, Kayla!]
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*Ø* Blogmanac | Google News Alerts
As they say, be alert, we need more lerts.
I love Google's new News Alert service, which sends an email of news items according to the keywords I give it. I can choose whether it comes daily or whenever the news arrives at Google.
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*Ø* Blogmanac September 9, 1087 | The death of William the Conqueror
 1087 Death of William I (The Conqueror) of England (b. (c. 1027). William was succeeded by his favourite son, William II (who died on August 2, 1100, while hunting in the New Forest and might have been a pagan Lammas sacrifice – see the Lammas article at the Scriptorium).
The death of William the Conqueror
William was sojourning in Normandy, planning to win back from France's King Philip I (May 23, 1052 - July 29, 1108), a piece of territory that Philip had taken from him some years before. He was also undergoing a medical regimen for his corpulence – he was a fat guy. Philip joked, “It is a long lying-in; there will doubtless be a ceremonious churching”. (Churching was a ceremony performed after a woman gave birth.)
William, hearing this, swore that he would hold his ‘churching’ in the centre of Paris, at Notre Dame, with ten thousand lances for candles. He led an expedition into French territory; while so engaged, his horse, stepping into some concealed burning timber, stumbled and fell, causing a rupture in the large belly of the king. At the age of sixty, after some weeks of illness, he died at the Convent of St Gervais, near Rouen, from injuries received when he fell off a horse at the Siege of Mantes.
His servants and officers thought only of their own interests, for William had been feared but never loved. He was left nearly naked on the floor, and was buried unceremoniously by monks. There being no coffin, his large body was squeezed into a grave, whereupon it burst. Incense and perfume failed to dispel the stench that rose up, and the people left the church in disgust.
William is buried at St. Stephen's, Caen, Normandy, now in France.
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*Ø* Blogmanac September, Australia | Watch out for magpies
 Magpies are now nesting, swooping innocent passers-by
An Australian remedy for the attack of the highly territorial nesting magpies is to wear a helmet with false eyes attached to the back, as the birds often attack the face.
Craig Whiteford, manager of flora and fauna with the Department of Sustainability and Environment in the south west region of Victoria, advised that during breeding season the birds might feel threatened and act aggressively.
The Australian birds have become naturalised in New Zealand, where they were first released by acclimatisation societies in 1864 to combat pasture insects. In the “Shaky Isles” they are often seen as a pest and they continue the swooping behaviour for which they are well known in their home country.
“Formerly ‘maggot-pie’, maggot representing Margaret (cf Robin redbreast, Tom-tit, and the old Phyllyp-sparrow, and pie being pied, in allusion to its white and black plumage.
The magpie has generally been regarded as an uncanny bird; in Sweden it is connected with witchcraft; in Devonshire it was a custom to spit three times to avert ill luck when the bird was sighted; in Scotland magpies flying near the windows of a house foretold death. The old rhyme about magpies seen in the course of a walk says:
One's sorrow, two's mirth.
Three's a wedding, four's a birth'
Five's a christening, six a dearth,
Seven's heaven, eight is hell'
And nine's the devil his ane sel'. "
Evans, Ivor H, Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Cassell, London, 1988
Two hospitalised after magpie attacks
Australian man killed by bird attack
Hear magpie
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*Ø* Blogmanac New article | The cannibals of Scotland
 The legend of the Sawney Beane family
The 48 cannibalistic members of the evil family of the Scotsman Sawney Beane are variously described as having lived in any century between the 13th and 18th, depending on the source consulted. One site goes as far as to give the date of their capture – 1435.
The Beane story, no doubt, is a legend, but one can only wonder if there was some series of disturbing events in old Scotland from which it arose.
I've posted this intriguing story here at the Scriptorium.
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*Ø* Blogmanac | Those unfashionable Romans
"LONDON (AFP) - Ancient Romans in Britain apparently wore socks with their sandals, a modern-day fashion faux-pas, archeologists at work on a 2,000-year-old site in south London have revealed.
"A foot belonging to a bronze statue, unearthed on the 1.2 hectare (three acre) site of a Roman temple complex, appears to be wearing a kind of woollen stocking under a Mediterreanean-type sandal ..."
Source
I found it at the inestimable Discordian Research Technology News
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*Ø* Blogmanac | Spring is sprung
 The swallows' eggs outside my flat hatched on Saturday. The parents, Welcome swallows, returned recently to the nest that has been there for years. I don't know where they go each winter, but it's nice to see them return, and even nicer to hear the soft cheeps of the little babies.
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*Ø* Blogmanac September | Britain and US inventing new excuses for invasion
"Britain and the US have combined to come up with entirely new explanations of why they went to war in Iraq as inspectors on the ground prepare to report that there are no weapons of mass destruction there.
"The 'current and serious' threat of Iraq's WMD was the reason Tony Blair gave for going to war, but last week the Prime Minister delivered a justification which did not mention the weapons at all. On the same day John Bolton, US Under-Secretary of State for arms control, said that whether Saddam Hussein's regime actually possessed WMD 'isn't really the issue'.
"The 1,400-strong Iraq Survey Group, sent out in May to begin an intensive hunt for the elusive weapons, is expected to report this week that it has found no WMD hardware, nor even any sign of active programmes ..."
Source
31 myths and lies in the 'War on Terrorism' and Iraq
* Ø * Ø * Ø *
"I believe the lies were exposed by an Air Force Lt. Colonel named Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked in the Pentagon until her retirement last April. Kwiatkowski is one of many whistleblowing intelligence insiders who have come forward in the last months to expose the shoddy manner in which the Bush administration took us to war in Iraq. Kwiatkowski worked with the Office of Special Plans, the special unit formed by Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld specifically to second-guess and manufacture 'proof' that Iraq was a threat. 'What I saw was aberrant, pervasive and contrary to good order and discipline,' Kwiatkowski wrote recently. 'If one is seeking the answers to why peculiar bits of "intelligence" found sanctity in a presidential speech, or why the post-Saddam occupation has been distinguished by confusion and false steps, one need look no further than the process inside the Office of the Secretary of Defense.' She described the activities of Rumsfeld's Office of Special Plans as, 'A subversion of constitutional limits on executive power and a co-optation through deceit of a large segment of the Congress.'"
Source
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*Ø* Blogmanac | The Tyburn Tree
1686 Jonathan Simpson, English highwayman, was executed on England’s infamous Tyburn Tree. On most Mondays an estimated 10,000 people used to attend the executions at Tyburn. If it happened to be a notorious case, numbers could be as high as 50,000. Of the 1,232 people hanged at Tyburn between 1703 and 1792, only 92 were women. It has been estimated that 90 per cent of all those executed were males below the age of 21. Among the famous figures who died at Tyburn was poet Robert Southwell (b. 1561) in 1595.
Boswell's Visit to Tyburn and Newgate
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*Ø* Blogmanac September 8, 1971 | Remembering Attica
US: The beginning of the Attica Prison revolt at Attica State Prison, a maximum security prison located in western New York state.
 What a waste of human power
What a waste of human lives,
shoot the prisoners in the towers
Forty-three poor widowed wives.
Media blames it on the prisoners,
But the prisoners did not kill.
"Rockefeller pulled the trigger"
That is what the people feel.
Attica State, Attica state,
we're all mates with Attica state.
John Lennon and Yoko Ono, ‘Attica State’, Some Time in New York City, 1972
" … thirteen hundred prisoners had rebelled, taken over the prison, and held forty guards hostage. Issuing a list of demands – including calls for improvements in living conditions as well as educational and training opportunities – they entered into negotiations with state officials. The negotiations failed and state police and national guard troops seized the prison; in the course of taking it over they killed forty-three individuals, including ten hostages." Source
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*Ø* Blogmanac | An ancient reindeer dance in England
 Wakes Monday, the first Monday after September 4
The Abbots Bromley Horn, or Antler Dance
Originally this was danced during the Yuletide on Twelfth Day (January 6) at Abbots Bromley, Staffordshire, England. Now the Abbots Bromley Horn is danced on the first Monday after September 4, the date having been moved in the 18th Century. Six male dancers hold white and brown-painted (formerly red and white) genuine reindeer antlers on wooden poles. The antlers were obtained from reindeer that were castrated, or domesticated during the eleventh century. As reindeer were extinct in the British Isles by then, and we know of no domesticated herds, the antlers were possibly of Scandinavian origin.
The dancers hold the antlers to their heads as they dance. They go round neighbouring farms before the event (a distance of about 16 kilometres, or ten miles), which is possibly left over from a more ancient fertility dance. At the end of the day, the antlers are returned to the church. The Horn Dancers comprise six ‘Deer-men’, a Fool, Hobby Horse, Bowman and Maid Marion, performing their dance to music provided by a melodian player
This ancient rite is held two weeks before the Equinox. The Abbots Bromley Horn Dance is similar to the Yakut dance of Russiaand certain dances of Finno-Ugranian tribes, and it might have originally been a Scandinavian/Viking ritual dedicated to Frey, god of fertility and Lord of the Light Elves of Alfheim. In the Celtic world of the Iron Age, the Horned One is most commonly called Cernunnos, the Stag Lord, the Horned One, and this custom might hark back to the pre-first century CE times when his cult was widespread.
“One of the antlers (which are never allowed to leave the parish) has been carbon dated to the 11th century and at Star Carr in Yorkshire Mesolithic antler "frontlets" dated to 7600 BC have been found which have been attributed to ritual use or to use in hunting as a sort of disguise. However, the origins of the dance may be much older - perhaps as a Stone Age hunting ritual or possibly connected with reindeer migrations occurring in the Upper Palaeolithic.” Source
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*Ø* Blogmanac September 7, 1923 | Peter Lawford
 1923 Peter Lawford (Peter Sydney Ernest Aylen), English-born actor, member of the Rat Pack (comprising Lawford, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr, and Joey Bishop) and Kennedy clansman (Hollywood movies: The White Cliffs of Dover, 1944; The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1945; Royal Wedding, 1951).
In 1972, Lawford had surgery to remove a pancreatic tumor. By that time, he was in ill health as a result of long-time alcoholism, and he died on December 24, 1984 of cardiac arrest complicated by kidney and liver failure.
Peter Lawford died a pariah in Hollwood, to whom restaurants refused to deliver food as he was a bad bill-payer. He died penniless, without even enough money for a cemetery plot, and it has been alleged that his last wife, Patricia Seaton Lawford, made a deal with the seedy National Enquirer magazine that it could photograph the ashes-scattering ceremony, in exchange for the cost of the funeral.
Lawford was uncle of Maria Shriver and brother-In-Law to President John F Kennedy. He visited Marilyn Monroe with brother-in-law Robert Kennedy the evening she died.
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*Ø* Blogmanac September 7 | Saint for carbuncles
Feast day of St Cloud of Nogent, confessor (Golden starwort, Aster solidaginoides, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint).
Saint Cloud was the grandson of King Clovis and Saint Clotilde. In art, Saint Cloud is portrayed as a Benedictine abbot giving his hood to a poor man as a ray of light emanates from his head. He may also be shown with royal insignia at his feet or instructing the poor. He is invoked against carbuncles.
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*Ø* Blogmanac September 7, 1876 | CJ Dennis, a sentimental bloke
 'Er name's Doreen ...Well, spare me bloomin' days!
You could er knocked me down wiv 'arf a brick!
Yes, me, that kids meself I know their ways,
An' 'as a name for smoogin' in our click!
I just lines up 'an tips the saucy wink.
But strike! The way she piled on dawg! Yer'd think
A bloke was givin' back-chat to the Queen....
'Er name's Doreen.
1876 CJ Dennis (Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis), Australian writer and poet (Songs of a Sentimental Bloke) was born on this day.
“Sending nothing. Go to Hell.”
CJ Dennis was born in Auburn, South Australia,where a Dennis festival is held each September. His father was a publican, and his poetry probably a rebellion against his upbringing by maiden aunts, who dressed him (according to bigrapher Alec Chisholm) in a starchy suit, Eton colllar, patent leather shoes, and so on. He was even obliged to carry a cane. The local boys considered 'Clarence' quite a sissy.
Dennis never called himself Clarence, either CJ or Den. His father gave him a job but he 'shot through' to Broken Hill, where there was no work for a lad with a weak physique. The legend goes he sent a telegram to his father “Send five pounds. Gone to Broken Hill.” His father returned a telegram: "Sending nothing. Go to Hell."
He went to Adelaide, the capital city of South Australia, where he helped launch the satirical weekly The Gadfly. 1908 he went to Melbourne, lived in a tent in the Dandenong hills outside the city.
In 1914 CJ Dennis wrote his humorous masterpiece, The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke, a long narrative poem, or ‘verse novel’ that has become an Australian classic. Rejected by a Melbourne publisher, in the next year it was published by the prestigious publisher, Angus and Robertson. The Sentimental Bloke, as it is usually called (and was named on the spine of the book) was a roaring success, revealing as it did to Australians their own slang and culture of the common people. The book was hugely popular with homesick Aussie troops fighting in the French trenches of World War I. His next book, The Glugs of Gosh, was a popular mixture of satire and fantasy masquerading as a book for children.
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