*Ø* Blogmanac | Coligny nuts take note

Celtic calendar free download

The Coligny Calendar , in the Gaulish language, is an ancient Celtic solar/lunar ritual calendar which was discovered in Coligny France. It dates to a time when the Romans and Celts coexisted, and heavily influenced each other. The Calendar that was found uses roman numerals for instance. However, the actual format of the calendar may be much older.

I've found a good site that not only has lots of information about the Coligny, but also a downloadable program that will give Coligny calendar dates and further data. If you're a calendar nut like me, it's well worth getting (for free). It's only 148kb zipped, and it works very quickly from the shortcut on my desktop. It's a great complement to my wondrous Lunabar, another great freebie that lives in my toolbar.

*Ø* Blogmanac November 30 | Today in the Book of Days

Feast day of St Andrew and beginning of Advent

St Andrew the King
Three weeks and three days before Christmas begins.

Saint Andrew, one of the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ and the brother of Simon (later the apostle Peter), was a Galilean fisherman of Bethsaida, and originally a disciple of John the Baptist. In the Gospel of John (1:35-42), Andrew was the first called of Jesus’ disciples.

According to tradition, Andrew was crucified at Patmos, in Achaia, on an X-shaped cross, the form of which became known as St Andrew's Cross, which is still on the Scottish and British flags. His cross is the same as the cross of Wotan which Norse invaders of Scotland carried. In Scotland it became the national symbol, as Andrew the national patron saint. Waverly Fitzgerald points out, “The cross saltire, is also a sun symbol, which looks similar to a Catherine wheel or the rune of Gefjon, the Giver, which is associated with Freya, the great Scandinavian goddess who is much honored at wintertide.”

Pagan origins
According to Nigel Pennick (The Pagan Book of Days, 1992, 131), Andrew is a version of the divinity Andros, the Man, personification of virility, seen as an aspect of Dionysus. Scotland’s matronal goddess is Skadi, the Scathing One.

St Andrew and the meaning of ‘X’ on a letter
People used to sign with an X if they couldn't sign their name. Then they would kiss the X and promise by St Andrew (whose cross the X resembles) to abide by their oath or contract. Over the years, ‘X’ on a letter came to mean a kiss ...

* Ø * Ø * Ø *

1835 Mark Twain (November 30, 1835-April 21, 1910), anti-war, anti-imperialist American humorist and novelist (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; The War Prayer) ...

* Ø * Ø * Ø *

The death of Oscar Wilde
He wrote De Profundis while in prison, exalting revolutionary action and political agitation. This small book was not published in its entirety until 44 years later. Wilde was released, practically a broken man, on May 19, 1897, spending his last years penniless on the Continent, under the name of Sebastian Melmoth in self-inflicted exile from society and artistic circles. He chose his name from Saint Sebastian (feast day January 20)*, who was killed by archers (suggested by the broad arrows on Wilde’s prison uniform), and Melmoth, a family name ...


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

*Ø* Blogmanac | Great apes face extinction

PARIS (Reuters) - "At least $25 million (14 million pounds) is needed to save great apes such as gorillas and chimpanzees from the threat of extinction, a United Nations official says.

"'The clock is standing at one minute to midnight for the great apes, animals that share more than 96 percent of their DNA with humans,' said Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP).

"'$25 million is the bare minimum we need, the equivalent to providing a dying man with bread and water,' he said in a statement before a three-day international conference on the great apes starting in Paris [last] Wednesday.

"All great ape species risk extinction, either in the immediate future or at best within 50 years, because of growing forest destruction, poaching, live animal trade and humans encroaching on their habitat, the conference organisers said."

Full text

*Ø* Blogmanac | Rockers Unite to Oust Bush

From ROLLINGSTONE.COM

Moby, Henley, Matthews ask fans to "get involved"

"Bruce Springsteen told a crowd of 50,000 New Yorkers on October 4th to 'shout a little louder if you want the president impeached.' Two weeks later, John Mellencamp posted an open letter to America on his Web site, declaring, 'We have been lied to and terrorized by our own government, and it is time to take action.' Meanwhile, Moby, Eddie Vedder and Michael Stipe are organizing a TV-ad campaign that will run anti-Bush commercials during the week of the State of the Union address in January; Dave Matthews is railing against the war in Iraq in interviews; and at press time, at least three multiband rock tours planned to take aim at Bush-administration policies. Green Day, NOFX, Tom Morello, Dixie Chicks, Don Henley, Willie Nelson and Steve Earle have all played (or plan to play) for political candidates or causes. Hip-hop stars have also gotten involved. 'We have a voice and a responsibility to speak out,' says Jay-Z, a member of Russell Simmons' Hip-Hop Summit, which aims to register 4 million voters before the 2004 election. 'People listen to us.'

"Welcome to the increasingly partisan world of popular music -- where President George W. Bush is a marked man. Thirty major artists interviewed for this story cited many concerns: U.S. policy on Iraq, the Patriot Act, the Bush administration's assault on the environment, the economy and the media. But they all agreed that as the 2004 presidential election gets
closer, it is time to mobilize. 'The America we believe in can't survive another four years of George Bush,' says Moby. Adds Lou Reed, 'We must all unite and work for whomever opposes Bush, regardless of whatever differences we may have. Our motto: Anything but Bush.'"

Continue here

*Ø* Blogmanac | More "Food" For Thought

Arrogance is a Disease that often leads to War

Excerpt:

I'll end with a quote that could well describe most liberals. It is from a book called,
"How to be a Gentleman", by John Bridges.

"A gentleman never makes himself the center of attention. His goal is to make life
easier, not just for himself, but for his friends, his acquaintences, and the world
at large."

While a Conservative may succeed in getting to the point where friends and
acquaintences are included within their sphere of concern...they always, always,
fall flat on the last point. It is this point where Liberals go far beyond the current
crop of Conservatives...at least among the more outspoken of them (there are
always exceptions, of course) and shine as the true gentlemen and gentlewomen
of our age, and, at times, all ages.


The Yin and Yang of Conservatism

The 7 States of Sickness
(from "Natural Healing Through Macrobiotics" by Michio Kushi)

1. Fatigue or Tiredness
2. Aches and Pains
3. Blood Diseases
4. Emotional Disorders
5. Organ Diseases
6. Nerve Diseases
7. Arrogance


FURTHER EXPLANATION

1. Fatigue or Tiredness - The major causes are lack of physical exercise plus over-eating
and over-drinking, particularly meat and sugar.

2. Aches and Pains - The nervous system starts to weaken.

3. Blood Diseases - Thought incurable, these can often be cured by proper diet.

4. Emotional Disorders - This category includes problems such as irritability, impatience,
upset, anger, anxiety, worry, fear, and uneasiness. A healthy person is not bothered by
negative emotional states. If we become angry even once a year, we are not completely
healthy. Ideally, we should not become angry even once during an entire lifetime.
(This was written before The Great Dewakening; The Current Unpleasantness. It could
be argued that anger, as a defense mechanism, should be reserved for such times as
these...although I much prefer Gandhean Satyagraha to vehemence and anger. Besides,
there is always the Butterfly Effect to consider, as well as the even more subtle Taoist
notion that one need not lift a finger, or make any ripple in the material world. A vision,
well-wrought, can change minds and worlds effortlessly, internally. I digress....)

5. Organ Diseases - Organs begin to degenerate.

6. Nerve Diseases - Dullness, forgetfulness, social crimes.

7. Arrogance - This occurs when we try to separate ourselves from nature and the
universe, and happens in one of two ways. The first is yang arrogance, and it appears
in the form of a domineering, conquering, or self-insistent personality which tends to
drive others away. This yang arrogance is what George W. Bush, and many on the
flagrant right-conservative site of the dial, have digested...although it occasionally takes
root among those left of center...at which point they become neo-cons, after having
passed through Dennis Miller.

"The yin type of arrogance shows itself in the form of withdrawal or a refusal to listen.
Many of the elderly and and those who consider themselves devout or religious suffer
from this form of arrogance. This type of person is usually not open to the opinions or
suggestions of others."

Kushi continues: " Arrogance is actually the underlying cause of all human sickness and
unhappiness and is at the same time the end point of the first six stages. Ultimately, all
people who suffer from arrogance commit suicide by dying an unnatural death, either
through sickness, war, accident, or other causes. The basic purpose of macrobiotic
healing is to cure arrogance."


So here we have it. The explanation of what is today called "Conservatism"...although the only thing these folks are concerned about conserving is their ego; their arrogance -- whether it be in the form of Bush-style brashness, or the quieter, more obscurantistic hard-headed self-righteousness exhibited by the more reposed.

Arrogance is a killer...of self and others. It incorrectly places the ego where God, the Tao, the spirit, Stewardship, Magnanimity, or whatever name you call it, should be.


What a wildly imaginative but brilliant and sensible way of looking at our world!
Definitely CONTINUE to the SOURCE and enjoy more of this and other unique posts!

*Ø* Blogmanac November 29, 1838 | Myall Creek murderers convicted

1838 The Myall Creek Massacre culprits were found guilty of murder.

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

Massacre at Myall Creek, from Cafe Diem!, our store

*Ø* Blogmanac November 29 | International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People

I am a black South African, and if I were to change the names, a description of what is happening in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank could describe events in South Africa.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu

In 1977, the General Assembly of the United Nations called for the annual observance of November 29 as the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People (resolution 32/40 B). On that day, in 1947, the Assembly had adopted the resolution on the partition of Palestine (resolution 181 (II)).

On December 3, 2001, the Assembly noted the action taken by Member States to observe the Day, and requested them to continue to give it the widest possible publicity (resolution 56/34).

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

*Ø* Blogmanac | Queen speaks of same-sex couple rights

"My government will maintain its commitment to increased equality"

"Queen Elizabeth II of England opened Parliament on Wednesday by announcing that MPs will debate the issue of civil partnerships for same-sex couples in the coming session.

"In her annual speech, in which she outlines the key bills from the government, the queen said the bill would help increase social justice across England and Wales.

"'My government will maintain its commitment to increased equality and social justice by bringing forward legislation on the registration of civil partnerships between same-sex couples,' she told the House of Lords' ..."
Source: Planet Out

*Ø* Blogmanac | Good Friday Agreement in trouble

Gerry Moriarty, Irish Times

"Sinn Féin has made huge gains over the SDLP in the Northern Ireland Assembly elections, while a strong DUP vote could give the Rev Ian Paisley's party more seats than the UUP.

"The overall result due later today radically alters the political landscape of the North and threatens the future of the Belfast Agreement.

"The DUP outpolled by around 20,000 votes the Ulster Unionists in terms of first preferences, sending a clear anti-agreement message to the British and Irish governments.

"Another day of high electoral drama is in store today as the DUP, Sinn Féin and Mr David Trimble's Ulster Unionists Party battle to win the most Assembly seats. The result was unpredictable last night and will hinge on how preference votes are transferred in several of the constituencies.

"If Sinn Féin emerges with the majority of seats, then the prospects of unionists agreeing to form an Executive with Mr Martin McGuinness as the likely First Minister appear very remote. While there has been speculation that DUP pragmatists might deal with Sinn Féin, the party leader Dr Ian Paisley emphasised yesterday that he would not negotiate with Sinn Féin.

"'Anyone who talks to Sinn Féin will be out of my party,' he said."

Continue here

*Ø* Blogmanac November 28, 1757 | William Blake, New Age guy

Art degraded, Imagination denied
War govern'd the Nations.
William Blake

Poetry fetter'd Fetters the Human Race
Nations are Destroy'd or Flourish in proportion as
Their Poetry, Painting and Music are Destroy'd or Flourish:
The primeval state of Man was Wisdom, Art and Science.
William Blake; Jerusalem
Energy is eternal delight.
William Blake

1757 William Blake, English visionary poet (Songs of Innocence and of Experience) and artist who believed in a spiritual and artistic New Age and produced books in a total celebration of self-publishing, including writing the text, making relief etchings of the text (as mirror image) and the illustrations, printing and hand colouring the pages ...

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

*Ø* Blogmanac | McDonald's Rapped for 'Simple Fries' Campaign

LONDON (Reuters) - "Fast food corporation McDonald's has been rapped by British advertising watchdogs for a campaign that trumpeted the brilliant simplicity of their recipe for fries -- the humble potato and nothing else. Adverts showed a potato in a fries box alongside the text: 'The story of our fries (end of story).'

"But the public and campaigners objected, saying that often the chips were part-fried in one country, sometimes in beef tallow; flown halfway round the world; soaked in dextrose; often contaminated with gluten and finally drenched in excessive levels of salt ... "

Full text

*Ø* Blogmanac | Ireland - Gardaí breathalyse wheelchair user

"A man in a motorised wheelchair is facing a possible drink-driving charge after his arrest on suspicion that he was over the limit.

"Gardaí spotted the wheelchair-user driving in an erratic fashion in Cork city centre and pulled him over. Most motorised wheelchairs have a top speed of 6mph.

"A garda spokesman confirmed the 'highly unusual' incident happened over the last Bank Holiday weekend. The driver of the wheelchair was arrested and taken to a local garda station where he was breathalysed. A file is now being sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions."

Source

*Ø* Blogmanac | Let's Roll! There are antiquities we must destroy!

[It seems the U.S. IS on a crusade--it's destroying non-Christian
relics wherever it goes, ignoring the fact that Christian relics go
along with them. "Another one back to the Stone Age," they cry,
thinking even less of the people who'll die. -v]


Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) Commentary
Editor: John Gershman, Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC)
Project Against the Present Danger


The Road to Damascus
By Ian Williams | November 24, 2003

At this time last year, it was difficult to get people to take the threat of war on Iraq seriously. This year, the threat to Syria is much more explicit than that against Saddam Hussein, but too many people dismiss any such thought.

But paranoia pays. We should have noted by now that this administration is motivated in mysterious ways, but does clearly signal its intentions no matter how seemingly irrational they appear to others. The neocons and their friends in the administration may, as the current unplanned Iraqi occupation experience indicates, be out of tune with reality in the rest of the world. But the fact that they achieved their first goal--the invasion and occupation of Iraq--indicates that they know all to well how Washington works. Which should make us worry about their second goal; most of them are on the record supporting Ariel Sharon's suggestion that Syria is next.

The passage of the Syria Accountability Act in the House of Representatives with only 4 votes against it on October 15 could be dismissed as mere pandering by legislators eager to prove how earnestly pro-Israel they are in the run-up to a costly election campaign. But even if Representatives only voted for it out of callow expediency, the Act threatens to mean much more.

The laundry list of reasons to attack is already written!

*Ø* Blogmanac November 27 | Sophia, goddess of wisdom

Sophia is the great lost Goddess who has remained intransigently within orthodox spiritualities. She is veiled, blackened, denigrated and ignored most of the time; or else she is exalted, hymned and pedestalled as an allegorical abstraction of female divinity. She is allowed to be a messenger, a mediator, a helper, a handmaid: she is rarely allowed the privilege of being seen to be in charge, fully self-possessed and creatively operative.
Matthews, Caitlin, SOPHIA: Goddess of Wisdom, Bride of God (1991)

Day of Sophia (according to some sources)

Sophia (pronounced sew-fee'ah in Greek) (pictured here with her three daughters, Faith, Hope and Charity) has been revered as the Wise Bride of Solomon by Jews, and as the Queen of Wisdom and War (Athena) by Greeks. She has been referred to as the Holy Spirit of Wisdom by Christian writers. She is known as Chokmah (HOK-mah) in Hebrew, and Sapientia in Latin. She is sometimes referred to as the Bride of Christ or of God.

To the Gnostic Christians, Sophia had an esoteric meaning, and was the Mother of Creation; her consort and assistant was Jehovah. In the Gnostic creation myth, Sophia sought the unknowable One, being so distant from her. In one account, she saw a distant light which was in fact a mirror image, and thus drifted even farther away from the pleroma, or fulness of God. The Gnostic religion’s sacred texts include Pistis Sophia: The Books of the Saviour.

Her sacred shrine, Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, is one of the remarkable buildings of the world. The first church on the site was built by Constantine the Great. The temple itself was so richly and artistically decorated that Justinian I, after rebuilding it, is believed to have said ÍåíßêçêÜ óå Óïëïìþí (Solomon, I have surpassed you!). It was converted to a mosque at the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks under Sultan Mehmed II in 1453. [Read about this seminal event in history in our article, ‘Celestial wonders and the fall of Constantinople, 1453’]. A Christian church in Sophia, capital of Bulgaria, gave its name to the city.

As Asherah (the Semitic name of the Great Goddess, whose origin differs from Astarte, or Ishtar, or Inanna in Sumerian mythology), who was principally worshipped at the Philistine Pentapolis (coalition of five cities forming a kingdom – namely, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ekron, Gath and Gaza) but also along Canaan and, for some time, Israel, she was even given a place in Solomon’s Temple of Yahweh (Jehovah God), which was built under the direction of skilled Phoenician builders and workmen ...

This is just a snippet. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every 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

*Ø* Blogmanac | A reminder for tomorrow

Buy Nothing Day

“Since its launch in the Pacific Northwest [USA] twelve years ago, Buy Nothing Day has grown into a worldwide celebration of consumer awareness and simple living. Observed on the day after US Thanksgiving – America's busiest shopping day of the year – the campaign has sparked debate, radio talk shows, TV news items and newspaper headlines around the world.

“People in more than thirty countries have made a pact with themselves and, as a personal experiment and public statement, stepped out of the consumer stream for 24 hours. The ways in which people have marked the event worldwide have been as diverse as the participants themselves.

“The daredevils of the Ruckus Society, a California-based direct-action group, dropped a boxcar-sized banner ridiculing overconsumption smack in the middle of the Mall of America. Other more down-to-earth-types created and distributed the Gift Exemption Voucher – a polite way of saying, Let's not get each other anything this year, out of principle. In Seattle, helpful Buy Nothing Day celebrants offered a credit-card cut-up service outside a downtown mall.” Source

*Ø* Blogmanac | What a wonderful Bush world



(Tune: 'What a Wonderful World This Will Be' by Sam Cooke)
Don't know much about history
Don't know much foreign policy
Don't remember how I got through school
I'm sure I didn't break the rules
But what's it matter 'cause my granny says
"Boy, if you want to you can be the prez
And what a wonderful world this will be"

Don't know much about the women's vote
Don't know much about the bill I wrote
Don't know much about the foreign vets
I've never voted for 'em yet
But I do know if your dad tries hard
He can get you in the National Guard
And what a wonderful place that can be

Now I never claimed to be an A student
But what's wrong with C's?
And maybe by knowing the names of my cabinet
I can win their love for me...
Don't know much about air pollution
Don't know much about the constitution
Don't know much about th'economy
It never much affected me

But there's one thing that I know for sure
If the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor
What a wonderful world this will be

Don't know much about the national debt
I've never had to pay one yet
If we need to we can sell the States
To the Japanese at discount rates
But I do know if things get bad
Dick and I can always call my dad
And what a wonderful world this will be.

*Ø* Blogmanac | Aids annual death toll hits 3m

26 November, Irish Independent

"The annual worldwide death toll from Aids has reached 3m, the UN agency leading the fight against the virus reported yesterday.

"New figures released by Unaids and the World Health Organisation before World Aids Day on Monday show that the global advance of the condition is continuing unabated, with 5m new infections and 3m deaths this year, up from 2.8m deaths in 2002.

"An estimated 40m people around the world are now living with HIV or Aids, including 2.5m children below 15, and one in five adults in southern Africa is HIV-positive."

Continue here
Donate to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria here

*Ø* Blogmanac | Saddam Dolls Seized!!

"Customs officials in Israel have seized a lorry-load of inciteful material.

"No, it is not a controversial book about Arab-Israeli relations.

"It is 450 Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden dolls.

"And they dance.

"They were seized from an Arab-Israeli businessman in the Northern port of Haifa. He said he wanted to sell them to both Arab and Jews as a 'gimmick'.

"A spokesman for Customs said: 'The law doesn't exactly say that you cannot own a bin Laden doll, but neither he nor Saddam Hussein are exactly good educational role models'."

Source

*Ø* Blogmanac | "Monstrous US justice" -- Law Lord

The Telegraph
26 November

"One of Britain's most senior judges condemned the American courts last night for a 'monstrous failure of justice' by refusing to rule on the claims of Taliban suspects held without trial at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

"Lord Steyn, a serving law lord, said the United States was acting illegally by holding the men without trial since their transfer from Afghanistan early last year.

"'By denying the prisoners the right to raise challenges in a court about their alleged status and treatment, the United States government is in breach of the minimum standards of customary international law,' he said.

"Giving the annual F A Mann lecture arranged by the law firm Herbert Smith in London last night, Lord Steyn accused the world's most powerful democracy of 'detaining hundreds of suspected foot soldiers of the Taliban in a legal black hole at the United States naval base at Guantanamo Bay, where they await trial on capital charges by military tribunals'.

But these tribunals, or 'commissions', were not independent courts, he said.

"The term 'kangaroo court' springs to mind."

Continue here

*Ø* Blogmanac | The Blocking of Africa

"The Congo, and countries around lake Albert in Africa have become synonymous with butchery, vile deeds, corruption and the curse that valuable resources bring when there is no strong democracy or rule of law. Now, add oil into the mix. It’s too easy to say oil will be merely another story of lawless rebels being exploited in an inevitable spiral of death, dollars and destruction ...

"Oil industry conferences are gushing freely in almost every continent, and African oil is now a regular item. Last month in Capetown, one session actually had as a theme-‘Oil Wars in Africa’. Then there was the Oil and Money Conference in London in Early November. And in the last week there have been another two conferences in Texas.

"America wants to wean itself off reliance on Middle East oil, and make sure there is plenty around elsewhere for the future ..."
Source: Background Briefing

America's SUVs are driving some bad foreign policy decisions [so are Australia's]

*Ø* Blogmanac November 26 | Eid Mubarak! to our Muslim readers

Go grab a big hamburger with the lot! You've earned it

Today in the Book of Days

’Id-al-Fitr
Today (Eid, or 'Id) is one of the most important days in the Islamic calendar, and commences with the first sighting of the first New Moon following Ramadan. When the Ramadan fast ends (the first day of the month of Shawwal) it is celebrated for three days in a holiday called Id-al-Fitr (the Feast of Fast Breaking). Gifts are exchanged; friends and family gather to pray in congregation and for large meals. In some cities fairs are held to celebrate the end of the Fast of Ramadan. This Id is known as Seker Bayram in Turkish, and Hari Raya Puasa in South East Asia. More

Send a free e-card to someone for Eid today because even that nice Mr Bush has done it.


There's much more in today's page of the Book of Days. Like this:

Late November, the Bogong Moth Dreaming, Australia

North-East and Upper Murray River region of Victoria

Late November six aboriginal clans meet at Mungabareena (‘the gathering place’), a reserve on the NSW side of the river just east of Albury.

and

Archaeologist Howard Carter and the Earl of Carnarvon peeked through a hole in the door of Tutankhamun's tomb and became the first modern people to see the treasures.

(Read on at November 26)

*Ø* Blogmanac | Free: Australian wildlife calendars



I have two Australian wildlife calendars that I will airmail next Monday to the 7th and 17th persons who write to me and tell me that they have invited two friends to subscribe to Wilson's Almanac from the subscription box in the right-hand column on this page.

I have an Aussie bird calendar for the 27th person who writes to me. My email addy is in the left-hand column here.

Put CALENDAR in the subject header of your email to me and I will contact the winners for their postal address.

No need to give me your friends' names or anything else. Let's do it on trust.

Have fun!

Seen at
The Armchair Acitivist
Get free graphics and free content for your website

*Ø* Blogmanac November 25 | Feast day of St Catherine of Alexandria



(Sweet butter-bur, Tussilago fragrans is today's plant, dedicated to this saint)

She was a virgin (nun) and martyr of noble birth in Alexandria who defended the Christian faith against ‘heathen’ philosophers (c. 310 CE) commanded by Emperor Maximinus.

When Maximinus began his persecutions, the 18-year-old and very beautiful Catherine went to the emperor and rebuked him for his tyranny as he stood in the middle of a pagan temple. Unable to answer her arguments, he called in fifty philosophers to confront her. After they admitted that they were convinced by her arguments, the furious emperor sentenced them to be burned ...

From the wheel on which she was tortured and killed comes the circular window design in stained glass in medieval ecclesiastical architecture, termed a Catherine-wheel window or wheel window, and also the firework, the Catherine wheel.

There is quite a lot of folklore associated with Catherine and this day, and some info on the Hindu goddess Kali, with whom she has been compared. Check out November 25 in the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days where there is plenty more, on John Lennon, Homeland Insecurity, Celtic Tree Calendar Months, crazy temperance lady Carry A Nation, Australian Aboriginal Legend of the Great Flood and much more.

*Ø* Blogmanac November 24, 1876 | Canberra's bent designer



1876 Walter Burley Griffin, anthroposophist architect who designed Canberra, Australia’s national capital.

Rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne, Australia’s two largest cities, has always been so great, in the early 20th Century it was decided that a capital city should be founded somewhere between the two, despite the huge distances involved and the complete lack of any other reason for founding a city in the ‘middle of nowhere’. The city thus founded is 248 km from Sydney and 483 km from Melbourne.

As it was being established in the middle of sheep country (appropriately), the new capital city of Australia was named ‘Canberra’. Names flippantly suggested for the artificial city included Kangaremu, Australific, Meladneyperbane (combined names of capital cities Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney, Perth and Brisbane). The final choice was kept a secret and announced by Lady Denman, wife of the Governor-General, when foundation stones were laid on Capital Hill, at noon on March 12, 1913. The name probably means "meeting place" in an Aboriginal language.

The city of Canberra was designed by this American anthroposophist, who placed esoteric symbols in the unusual layout of the city’s roads, public spaces and suburbs. Similar occult symbology is to be found in other examples of his work such as a large incinerator built at the Sydney suburb of Sydney.

It is widely alleged that the best thing ever to come out of Canberra is the Federal Highway.

*Ø* Blogmanac November 24, 1963 | Patsy Day?

It isn't right to put me in line with these teenagers ... You know what you are doing, and you are trying to railroad me ... I want my lawyer ... You are doing me an injustice by putting me out there dressed different than these other men ... I am out there, the only one with a bruise on his head ... I don t believe the lineup is fair, and I desire to put on a jacket similar to those worn by some of the other individuals in the lineup ... All of you have a shirt on, and I have a T-shirt on. I want a shirt or something ... This T-shirt is unfair.
Lee Harvey Oswald at a police lineup for Helen Markham, witness to the Tippit murder

At noon, on a street in Dallas, the president of the United States is assassinated. He is hardly dead when the official version is broadcast. In that version, which will be the definitive one, Lee Harvey Oswald alone has killed John Kennedy.
The weapon does not coincide with the bullet, nor the bullet with the holes. The accused does not coincide with the accusation: Oswald is an exceptionally bad shot of mediocre physique, but according to the official version, his acts were those of a champion marksman and Olympic sprinter. He has fired an old rifle with impossible speed and his magic bullet, turning and twisting acrobatically to penetrate Kennedy and John Connally, the governor of Texas, remains miraculously intact.
Oswald strenuously denies it. But no one knows, no one will ever know what he has to say. Two days later he collapses before the television cameras, the whole world witness to the spectacle, his mouth shut by Jack Ruby, a two-bit gangster and minor trafficker in women and drugs. Ruby says he has avenged Kennedy out of patriotism and pity for the poor widow.
Galeano, Eduardo, Memory of Fire: III ‘Century of the Wind’. Part Three of a Trilogy, translated by Cedric Belfrage, Pantheon Books, 1988, p. 183

Lee Harvey Oswald's murder on this day in 1963 is one of many items in the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days entry for November 24

*Ø* Blogmanac | Keep Your Eye on the Prize!


The Whole World (except America) is Watching

While all eyes of the legitimate news sources in the world were trained on the protests against Bush in England (which were quite something, by the way!) and Dubya's antics among the royals, when they weren't covering the deepening of the military actions in Iraq and Turkey and the mounting loss of life, Americans were treated to a blow by blow, minute by minute coverage of Michael Jackson's latest run-in with authorities instead of the latest news about the illegtimacy of the touch-screen voting machines AND the illegitimacy of the Iraq massacre and occupation(thanks, DUG)--to say nothing of the expansion of the Patriot Act is moving through Congress.

We watched Michael's stunned reaction to the arrest warrant--it just "happened" to be served after two days of searching his ranch which began ON THE DAY (There are NO accidents!) that his latest CD was released.

The flight back to California and the black Bronco drive were high theatre, as were the handcuffs--whose idea were those, I wonder? He obviously was not a flight risk, since he was turning himself in! Nor was he a danger to the law enforcement agents whose numbers and poundage could have squashed him like a fly.

Is there anyone who still doubts the White House control of the media and the small-minded audiences it satisfies? Does anyone doubt that there are no "free speech zones" within eyesight of the President and the cameras of the media in this, the land of the free and the home of the brave? Isn't it obvious now that mainstream media are prevented from airing any footage they might catch of the gigantic demonstrations being held here against the "leader of the free world?"

It's so depressing and frustrating that I'm tempted to say that America deserves the horror that's taking place here for simply acting as gossip hounds while its priorities go haywire.

WAKE UP, AMERICA! Even Michael Jackson would tell you that. And I'm sure even Laci Peterson would cry out from the grave that her husband's trial is not of national importance and that we should switch to Democracy Now! or our local Pacifica Station. What would our troops say if they knew how little we heard about what was really going on over there and how little their lives meant in this administration's grand scheme?

*Ø* Blogmanac | Winding the Iraq Deathwatch

League of Liberals New Weblog Showcase Nominee

Iraq = Death

It's becoming more and more clear that America's neo-conservative regime was so blinded by its dual lust for oil and expanded empire that, not only did they fabricate lies to justify the invasion of Iraq but they also didn't bother to plan for the occupation. Now, just like Afghanistan they have what they want, energy resources and a pliant puppet regime. The rest of the country descending into chaos? That's just fine. Soon enough the war will be "won", that is, when the American people stop paying attention and we've moved on to invade Iran or Syria.

Anarchy Xero: Anarchy Xero explains it all

*Ø* Blogmanac November 23 | St Clement and the god Wayland

Feast day of St Clement (Pope Clement I, or Clement of Rome)
St Clement, the fourth pope of the Roman Catholic Church, the first of the successors of the Apostle St Peter about whom anything definite is known, and the first of the ‘Apostolic Fathers’, is the patron saint of tanners, as, by tradition, he was one himself. His symbol is an anchor, as he was thrown into the sea tied to an anchor. He is also patron of boatmen, marble workers, mariners, sailors, sick children, stonecutters and watermen.

He is mentioned by St Paul in Philippians, iv, 3. After Clement, or Old Clem as he was known to English blacksmiths, was martyred, two of his disciples prayed to find his remains: the sea retreated for 3 miles, and they could walk to where an angel-built chapel was, with St Clement's remains in a chest of stone, by the anchor. Every year the sea did so, on St Clement's day and remained dry for seven days.

Children in pre-Reformation England went in procession on this day, and at night, adults went out to beg a drink. Hence this day was marked with a pot on old ‘clog almanacs'.

St Clement is also patron of blacksmiths. The November 22 Almanac looked at St Clement’s Eve activities amongst that trade. At the annual blacksmiths’ feast held at Burwash, Sussex, St Clement was said to stand protectively above the tavern door.

Old Clem and Wayland the Smith
St Clement’s day marks the first day of Winter in the Julian (OS) calendar. According to Pennick (Pennick, Nigel, The Pagan Book of Days, Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont, USA, 1992, p. 129), as patron of blacksmiths and metalworkers, Clement is an aspect of the Saxon and Norse godling Wayland the Smith, Völundr, the smith of the gods, who was the son of the giant sailor Wate and of a mermaid. Swords made by Wayland are regular properties of medieval romance. King Rhydderich gave one to Merlin – King Arthur’s famous sword Excalibur. Rimenhild made a similar gift to Child Horn.

In the Dietrich cycle of sagas, Völundr’s brother Egill was compelled to prove his skill as an archer by shooting an apple off the head of his three-year-old son; he is thus the prototype of William Tell.

The earliest known record of the Wayland legend is the representation in carved ivory on a casket made by Northumbrian craftsmen not later than the beginning of the 8th century. English local tradition has it that Wayland Smith’s forge is in a cave close to the famous White Horse of Uffington, Berkshire, UK. If a horse that needs to be shod, or any broken tool were left with sixpence at the entrance of the cave the repairs would quickly be done.

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

*Ø* Blogmanac | "Harry Grable" from the Beatles


If you're an old Beatles fan (or even a new one), and have Kazaa, you'll dig the download I just found. At only 15 megs, the compilation of early-1960s Beatles Xmas message records (released only to fan clubs) is heaps of fun and surprisingly long. I just typed in Beatles Xmas. Takes me back, as I heard some of them way back then. Aaahh.

Happy Grimble, everydobby peegle!

*Ø* Blogmanac | Fabulous creatures

Although my server is playing up this weekend (hence as I write, some of the pix on the Blogmanac aren't showing, I'm sorry), I am still able to work online with everything except the Scriptorium.

I'm constantly amazed by the Internet, as I am constantly dismayed by Western culture. I was searching Yahoo! Groups' Fabulous Creatures category, hoping to find a good list I could join to trawl for more information about creatures of fable such as basilisks (pictured), unicorns and sphinxes, when I found that this category's top-ranking Yahoo! Group is

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/long_legs_small_waist_big_breasts/, the FabulousBody:MoniqueDesireeTaitague group, described as:

Monique Desiree Taitague Body Appreciation Forum:Sexiest Creation in the World!! God's Gift to the World Monique Desiree Taitague.No plastic surgery!!! 36DD breasts and 18 inch waistline.The Sweetheart from Vallejo,California.

::sigh::

Perhaps she is a succubus.

That group has got 8,616 members since November 2, 2002. Wilson's Almanac at Yahoo! Groups has got about 2,550 if you include bouncers, since January 1, 2001. Maybe I should get more large breasts into the Almy, or lose the dragons. Let me know.

I note that there are 552 groups for this fabulous creature, Ms Taitague.

Worst of all, that group didn't have a picture to show so I am completely in the dark. Damn and double damn!

Still and all, out of 1,285 e-lists in our category, the Almy is the fourth largest. We must be doing something right.

*Ø* Blogmanac | And the mark of the Beast is . . . .

Implantable Spy Chip Gets Green Light from U.S.
By Tim McDonald
NewsFactor Network

The company said the VeriChip could be combined
with a global positioning system and used for
security purposes by potential kidnap victims.
[Do I hear a collective "Yeah, right!"? -v]

Originally used to protect pets, the Verichip can be programmed to contain medical information and can be used to track political dissidents--or whomever might be a "person of interest" to the Bush Administration.

For More Orwellian horror, read on.

Thanks, Dave!

*Ø* Blogmanac November 22 | St Clement folklore

Eve of St Clement (Pope Clement I, or Clement of Rome)

Today is the Eve of St Clement's day, November 23. Clement is the patron of blacksmiths. On this eve in England the tradesmen gathered and one of the senior apprentices was chosen as ‘Old Clem'. He would be dressed in a greatcoat, his head covered in a wig, and his face masked with a long white beard.

Old Clem sat in a large wooden chair, with a crown and anchor made of wood on top, and four transparencies around it representing ‘the blacksmiths' arms’, ‘anchor smiths at work’, ‘Britannia with her anchor’ and ‘Mt Etna’. Clem also had a wooden anvil. The other smiths would bear sledge hammers, battle axes, tomahawks, and so on, and they formed a procession around town, ending with what in Australia we call a pub crawl.

One of the smiths called for attention to St Clem's speech with:

Gentlemen all, attention give,
And wish St Clem, long, long to live.

St Clem then recited a speech describing himself as the first founder of brass, iron and steel. They all sang the song :

Come all you Vulcans stout and strong,
Unto St Clem we do belong.
I know this house is well prepared
With plenty of money and good strong beer,
And we must drink before we part,
All for to cheer each merry heart.
Come all you Vulcans, strong and stout,
Unto St Clem I pray turn out;
For now St Clem's going round the town,
His coach and six goes merrily round.
Huzza-a-a!

*Ø* Blogmanac | Lincoln-Kennedy coincidences


You’ve seen it before, but let’s give it another run around the block

Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
John F Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.

Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
John F Kennedy was elected President in 1960.

The names Lincoln and Kennedy each contain seven letters.

Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.

Both wives lost a child while living in the White House.

Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.

Both Presidents were shot in the head.

Lincoln's secretary was named Kennedy.
Kennedy's secretary was named Lincoln.

Both were assassinated by Southerners.

Both were succeeded by Southerners named Johnson.

Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808.
Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.

John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, was born in 1839.
Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy, was born in 1939.

Both assassins were known by their three names.

Both names are composed of fifteen letters.

Lincoln was shot at the theater named 'Kennedy.' Kennedy was shot in a car called 'Lincoln.' Booth ran from the theater and was caught in a warehouse.
Oswald ran from a warehouse and was caught in a theater.

Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.

A week before Lincoln was shot, he was in Monroe, Maryland.
A week before Kennedy was shot, he was in Marilyn Monroe.

Are the ‘Lincoln-Kennedy coincidences’ real? No, says Snopes

*Ø* Blogmanac November 21, 1953 | Fifty years ago today



1953 Whodunnit? The Piltdown Man was revealed as fake.

*Ø* Blogmanac | Exciting news from the Wilson's Almanac freezine

Wilson's Almanac Book of Days

Very soon, I'll be making big changes to
the illustrated Wilson's Almanac free daily ezine.

Progressive *Ø* Green *Ø* Spiritual *Ø* Historical *Ø* Fun

The Almy is about to change. I will still send out the ezine every day of the year, and more than 2,550 daily readers worldwide will still get what they get today: many reasons and many ways to celebrate each day. That's congruent with the Almanac philosophy that "every day is a red-letter day", and our motto, "Carpe diem!" – Seize the day!

The difference will be that the ezine will contain headlines of the pick of the day's stories, with a link to a webpage at our exciting new project, the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days.

There will be much more info on that day's page than I could ever fit into an ezine, so Almaniacs will get a much better deal. The ezine will be lighter and faster to download, so there's another reason to take this path. The third big gain for our readers will be that the online resource will be permanent, which is better than the fleeting nature of an ezine.

The big benefit to your almanackist will be that it takes only as much time to make a webpage as it does to make an illustrated ezine, and I'll have the resource last online rather than vaporize each day. I'll do half as much work for twice the outcome, so I can work on two books I'm writing. One book is Almanac-style material, and the other is more philosophical and activism-oriented.

What will Wilson's Almanac Book of Days come to look like?
At the Book of Days, over time, there will be 366 pages – maybe the biggest database of On This Day material of this kind. If you want to get an idea what it will be like, it'll be exactly like this page already at the Scriptorium, only different, crossed with this and a touch of this, and a little bit like this. It'll definitely have a touch of this with a dash of this, stirred with a dash of this, seasoned with a touch of this ... and of course, you can always expect the Almy to have a flavour of this , this and this.

Women will be pleased that, like the old Almanac, there will still be plenty of things like this.

Like my favourite Daily Bleed, the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days will have a wealth of progressive data, with an emphasis on peace and activism. We will also have the emphasis on how each day is celebrated by the world's peoples – just like in the current Almy. And each year, it will keep getting bigger and better. I have a database of more than 2 million words complied over more than a quarter of a century, and I'll love sharing it each day.

Get ready for our unique Wilson's Almanac Book of Days: folklore, celebrations, peace, environment, activism, ideas, alternatives, Nature-oriented spirituality, historical oddities and much, much more. If you are not already a subscriber, why not take out a sub in our right-hand column of the Blogmanac, and I promise you'll get a cornucopia of info and entertainment each day for free.

Many thanks to Blogmanac team member Nora Ui Dhuibhir of Ireland who has made this possible. Because I'm a compulsive and incorrigible scrivener who keeps churning out pages, my wilsonsalmanac.com site is crammed to overflowing and the ISP is screaming for $400 back payments (help welcome!). Nora, always a practical supporter of our project, has made available 50 megabytes of her bluefudge domain available for hosting images. Thanks, pardner!

*Ø* Blogmanac | Quick off the mark at Betty Bowers




Wish I'd thought of it.

*Ø* Blogmanac | Bush and Blair at it again

From Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq
[permanently linked in our right-hand column]

"11/19/03: They've been bombing houses in Tikrit and other areas! Unbelievable … I'm so angry it makes me want to break something!!!! What the hell is going on?! What do the Americans think Tikrit is?! Some sort of city of monsters or beasts? The people there are simple people. Most of them make a living off of their land and their livestock- the rest are teachers, professors and merchants- they have lives and families… Tikrit is nothing more than a bunch of low buildings and a palace that was as inaccessible to the Tikritis as it was to everyone else!

"People in Al Awja suffered as much as anyone, if not more- they weren't all related to Saddam and even those who were, suffered under his direct relatives. Granted, his bodyguards and others close to him were from Tikrit, but they aren't currently in Tikrit- the majority have struck up deals with the CPA and are bargaining for their safety and the safety of their families with information. The people currently in Tikrit are just ordinary people whose homes and children are as precious to them as American homes and children are precious to Americans! This is contemptible and everyone thinks so- Sunnis and Shi'a alike are shaking their heads incredulously."

Courtesy Blogmanac team member Jeannine; article found at InformationClearinghouse.info who do a great job keeping us up to date.

*Ø* Blogmanac | Perle admits invasion of Iraq illegal

"International lawyers and anti-war campaigners reacted with astonishment yesterday after the influential Pentagon hawk Richard Perle conceded that the invasion of Iraq had been illegal.

"In a startling break with the official White House and Downing Street lines, Mr Perle told an audience in London: 'I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing.'

"President George Bush has consistently argued that the war was legal either because of existing UN security council resolutions on Iraq – also the British government's publicly stated view – or as an act of self-defence permitted by international law ..."
Source: The Guardian

Uri Geller, interviewed about Michael Jackson, on A Current Affair [Australia] last night:

"I have only three words to say to Michael (Jackson):

"Grow up!"

[Thanx, Baz le Tuff]

*Ø* Blogmanac | How rich or poor are you?

http://www.globalrichlist.com has the answers in a clever bit of scripting that shows just how rich we are.

I live just a few bucks above the official Australian poverty line, but this website lets me know how lucky I am:

"You are in the top 13.9% richest people in the world.

"There are 5,165,485,122 people poorer than you."

Food for thought: there is poverty, and there is abject poverty. Have a go.

*Ø* Blogmanac | ACT Health Minister backs synthetic heroin trial

"The ACT [Australian Capital Territory] Health Minister will today urge other states and territories to back a national prescription trial of a synthetic form of heroin, known as hydromorphone.

"Simon Corbell will call on his state and territory counterparts at a ministerial drug council meeting to back the trial as an alternative treatment for heroin addicts ..."
Source



Let's hope people listen to Mr Corbell, although it makes much more sense to use heroin rather than hydromorphone.

Currently in Australia, and most countries, I believe, the best medical treatment available for people dependent on Bayer Pharmaceuticals' great product, heroin, is methadone. "Liquid handcuffs", as it's known here (aka 'done', rhymes with phone) is a terrible solution which leaves addicts at the mercy of the state as it is far harder to withdraw from than smack.

It's past time that Australians viewed addiction as a medical problem, not a character flaw. Prescription heroin could clear our prisons of 80-90% of inmates, and maybe people in our cities could go back to not locking their cars and houses – as it was 25 years ago before George Bush Senior's CIA, the Mafia and US-backed Middle Eastern warlords started flooding the world with junk. [As is well documented by people such as Alfred McCoy in his seminal work, (The Politics of Heroin), warlords trade heroin to pay to Western armaments salesmen.

*Ø* Blogmanac | Habib's wife confronts Howard on radio

"The wife of one of the Australian men being held at Guantanmo Bay in Cuba has used talkback radio to confront Prime Minister John Howard this morning.

"Maha Habib rang Southern Cross Radio in Melbourne to ask Mr Howard what he was doing to support her husband Mamdouh, who has been held by the United States without charge for more than two years ..."
Source

I heard a tape of the interview. Howard said that Habib had been captured as an enemy combatant. When Mrs Habib asked the PM if he knew that her husband had been taken by the Americans before the war even began, "Honest John" Howard started prevaricating and the radio jock quickly cut her off.

*Ø* Blogmanac | How many were at the British demo?

Bush protest in London biggest in years

"Massive demonstrations have taken place in and around Trafalgar Square in London. Indymedia reporters on the scene estimate 250,000 - 300,000 people were in attendance for the toppling of a George Bush statue at 17:22 GMT. Estimates of today's attendance range from the Metropolitan Police's official estimate of 70,000 to the Stop the War Coalition estimate of 300,000. Today's event looks to be the biggest weekday demonstration of recent years." Source

Some funny placards

Hundreds of Thousands of Protesters Decry Bush Visit in Week of Resistance
Cardiff City Centre Closed in Anti Bush Protest
Bush burns as North East prepares a hot reception for him in Sedgefield - photos
Bush statue toppling, flag burning in Swindon - good photo

Touring Buckingham Palace's collection of jewelled Faberge eggs, US first lady Laura Bush told reporters she had barely noticed the opposition to her husband's state visit to Britain.

Amnesty International protestors demonstrating near Downing Street, London,
over conditions for the so-called "enemy combatants" at the U.S. military
detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, during Tony Blair's meeting with George W.
Bush on Thursday

The detainees at Guantanamo are in legal limbo, as the U.S. government has refused to afford them individual hearings to determine their status, as required by the Third Geneva Convention - N

*Ø* Blogmanac | Thousands march against Bush

By Janet McBride and Kate Holton

LONDON (Reuters) - "Around 100,000 protesters have marched through London and torn down a mock statue of visiting U.S. president George W. Bush, many of them convinced his policies were to blame for anti-British bombs in Turkey.

"Demonstrators of all ages beat drums and blew whistles along a three-mile route that took them past parliament and the end of Downing Street, where crowds paused to jeer towards Prime Minister Tony Blair's office.

"When they reached Trafalgar Square, protesters felled a six-metre (20-foot) papier mache statue of Bush in a parody of the toppling of a statue of Saddam Hussein when U.S. and British troops swept into Baghdad. In its top pocket was a puppet with a grinning Blair face."

Full text

*Ø* Blogmanac November 20, 1752| The death of Chatterton

Boy genius poet and forger

Thomas Chatterton, the English poet, was born on November 20, 1752 and produced all his work by the age of only 17, when he committed suicide in 1770 ...

It was only after Chatterton's death that the controversy over his work began. Poems supposed to have been written at Bristol by Thomas Rowley and others, in the Fifteenth Century (1777) was edited by Thomas Tyrwhitt, a Chaucerian scholar who believed them to be genuine medieval works. However, the appendix to the following year's edition recognises that they were probably Chatterton's own work ...

The boy poet/forger was not without his supporters. Shelley commemorated Chatterton’s genius in Adonais, and Wordsworth in Resolution and Independence. Coleridge wrote A Monody on the Death of Chatterton, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti lauded him in Five English Poets. John Keats inscribed Endymion “to the memory of Thomas Chatterton”. Alfred de Vigny's drama of Chatterton invented a fictitious account of the poet

Excerpted from a new article I posted recently at the Scriptorium

*Ø* Blogmanac November | Bush not welcome


"Several hundred demonstrators gathered at the front gates of Buckingham Palace yesterday to jeer US President George W Bush on the first full day of his state visit to Britain.

"The crowd was seen waving anti-Bush banners, flags and an effigy of Bush in a Texan cowboy hat.

"Bush is staying at the palace as the guest of Queen Elizabeth.

"Last night he tucked into chicken and cabbage to the sound of bagpipes and Broadway musicals at a lavish state dinner in his honour, hosted by the queen."
Source

UK Indymedia | See the Poster That Almost Caused an Arrest

*Ø* Blogmanac November 20, 1908 | Happy birthday, Alistair Cooke

95 and still going strong; world record for broadcasting

1908 Alistair Cooke, English-born journalist and broadcaster. His Letter from America has been broadcast on BBC (British Broadcasting Commission) Radio every week since March 24, 1946, making it the longest-running speech broadcast program in the world. The 95-year-old Cooke’s Letter is still running at the time of writing, and is enjoyed most weeks by your almanackist as well as millions of others for its clarity, intelligence and good writing, if not always for the opinions expressed.

According to a CBS media release, on October 4, 1953, Omnibus, an American TV show hosted by Cooke, made its CBS debut. It won three Emmy awards throughout its CBS run in its category.

The show must go on
In his November 9, 2003 broadcast, Cooke revealed that in 57 years of Letter from America he has recorded the program 16 times while in hospital, but only ever missed one edition due to ill health. As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald on October 20, 2003:

“Veteran 94-year-old British-born presenter Alistair Cooke was unable to broadcast his Letter from America show this week after suffering a fall, the BBC said yesterday.”

Ever the trouper, Cooke’s only reference to his injuries in his next broadcast (October 27), lay his opening sentence: “Where were we when I was so smashingly interrupted?”

Veteran BBC broadcaster Cooke falls and misses show

Shop Alistair Cooke

Classic Letter: The death of Senator Kennedy, 1968
More on Cooke
Listen: 90th birthday tribute, November 20, 1998
Alistair Cooke: A Biography

*Ø* Blogmanac | Are you mad as hell and won’t take it any more?

Are you sick of TV and radio that is owned by mega-military corporations, just as NBC is owned by General Electric? Are you desperate to stay informed of world events from a non-commercial and global perspective? Do you want news and opinion that takes all the world’s nations into account, not just your own, and doesn’t have to give you infotainment according to trans-national corporations’ PR spin?

It seems impossible to achieve, but honestly, we have the link for you right here. Wilson’s Almanac strongly recommends the world’s most prestigious broadcaster, the ‘Beeb’, or BBC, as probably the best single online and radio/TV resource for trustworthy information, entertainment and opinion. It is, of course, Britain based, but no other country can boast such a global audience nor such a range of international (nor highly qualified) correspondents. It has unmatched global news, TV, radio, current affairs, science, Nature programs, society and culture and many other features in more than 40 languages. BBC World Service is indispensable to those who wish to keep abreast of world events and cultures. Another good way to stay up to date each day with the BBC plus an amazing 1,744 radio and TV stations free online, from dozens of countries, is Wilson’s Almanac's global media portal. There is a permalink to the portal in our left-hand column.

Today’s Pip’s Trip Tip: bookmark our portal for the BBC plus the whole world from the convenience of your computer, then promptly give your TV to the local charity store. Combine these with Indymedia’s 123 worldwide sites, and you’ll have the sharpest consciousness on your block.

*Ø* Blogmanac | A Right Royal Fiasco!

[The Mirror is thoroughly enjoying its security scoop! LOL - N]

By Ryan Parry, The Mirror
November 19

"For the past eight weeks, I have enjoyed unfettered access throughout Buckingham Palace as one of the Royal Family’s key aides. Had I been a terrorist intent on assassinating the Queen or President George Bush, I could have done so with absolute ease.

"Indeed, this morning I would have been serving breakfast to key members of his government, including National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and US Secretary of State Colin Powell ...

[This is the bedroom George Bush and his wife slept in last night. But five days ago, as Britain and the US geared up for the biggest security operation at the Palace since World War Two, I was able to take this photograph.]

"It began last August when I applied for a job as a royal footman advertised on a recruitment page of the Buckingham Palace official website.

"I composed a CV –- leaving out details of my journalistic career –- with one real reference and one fake ...

Read the stories here and here

*Ø* Blogmanac | Charlie

1600 Charles I (November 19, 1600 - January 30, 1649) King of Scotland, England, and Ireland (March 27, 1625 - January 30, 1649), most notable for being the only British monarch to be overthrown and beheaded. He was the son and successor of James VI and I.







Young people today!

Patching and painting
As the illustration shows, ‘patching’ and painting of women’s faces was popular during the reign of Charles I, as it was in Louis XV’s France.

*Ø* Blogmanac November 19, 1875 | Happy birthday, Hiram Bingham!

Hiram Bingham (November 19, 1875 - 1956), American archaeologist and statesman; born in Honolulu. At Yale University (1907-28), he led expeditions that discovered the Inca cities of Viitcos and Machu Picchu. He was governor of Connecticut (1925) and US senator (1925-33)

“Machu Picchu (which means "manly peak") was most likely a royal estate and religious retreat. It was built between 1460 and 1470 AD by Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui, an Incan ruler. The city has an altitude of 8,000 feet, and is high above the Urubamba River canyon cloud forest, so it likely did not have any administrative, military or commercial use. After Pachacuti’s death, Machu Picchu became the property of his allus, or kinship group, which was responsible for it’s [sic] maintenance, administration, and any new construction.”
Source

Bingham, Hiram, Lost City of the Incas



Andes music: midi files
Greed, gold and God Part 2: The Battle of Cajamarca
Another remarkable Hiram Bingham

*Ø* Blogmanac | Apolitical Blues -- Rock and Roll as Cultural Studies

Love this Little Feat song.................
gets to feeling that way at times........J-9


Apolitical Blues
By Lowell George of Little Feat

Well my telephone was ringing
And they told me it was Chairman Mao
Well my telephone was ringing
And they told me it was Chairman Mao
You can tell him anything
'Cause I just don't wanna talk to him now

I've got the apolitical blues
And that's the meanest blues of all
Apolitical blues
And that's the meanest blues of all
I don't care if it's John Wayne
I just don't wanna talk to him now


“What Is Rock Music, Anyway?”

The approach I propose for an answer to the question raised in the title is informed less by what is commonly termed
"American Studies" than by what I would describe as "Cultural Studies with a focus on the United States." This differentiation is not merely a splitting of hairs. What is labeled "American Studies" is by and large the product of a specific development in the 1940s and 1950s, of World War II and the Cold War that soon followed, when the chief makers of U.S. policy deemed it imperative that the United States be established as the positive force in global politics, the polar opponent of the totalitarian forces of fascism and communism. The United States, and what it stood for, were to be set up as a counterweight not just in political-ideological terms. To establish a proper positive model, cultural work was also needed. This, at least, was what many people thought in Washington, and for that purpose, two government agencies, USIS and USIA, promoted especially a new field of study which was named by sleight of hand and somewhat too grandly "American Studies"—as if, indeed, the United States encompassed all of the Americas.

So as not to be mistaken as a left-over cold warrior—a threat that has gained renewed validity by George W. Bush's appointments—I propose to do "Cultural Studies with a focus on the United States." This is not merely a stale joke. Traditional American Studies have much to do with the promotion of U.S. ideology—usually wrapped in the study of American culture, or rather such elements of American culture as the chief U.S. ideologists regarded as worthy of promotion. Popular culture therefore received only limited attention—hardly any, to be true—from traditional American Studies. Cultural studies, conversely, is not only open to the study of popular culture but actually seeks to do away with traditionalist distinctions between high culture and low, conceptualizations which embrace art as worthy of study while denigrating popular culture. Cultural Studies takes up precisely those issues which traditional approaches have neglected intentionally. Rock music falls squarely into the lot of cultural expressions American Studies has traditionally neglected. And certainly, of all forms of cultural expression that emerged in the Western World after World War II, rock music is the one that has had the greatest mass appeal. Thus, rock music all but imposes itself as a crucial field for Cultural Studies.


Lawrence Grossberg, a cultural theorist has worked to analyze the history of pop culture, its effects on contemporary society, and how cultural agents now rely more on pop culture to initiate change, bypassing the political legislature.


"Hegemonic leadership has to operate where people live their lives. It has to take account of and even allow itself to be modified by its engagement with the fragmentary and contradictory terrain of common sense and popular culture. This is where the social imaginary is defined and changed; where people construct personal identities, identifications, priorities and possibilities..,"

Green Grass, Running Water and An Act of Violence
Grossberg

[From Easy Riders
American Culture on the Road
An Internet Anthology]

Lindis Percy, an anti-war protestor, standing on top of the gates of Buckingham Palace with an upside-down U.S. flag with the inscription "Elizabeth Windsor and Co. we don't want him here".

The woman dodged tight security on Monday to scale the wrought iron gates on the eve of George W. Bush's arrival in the UK.

*Ø* Blogmanac | Marchers get their way as Britain prepares for Bush

Jamie Wilson and Hugh Muir
November 18, The Guardian

"Anti-war protesters claimed victory last night after the Metropolitan police backed down and agreed to allow a march up Whitehall and past Downing Street to demonstrate against George Bush's visit to the UK. The police had initially refused to allow the march -- which the Stop the War Coalition hopes will be attended by more than 100,000 protesters -- along the route because of fears about security ...

"Though Tony Blair has been keen to justify the state visit, there has been fresh criticism from politicians. London's mayor, Ken Livingstone, said: 'I think that Bush is the greatest threat to life on this planet that we've most probably ever seen. The policies he is initiating will doom us to extinction.'"

Full text

*Ø* Blogmanac | Please take a moment to sign

I got this in my in-tray:

"Please join us in our e-mail campaign appealing for sanity and compassion with regards to Sassan Mashayekhi. Sassan Mashayekhi has been in an Australian detention centre for more than half a decade. Enough is enough, it's time that the government stop punishing this man.

"Please use the following link to participate in our latest e-mail campaign:

http://www.hopecaravan.com/ecampaign/sassan.asp

"Sincere regards,

HOPE Caravan
www.hopecaravan.com"

[Emphasis mine]

Even if you don't live in Godzone, please fill in the form. Overseas pressure will help a lot. Refugees are being treated like criminals -- even worse -- in Oz. help one, helps all. Thanx.

*Ø* Blogmanac November 18 | Day of Ardvi Sura, Mother of the Stars, ancient Persia

Approximately today was a festival in honour of the Persian and Armenian goddess Ardvi Sura (‘undefiled, immaculate, or mighty, blameless’), one of the names of Anahita, known as the Mother of the Stars, goddess of heavenly waters; Iranian version of Astarte. In the Christian tradition she is a cognate of Mary, Stella Maris.

The element sura of the name of Ardvi Sura Anahita might be connected with Old Indian surya 'the sun'. She is also connected with snakes and bulls.

An ancient hymn to Ardvi Sura says:


Source

She was apparently hungry for the sacrifice of animals, as it is written:

To her did Haoshyangha, the Paradhata, offer up a sacrifice on the enclosure of the Hara, with a hundred male horses, I will praise the water Ardvi Sura Anahita, the efficacious against the Daevas, devoted to Ahura's lore, and to be worshipped with sacrifice within the corporeal world, furthering all living things (?) and holy, helping on the increase and improvement of our herds and settlements, holy, and increasing our wealth, holy, and helping on the progress of the Province, holy (as she is)? . (Ardvi Sura Anahita) who purifies the seed of all male beings, who sanctifies the wombs of all women to the birth, who makes all women fortunate in labour, who brings all women a regular and timely flow of milk. a thousand oxen and ten thousand lambs.
Aban Yasht, verse 21 Source

*Ø* Blogmanac November 18, 1307| William Tell and the apple

On this day, William Tell (Wilhelm Tell) shot the apple off his son's head

The legend as told by Sabine Baring-Gould in Curious Myths of the Middle Ages (London, 1866) (Source): In the year 1307, Gessler, Vogt (local governor) of the Emperor Albert I of Hapsburg (c. 1250-1308), German king, and duke of Austria, eldest son of King Rudolph I of Habsburg, set a hat on a pole as symbol of imperial power, and ordered everyone who passed by to salute it. A mountaineer of the name of Wilhelm Tell boldly passed by the symbol of authority without saluting. By Gessler's command he was at once seized and brought before him. As Tell was known to be an expert archer, he was ordered by way of punishment to shoot an apple off the head of his own son.

Finding no way out of it, Tell submitted to Gessler's authority. The apple was placed on the child's head, Tell bent his bow, the arrow sped, and apple and arrow fell to the ground together. But the Vogt noticed that Tell, before shooting, had stuck another arrow into his belt, and he enquired the reason. “It was for you,” replied the sturdy archer. “Had I shot my child, know that it would not have missed your heart.”


The William Tell tale is known in other forms in other, earlier cultures.
Read more at the new page on William Tell at the Scriptorium.

The page will perhaps bring a smile to the lips of those who remember the Lone Ranger, when they hear the full William Tell Overture. :)

*Ø* Blogmanac | Michael Moore's Mission in the UK

Michael Moore Barnstorms through the UK
in a Tour that Preempts Bush's Visit

Michael Moore is playing to stadium-sized crowds in the UK as Bush gets ready to descend on the country with his Hitler-like security demands. Moore has a message for Brits: Stop Bush from using the UK as one big photo op stage.
"That can happen only in one way, and that's a very large physical presence in the streets of London, letting the American people know the people of Great Britain do not support this war and do not support George Bush. It has to be done in a graphic way, in a physical way; it can't just be said. It has to be done with the images that will be sent back to America because the American media will be there with Bush."

Go, Michael! And go, Brits -- take it to the streets!

Go, Readers! Go!

Thanks, Bill!

*Ø* Blogmanac | End of the sea voyage for Noah



2347 BCE In former times, Noah was said to have left the ark on this day. Muslim tradition says June 19, which year I don’t know.


God decides to kill everyone
“13 And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
14 Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.
15 And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.
16 A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it.”
From Genesis 6

The animals were not all in pairs
“1 And the LORD said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.
2 Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.
3 Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.”
From Genesis 7

Close-up view of the Mt Ararat anomaly some believe to be Noah's Ark

As I write, it looks like someone has hacked the Blogroll facility, the one we use in our left-hand column. All the links point to just one tonight. With luck, the good people at Blogroll will sort it out and it'll be fixed by the time you read this.

*Ø* Blogmanac | Could Red Jellyfish Help Save the World's Rainforests?

from GRIST Magasine

[For readers in the US only! - N]

"If you're talking about the gelatinous sea creature, the answer is no. But if you're talking about the eco-friendly Internet service provider, well, then, sure. We at Grist aren't generally in the business of making product endorsements, but Red Jellyfish is doing good work so we thought we'd pass on the word. For each person who subscribes to the company's home Internet service, Red Jellyfish protects 6,000 square feet of rainforest a year through the Nature Conservancy. If you're looking for an Internet service provider you can feel good about,try them out: The first month's free and they'll throw in a complimentary Red Jellyfish tote bag (made of organic cotton, of course) -- only if you click on the link below":

Get the scoop on Red Jellyfish Internet service

*Ø* Blogmanac November 18, 1797 | Sojourner Truth

I have plowed and planted, and gathered into barns ... and aren't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children and seen them most all sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother's grief, none but Jesus heard. And aren't I a woman?

1797 Sojourner Truth (self-given name of Isabella Baumfree, aka Isabella Van Wagener) (1797? - 1883), whose “Aren't I a Woman?” speech electrified an 1851 Ohio, USA women's rights convention; one of 13 children born to slave parents. At six-feet-tall, an imposing figure, she spoke only Dutch till she was sold from her family around the age of eleven.

Baumfree settled in New York City, earning a living as a domestic worker for several religious communes, including the ‘Kingdom of Matthias’ which became embroiled in a scandal of adultery and murder. When, in 1843, she was inspired by some kind of spiritual peak experience, Isabella Baumfree changed her name to Sojourner Truth, walked throughout Long Island and Connecticut, and preached “God's truth and plan for salvation”.

Eventually arriving in Northampton, MA, Sojourner joined the intentional community the Northampton Association for Education and Industry, where she met and worked with abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison (founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society), Frederick Douglass and Olive Gilbert. (The latter helped edit her memoirs which were published in 1850 as The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave.)

Truth eventually added abolitionism and women's suffrage to her oratory; in her later life she became a noted speaker for both the abolitionist movement and the women's rights movement.

Narrative of Sojourner Truth; a Bondswoman of Olden Time,
Emancipated by the New York Legislature
in the Early Part of the Present Century;
with a History of Her Labors and Correspondence,
Drawn from Her "Book of Life".

The Narrative of Sojourner Truth at Amazon.com

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

*Ø* Blogmanac | High Risks in Afghanistan

November 17, New York Times

"While the failure of American policy in Iraq in recent months has been painfully visible and at the forefront of public debate, the Bush administration's failures in Afghanistan have been as serious, and the risks are also great. It was Afghanistan, not Iraq, that was the spawning ground for the Sept. 11 attacks. And now, less than two years after President Bush celebrated his first military victory, Afghanistan is in danger of reverting to a deadly combination of rule by warlords and the Taliban, the allies and protectors of Osama bin Laden.

"A revived Taliban army, flush with new recruits from Pakistan, is staging a frightening comeback. Major cities remain in the hands of the corrupt and brutal warlords. Much of the countryside is too dangerous for aid workers. The postwar pro-American government led by Hamid Karzai rules Kabul and little else. Opium poppies are once again a major export crop. And Osama bin Laden remains at large."

CONTINUE

*Ø* Blogmanac | America: The World's Free Elections Monitor

Woodie Guthrie had a sticker on his guitar that said "This Machine Kills Fascists".
I wonder if Diebold voting machines have a sign inside them somewhere which says
"This Machine Elects Republicans".


If we read it in a book, we'd toss the book aside as being too implausible. But we're watching unbelievable crimes being committed before our very eyes every single day. One very minor one (in the "big picture" scheme of things) involves the death in May in a plane crash (of all things!) of Diebold chief operating officer Wesley Vance. A lot's happened to Diebold since May after the takeover of operations of Diebold "until a successor is named" by the deeply religious and extreme partisan Republican Walden O'Dell.

Is there anything we can do to stop the Republican fix of elections? Can we awaken the fight in American progressives yet? Here's a hint: it involves stickers and ATM machines. Intriguing, n'est'ce pas?

See what xymphora has to say about it.

*Ø* Blogmanac | 'Shoot-to-kill' demand by US

Martin Bright, home affairs editor
Sunday November 16
The Observer

"Home Secretary David Blunkett has refused to grant diplomatic immunity to armed American special agents and snipers travelling to Britain as part of President Bush's entourage this week.

"In the case of the accidental shooting of a protester, the Americans in Bush's protection squad will face justice in a British court as would any other visitor, the Home Office has confirmed.

"The issue of immunity is one of a series of extraordinary US demands turned down by Ministers and Downing Street during preparations for the Bush visit.

"These included the closure of the Tube network, the use of US air force planes and helicopters and the shipping in of battlefield weaponry to use against rioters ...

"The Americans had also wanted to travel with a piece of military hardware called a 'mini-gun', which usually forms part of the mobile armoury in the presidential cavalcade. It is fired from a tank and can kill dozens of people. One manufacturer's description reads: 'Due to the small calibre of the round, the mini-gun can be used practically anywhere. This is especially helpful during peacekeeping deployments.' "

Full text HERE

And Then...: Late Night With Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist

*Ø* Blogmanac | Important petition for our USA readers

Stop "Drive-Thru Mastectomy"

Please take the time to read this and sign the petition. It will mean a lot to many women. Thanks.

Subject: FW: Mastectomy Legislation

MASTECTOMY LEGISLATION Important info for all women. Please forward this to everyone in your address book. This is a time when our voices and choices should be heard. It takes about 30 seconds to vote on this issue...and send it on to others you know who will do the same. There's a bill called the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act which will require insurance companies to cover a minimum
48-hour hospital stay for patients undergoing a mastectomy. It's about eliminating the "drive-through mastectomy" where women are forced to go home hours after surgery against the wishes of their doctor, still groggy from anesthesia and sometimes with drainage tubes still attached. Lifetime Television has put this bill on their web page with a petition drive to show your support. Last year over half the House signed on. PLEASE!!!! Sign the petition by clicking on the web site below and help women with breast cancer get the care they need and deserve!! There is no cost or monetary pledge involved. You need not give more than your name and zip code number. http://www.lifetimetv.com/reallife/bc/pledges/bc_mast_pledge.html

PLEASE PASS THIS ON.

[Thanks, Almaniac Mary Ann Sabo who so often sends excellent things to the Blogmanac.]

Check this out!

Already in less than a month, our Tell J-9 You've Read It! page might have helped save two lives!!

A woman in Kentucky, USA, and one in the United Kingdom ... now getting treatment for a rare cancer, IBC.

Please tell J-9 you've read it! And please place a link on your blog or site, and email lotsa peeples!

*Ø* Blogmanac | Recent search terms that found us
14 Oct, Tue, 22:31:28 Google: contact list of pip oil dealers in kuwait
23 Oct, Thu, 06:41:52 Yahoo: Allah's gonna bring the shit. No Joke, those Jesus kids are fucked.
15 Nov, Sat, 10:00:18 Google: Dr Wilson's MouthWash
16 Nov, Sun, 04:17:20 Yahoo: what is wallace's vision of nature in sunday morning
16 Nov, Sun, 06:21:52 Google: intellectual sierra leoneans in the united states
16 Nov, Sun, 09:24:04 Google: pip asylum australia

*Ø* Blogmanac November 16, 1946 | Whoaaaa!!!

1946 Terence McKenna, theoretician of consciousness, (November 16, 1946 - April 3, 2000) was the originator of the timewave zero theory, which claims time to be a fractal wave of increasing novelty, which ends in 2012.

More on McKenna and 2012 (and links) at the Scriptorium
McKenna audio

“Terence McKenna was one of the great explorers of consciousness, and of the wild Earth. His relationship both with the psyche and anima mundi (world soul) was unique. He was a man of fabulous intellect, with the capacity to articulate in a rational manner the behaviors and experiences of the non-rational mind. Famous for his explorations of the inner world of psychedelics—primarily those arising naturally in the flora of Earth—he was also a fearless traveler into the regions of the world where shamanic use of various psychotropic drugs is ethical and employed with reverence toward the gods who provided them." More

See the McKenna entry at Wikipedia

*Ø* Blogmanac November 16-19 | Belize goes wild

Carib Settlement Days (Nov 16-19), Belize

This annual fest is celebrated in the southern districts of Belize. For three days before Settlement Day (November 19) there is street and house-to-house dancing all day long, vibrating to the sound of leather drums. The re-enactment of the first Carib settlement in Belize in 1823 is an exciting potpourri of costumes, music and dancing.

Belize, once a part of the Mayan Empire, is an independent state, northeastern Central America, bounded on the north and northwest by Mexico, on the east by the Caribbean Sea, and on the south and west by Guatemala. Until 1973 Belize was known as British Honduras; it became independent in 1981 and is a member of Britain’s Commonwealth of Nations. The total area of the nation is 22,965 sq km (8867 sq mi).

*Ø* Blogmanac | Greed, gold and God

The Battle of Cajamarca, Part 2

November 16, 1532

Full story http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/cajamarca_battle.html


Atahualpa ambushed
... Invited by the Spaniard to attend a feast in his honour, the Inca chief accepted. The next day, he arrived at the appointed meeting place with several thousand unarmed retainers; Pizarro, prompted by the example of Hernán Cortés and Moctezuma in Mexico, had prepared an ambush.

The next day at around noon, Atahualpa appeared in the town centre, carried on a litter, or palanquin, borne by 80 Incan noblemen in rich blue livery, and with a retinue of 2,000 Indians sweeping the road before him. An eyewitness wrote “Then came a number of men with armour, large metal plates, and crowns of gold and silver which they bore, that it was a marvel to observe how the sun glinted on it."

Atahualpa was also surrounded by his warriors, many thousands of them.

It has been reported that Atahualpa asked Friar Vicente on what authority he acted, and the friar told him it derived from the book he was holding. The Incan emperor then commanded: "Give me the book so that it can speak to me." Atahualpa, holding the book next to his ear, tried to listen to its pages. Finally he asked: "Why doesn't the book say anything to me?" and defiantly and disdainfully threw it to the ground. On the friar's command (rather than Pizarro's), the Spanish soldiers emerged from the porticoes around the square and fired into the crowds of unarmed warriors and citizens.

Seven thousand slain
Just several hours of bloody battle ensued, with the conquistadors having the technological advantage. By evening, Pizarro and his men had killed 7,000 Indians yet lost not one of their own merry men. Later, Pizarro said to Atahualpa through an interpreter: “When you have seen the errors in which you live, you will understand the good that we have done you by coming to your land … Our Lord permitted that your pride should be brought low and that no Indian should be able to offend a Christian.”

During the melee, Pizarro had personally grabbed Atahualpa from his litter, calling out the Spanish war cry (“Santiago!”, or “St James!”) as he did so, and took Atahualpa prisoner. Soon, Atahualpa recognised that a huge ransom was his only chance of freedom, so he promised a huge hoard of gold to the Spaniards, which the Incan king’s subjects duly paid.

The ransom, the largest ever made, was staggering – when melted down, it consisted of sufficient gold to fill a room 22 feet long by 17 feet wide to a height of more than 8 feet! After the full amount had been delivered, Pizarro reneged on his promise and on August 29, 1533, the conquistador ordered Atahualpa burned to death. However, when Atahualpa was brought to the stake, Father de Valverde offered him the choice of being burned alive or being killed by the more merciful garrot if he would convert to Christianity. Although throughout his captivity Atahualpa had resisted conversion, he agreed to it and so died that day by strangulation ...

Read on at the Scriptorium

*Ø* Blogmanac November 16, 1813 | The Lourdes of USA

1813 Father Sebastian Alvarez, a priest in New Mexico, wrote a letter to the Episcopal See of Durango, Colorado, USA, expressing his feelings about the people coming from afar seeking cures for their diseases and the spreading of the fame of their cures.

New Mexico is home of the historic Chimayo Shrine, which commemorates an event during Holy Week on the night of Good Friday, circa 1810, when a Chimayo friar, Don Bernardo Abeyta, who was a member in good standing of the Hermandad de Nuestro Padre Jesus el Nazareno (Penitentes), was performing the customary penances of the Society around the hills of El Potrero. There he saw a light bursting from a hillside near the Santa Cruz River. He dug and found a crucifix, quickly dubbed the miraculous crucifix of Our Lord of Esquipulas.

A local priest, Fr Sebastian Alvarez, took the crucifix to Santa Cruz, but it disappeared three times and was later found back sitting in the hole the friar had dug, leading believers to understand that El Senor de Esquipulas wanted to remain in Chimayo. Consequently, a small chapel was built on the site, following which miraculous healings started occurring. These were so frequent that the chapel was replaced by the larger, current adobe Chimayo Shrine in 1816. El Santuario was a privately owned chapel until the year l929, when several benefactors bought it and turned it over to the Archdiocese of Santa Fe.

El Santuario de Chimayo is now known locally as the ‘Lourdes of America’. The crucifix still resides on the chapel altar, although its curative powers have been overshadowed by El Posito, the ‘sacred sand pit’ from which it sprang, now behind the main altar. More than 300,000 pilgrims visit Chimayo’s strange shrine each year.

(Note: On June 15, 1963, the face of cult leader JR ‘Bob’ Dobbs appeared on a tortilla of a humble Mexican woman in Plano, TX, USA.)


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

*Ø* Blogmanac | Talks Fail on Damaging Fumigant

By James Macharia

NAIROBI (Reuters) - "Environmental negotiations seen by U.S. fruit growers as critical to future profitability failed on Friday to reach consensus on a U.S. request to increase use of a fumigant known to destroy the ozone layer, delegates said ...

"Methyl bromide, which kills soil pests before crops are planted, is due to be phased out by all developed nations by January 1, 2005, under a global pact to protect the atmosphere ...

"The protocol -- seen by experts as the most successful global environmental treaty -- requires signatory states to phase out the use of some 95 chemicals that damage the ozone layer, a stratum of the atmosphere that protects the earth from ultraviolet radiation, which can cause skin cancer.

"The United States, the European Union and Japan have cut down the use of methyl bromide to 30 percent of existing stocks, but now the United States wants to be allowed to increase its use to 38.2 percent in 2005.

"A U.S. government delegation and farm groups say although they have made significant cutbacks in its use, they need more time to find effective substitute fumigants for crops such as tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, strawberries and sweet potatoes.

"Ozone experts and the European Union delegates opposed the request because it could reverse the gains achieved so far."

Full text

*Ø* Blogmanac November 15, 1532 | Pizarro and Atahualpa: The Prelude



1532 Pizarro and his 168 soldiers entered Cajamarca. The next day would see what is perhaps history’s most stunning battle.

Greed, gold and God: The Battle of Cajamarca

A satisfactory afternoon's work
for Spanish imperialism

When you have seen the errors in which you live, you will understand the good that we have done you by coming to your land … Our Lord permitted that your pride should be brought low and that no Indian should be able to offend a Christian.
Pizarro to Atahualpa

November 15-16, 1532

New World: Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro (1471 - June 26, 1541) seized Incan emperor Atahualpa (c. 1502 - August 29, 1533) after victory at Cajamarca, Peru. Pizarro had 168 men and Atahualpa had 80,000 battle-hardened soldiers who had recently defeated an indigenous enemy. However, the Spaniards had iron swords, guns, horses and armour, which the Incas did not. The result: one of history's most incredible battles, and it was all over in an afternoon.

Atahualpa (or Atahuallpa; Atabalipa) (ah'-ta-oo-al'-pa), was the13th and final emperor of the Incan Empire. He had been victorious in a devastating civil war with his half brother. He was a younger son of the Incan ruler Huayna Capac and an Ecuadorian princess of the Quito; although not the legitimate heir, he seems to have been the favourite. When Huayna Capac died (c. 1527), the kingdom was divided between Atahualpa, who ruled the northern part of the empire from Quito, and Huáscar, the legitimate heir, who ruled from Cuzco, the traditional Inca capital.

Into Atahualpa's heartland
Contemporary chroniclers depicted Atahualpa as brave, ambitious, and very popular with the army. He was soon embroiled in a civil war with his elder half-brother for control of the empire. The war ravaged Inca cities, wreaked havoc on the economy, and decimated the population. Early in 1532, near Cuzco, while Pizarro was making his way to Atahualpa's heartland, the army of the Incan lord had defeated Huáscar's army in what was probably the greatest of any Incan military engagement. Atahualpa treacherously captured his half-brother and his family and later had them executed, while Atahualpa was himself a prisoner – of Pizarro. (As Huáscar had been something of an ally to the Spanish, his half-brother's actions were later cited as a cause of the treatment Pizarro meted out to Atahualpa.)

In November, while the newly victorious Atahualpa and his battle-hardened army of 80,000 were relaxing with the hot springs in the village of Cajamarca, before their planned triumphal entry into Cuzco, Francisco Pizarro entered the city with a force of 168. Atahualpa got wind of the incursion.


On November 15, as the Spanish band moved close to Cajamarca, they tortured a few natives and discovered that Atahualpa was waiting for them at Cajamarca. Bravely, “Governor” Pizarro’s “army” moved towards the Incan town, and saw a beautiful town filled with so many tents that they were filled with fear. Hernando Pizarro, the leader’s brother, estimated the number of Incan soldiers at 40,000, but an eyewitness wrote that he gave this estimate in order to calm his comrades: there were in fact more than 80,000. Meanwhile, Most of Pizarro’s men were hidden around the main courtyard of Cajamarca.

Atahualpa ambushed
Invited by the Spaniard to attend a feast in his honor, the Inca chief accepted. The next day, he arrived at the appointed meeting place with several thousand unarmed retainers; Pizarro, prompted by the example of Hernán Cortés and Montezuma in Mexico, had prepared an ambush.

The next day at around noon, Atahualpa appeared in the town centre, carried on a palanquin borne by 80 Incan noblemen in rich blue livery, and with a retinue of 2,000 Indians sweeping the road before him. An eyewitness wrote “Then came a number of men with armour, large metal plates, and crowns of gold and silver which they bore, that it was a marvel to observe how the sun glinted on it." Atahualpa was also surrounded by his warriors, many thousands of them ...

This story continues at >http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/cajamarca_battle.html and I will be adding to it here tomorrow as well. Read how 168 men defeated 80,000 in an afternoon.


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

*Ø* Blogmanac | Kangaroos found hopping wild near Paris

"VERSAILLES, France, Nov 11 (AFP) - It may not be the scorching Australian outback, but fair dinkum, around 50 kangaroos who escaped a French animal park 30 years ago are happily living wild in a forest west of Paris.

"The grey marsupials broke free from the Emance nature reserve in the Yvelines department and are now bounding around woods bordering a dozen villages in the neighbouring Eure-et-Loir department, Le Parisien daily reported."
Source: Expatica

*Ø* Blogmanac | US media could learn from al-Jazeera

By Jon Faine

"Al-Jazeera, the Arab-language cable TV news service, has just celebrated its seventh birthday. I was there to witness it.

"I had met three al-Jazeera staff at an international media conference in Dublin, where they had debated the international coverage of the Iraq war with 200 war reporters from around the world.

"The al-Jazeera version of the war -- with one exception -- was vastly preferred to that presented by the US media.

"Assistant Secretary Brian Whitman, of the US Department of Defence, was greeted with total disbelief by the veterans, who scorned his pronouncements. The al-Jazeera staff were given a hostile reception by the colleagues of several dead journalists, whose corpses had been shown graphically on the Arab service. But otherwise, their coverage was regarded as accurate and balanced.

"The debate about the war went all day. Gathering socially afterwards, I wangled an invitation to visit their studio in Doha, in the tiny sheikdom of Qatar in the Gulf ...

"Abused by many Western governments -- and commentators -- as being a mouthpiece for Osama bin Laden, al-Jazeera is also decried in some Muslim countries as being nothing but a front for the CIA. As Omar Bec Merhebi, head of news gathering, said: 'We must be doing something right if everyone is abusing us.'"

Continue here
(Jon Faine presents the morning program on ABC Melbourne 774.)

*Ø* Blogmanac | Too much



Escher's 'Relativity' done digitally
Escher's 'Relativity' in Lego

Thanx, Baz le Tuff!

*Ø* Blogmanac November 15, 1777 | The forming of a great constitution


1777 The Articles of Confederation were adopted by the Continental Congress.

Was the USA founded on Christianity?

Many assert that it was,
but it seems not to be so

Someone wrote to me once that the USA is specifically a Christian nation, and I often hear it said that the American 'founding fathers’ intended America to be Christian or theistic. This, I assume, is why at the late date of 1954, after a campaign by the Catholic Knights of Columbus, Senator Homer Ferguson of Michigan sponsored a bill to amend the Pledge of Allegiance (an American text sometimes recited in school) to include the words "under God". On June 8, 1954, Congress adopted this change.

I believe there is ample evidence that it is not the case that America is a 'Christian nation'. In fact, the very first treaty signed by the USA confirms this view in no uncertain terms. Since the current US administration is so populated with fundamentalist Christians whose views are apparently influencing domestic and foreign policy, I thought it would be an idea to assemble some quotes on the subject.

I've placed these quotes, by American founding fathers, here at the Scriptorium

*Ø* Blogmanac | By George!

You couldn't make him up, and you don't have to. Like him or loathe him, George Bush is for real -- and heading soon for a capital city near you. Rupert Cornwell introduces our celebration of the remarkable career of Britain's favourite US President
from Independent.co.uk

"...But even if Bush, whose contact with the news is so assiduously filtered by his courtiers, gains little idea of the turmoil around him, his countrymen back home assuredly will. The treacherous French and spineless Germans are one thing. But in Iraq -- as in most other things, the average American assumes -- the British are our friends. Imagine the shock, then, when they see surging crowds, burning flags and (unless police step into ban it) a giant effigy of the Great Leader being toppled, à la Saddam, in Trafalgar Square.

"It is not only Bush the Chicken-hawk warmonger and promoter-in-chief of the great illusion about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction who they will be denouncing. It is also Bush the ignorant, self-righteous Christian warrior, Bush the smirking executioner and Bush the believer in one law for America and another for everyone else. And, of course, Bush the 'Toxic Texan', an image made flesh by the 'ghost ships' bearing down on Hartlepool, whose US-produced contaminants will find a last resting place on Britain's unpolluted isle ...

"Indeed, today's Washington has a whiff of Soviet ways; suffocating internal discipline, resentment of even reasoned, moderate opposition, and a refusal to admit even the tiniest error. For imperialists, read 'evildoers'. With their condescending 'we know best' attitude, Messrs Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest offer as close an impersonation of the Politburo as you will find. As was said of the pre-glasnost Kremlin then, so with the White House now: you know nothing, but understand everything."

FULL ARTICLE

*Ø* Blogmanac | Ahhhh, the truth will out . . . eventually.

The Memory Hole has added the following page:

9/11 Transcripts and Police Reports

Exclusive: Withheld by the authorities, released because of a lawsuit, and insanely expensive to purchase, these are the 9/11 documents that the Port Authority fought to keep under wraps. Previously unavailable online.

Also, 20 new stories have been added to the Newswire.

*Ø* Blogmanac | 'When shaking hands with the President ...'

By Andrew Marlatt and Tony Roche

From: The White House

To: Her Majesty's Lord Chancellor of Protocol

Sir: The President and Mrs. Bush are excited by their upcoming state visit to the United Kingdom and their audience with Queen Elizabeth II. However, if we may speak humbly, it is inevitable, when meeting the ruler of an Empire, that apprehensions arise concerning proper etiquette, i.e., how to present oneself, what to say, when to bow, etc. Therefore, as we do not wish an unintentional breach of protocol to dampen our special relationship, we hope the following notes will assist Her Majesty and all Britons in their efforts to behave appropriately in the presence of the President.

ADDRESS
- As the elective head of state, President Bush should initially be addressed as "Mr. President," and subsequently as "Sir." Please note that his official title -- "President of the United States of America and Sovereign Pro Tempore of Afghanistan, Iraq, and (Your Country Here)" -- is for internal use only.

- It is never appropriate to refer to the President in familiar terms, such as, "Dubya," "George," "41," or, if one is Prince Charles, "Sweetie." Prime Minister Blair, however, shall be permitted to employ his pet name for the President: "Daddy."

- The wife of the President is called the First Lady, and should initially be addressed as "Mrs. Bush" and thereafter as "Ma'am." It will not be appropriate to utilize endearments such as "Laura," "Lubya," or "Mrs. World Domination."

ARRIVAL
- When the President enters a room, it is customary for all in attendance to stand and applaud. As is done in America, women should "hoot," while men continuously "whoop." However, as he does not wish to infringe on local custom or discomfit the Royal Family, the President will not be offended if Her Majesty chooses to hoot from a seated position.

- Tradition dictates that in America, the President is "first among equals," and therefore, the President would consider bowing and curtsying to be ostentatious and inappropriate. For Americans.

- When shaking hands with the President, one's free hand should be used to flash the "thumbs-up" sign as a show of support, and also to signal that one carries no weaponry.

CONVERSATION- If one is concerned that a particular topic is unsuitable or indecorous, err on the side of caution. Acceptable subjects include: the weather, pledges of more British troops, exporting Democracy, pledges of more British troops, and jokes about the French, (but please, not in French).

- Subjects one should avoid include: questions that end in " ... and you call that victory?," and questions that begin with, "Hey, did you guys ever find ... ?"

- The President is celebrated for a colloquial conversational style that includes the bestowing of nicknames and the appearance of a certain unfamiliarity with our shared language. However, we expect the British people to recognize and embrace any perceived linguistic differences, and to take no offence when the President slaps Her Majesty on the back and refers to her as "La Wench del Windsor." (The President enjoys Spanish.)

SEATING
- A note to Palace staff: Unlike his predecessor, President Bush will not be bringing his wife and "a date," so there shall be no need for an extra chair.

STATE LUNCHEONS AND DINNERS
- The President should be seated first. During the meal, one should follow his lead, e.g., elbows off the table, napkin across lap, barbecue sauce on appetizer, entrée, then dessert.

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS BEFORE PARLIAMENT
- It is a tradition in your British Parliament for Members to interrupt the speaker in order to display support or disapproval. This is considered impolite in American politics, but the President recognizes and respects the traditions of other cultures and will, therefore, meet you halfway, i.e., you will be allowed to show support.

PROTESTING
- President Bush comes from a society that values free speech, and he will not be made uncomfortable if your government allows its citizens to express dissatisfaction with America or its policies, or in any other way gives the President cause to believe Great Britain wishes to have its name added to the list of terrorist nations.

GIFTS
- As is customary on such occasions, your government will wish to present to the President gifts reflective of British culture. We suggest:

- Tea

- Woollens

- Glassware

- Rumours involving Prince Charles and Howard Dean

- Scotland

[Thanx Colleen Spence and pagans4peace]

*Ø* Blogmanac | London cancels police leave to handle Bush protesters

"LONDON — Police are bracing for what could be the largest demonstration ever organized against a foreign head of state when President Bush arrives for a state visit on Tuesday.

"Central London streets will be closed for Mr. Bush's motorcades and leave has been canceled for London police, who are expected to spend millions of dollars on security for the visit.

"The highlight will come Thursday when as many as 60,000 people gather in Trafalgar Square to pull down a homemade statute of President Bush in a parody of the April 9 destruction of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad ..."
Source: Washington Times

* Ø * Ø * Ø *

"You have probably seen the photos of the statue of Saddam Hussein being toppled, and TV footage of jubilant Iraqis rolling the bronze head around, bringing back memories of so many previous popular uprisings – 1989, 1956, 1953...

"If there is one thing this war has taught us all, it's that we can't believe what we're told. For Donald Rumsfeld these were 'breathtaking'. For the British Army they were 'historic'. For BBC Radio they were 'amazing'.

A wide angle shot in which you can see the whole of Fardus Square (conveniently located just opposite the Palestine Hotel where the international media are based), and the presence of at most around 200 people – most of them US troops (note the tanks and armored vehicles) and assembled journalists."
The pulling down of Saddam's statue was a staged media event [the Baghdad square was not full of cheering Iraqis, and it was surrounded by US tanks keeping Baghdad citizens away]
See the Video of the Pulling down of the Statue

*Ø* Blogmanac November 14, 1646 | Gottfried Leibniz , genius and polymath



1646 Gottfried Leibniz (July 1, 1646 - November 14, 1716), German philosopher, scientist, mathematician, diplomat, librarian, and lawyer.

One of the main intellectual shapers of his day, Gottfried was the son of a professor of jurisprudence at the University of Leipzig, a precocious child who loved learning. At the age of seven, Leibniz entered the Nicolai School in Leipzig. His talents found him patrons, early in life, among the princes of Europe.

He wanted to join a group of alchemists who were searching for the philosopher's stone: in order to do so, he wrote to the society, and his letter was filled with as many long and difficult words as he could think of, though he didn't know their meaning. Still, the phoney letter impressed the ‘scientists’, who did not wish to appear ignorant, and he got the position.
Full story at the Wilson's Almanac free daily ezine archives

*Ø* Blogmanac November 14, 1889 | Today's item

1889 Journalist ‘Nellie Bly’ (Elizabeth Jane Cochran) set sail from New York in an attempt to beat the fictional record of Phileas Fogg of Jules Verne’s best-selling book, Around the World in 80 Days – to go around the world in less than 80 days. Nellie's trip took 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes and 14 seconds. Born May 5, 1864, to Judge Michael Cochran and Mary Jane Kennedy Cochran, part of the large Cochran family of Apollo, Pennsylvania, Elizabeth Cochrane revolutionised journalism for women.

In September 1887, Bly talked her way into the office of John Cockerill, managing editor of Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. Cockerill hired the unknown journalist and gave Bly her first assignment – to be committed to the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island. Impersonating an insane woman, Nellie Bly came back from the asylum ten days later with stories of cruel beatings, ice cold baths and forced, rancid meals. This adventurous and daring stunt propelled Bly into the limelight of New York journalism, and, at only 23, Nellie Bly had become a pioneer of a proud tradition that was well known in the West until the early 21st Century: investigative journalism.

On November 14, 1889, Nellie Bly began her world-wide journey on the Hamburg-American Company liner Augusta Victoria from the Hoboken Pier at precisley 9:40:30 a.m.

In 1895 Nellie Bly married a millionaire, Robert Seaman, 50 years older than herself, and retired. She lost most of his money after he died and in 1919 tried unsuccessfully to make a comeback.

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

*Ø* Blogmanac November 14, 1998 | Saddam Hussein offers compliance

Did Iraq really expel the UNSCOM weapons inspectors in 1998? Bush said so in his State of the Union. Cheney also told the world this falsehood.
The Almanac says it's an often-repeated error, or lie, one of 31 Myths of the 'War on Terrorism' and Iraq.

Here's what really happened.

On November 14, 1998, President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, after having ceased to comply with UN weapons inspectors on October 31, sent a letter to the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan offering to facilitate the inspections. On December 16, Australian Richard Butler, head of the UN weapons inspection team (UNSCOM), withdrew the team from Iraq, to protect his staff from the air strikes that the US and UK governments were threatening.

Within hours, Operation Desert Fox began: the US and UK began pre-emptively bombing Iraq – hundreds of cruise missiles raining down on the country, marking the start of strikes to punish the Baghdad government. An avalanche of US and British propaganda was published by a mostly unsuspecting world media, justifying the aggression and ignoring the destruction of Baghdad’s utilities and the deaths of many innocent civilians and service people. On ABC's This Week (September 27, 2003), Colin Powell publicly lied that the Clinton administration “conducted a four-day bombing campaign in late 1998 based on the intelligence that he [Butler] had. That resulted in the weapons inspectors being thrown out.”

Funeral services were held for 68 people who Iraqi officials say were killed in the raids. But Iraq's Ambassador to the UN, Nizar Hamdoon, said: “I'm told that the casualties are in the thousands in terms of numbers of people who were killed or wounded.”

US bombs food storage, schools, college, maternity centres
Several weeks after the strikes, the UN children's fund, UNICEF, made a first preliminary assessment of damage to civilian facilities. They reported the destruction of a rice warehouse in Tikrit in northern Iraq, damage to ten schools in the southern port city of Basra, and an agricultural college in Kirkuk in northern Iraq received a direct hit.

They said that in Baghdad medical and maternity centres, a water supply system and parts of the health and social affairs ministries were damaged.

Since Butler’s forced withdrawal in the face of US-UK threats, many Western media and politicians have usually pretended to the public that Iraq “expelled” the team.

The events surrounding the withdrawal are recounted in Butler's book, Saddam Defiant: (2000):

“I received a telephone call from US Ambassador Peter Burleigh inviting me for a private conversation at the US mission ... Burleigh informed me that on instructions from Washington it would be ‘prudent to take measures to ensure the safety and security of UNSCOM staff presently in Iraq.’ I told him that I would act on his advice and remove my staff from Iraq.”

Oft-repeated error of fact
The ‘mistake’ (that UNSCOM was ejected by Hussein in 1998) has been made not only by pro-war people such as George W Bush in his 2002 State of the Union address (‘the axis of evil’ speech), Dick Cheney, Alexander Rose, the Canadian right-wing Washington correspondent of the National Post, and the editorial writers of the Sunday Times. It has also been made by those who have shown concern for the humanitarian situation in Iraq, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, UK Liberal Democrats foreign affairs spokesperson Menzies Campbell, and the usually trustworthy Guardian Middle East editor Brian Whitaker. The BBC often makes the same incorrect assertion, although it usually acknowledges its error when it is pointed out to them.

Butler was pro-peace for Iraq
Richard Butler became a fierce critic of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, strongly criticising Australian Prime Minister Howard and marching with more than a quarter of a million others in the Sydney pro-peace march on February 16, 2003. On the morning of the peace march, he told ABC interviewer Terry Lane:

“I believe that there is a very real prospect now that the United States of America will attack Iraq without the approval of the UN Security Council. That is contrary to international law, it should not happen, and I believe the consequences of such an action could be possibly catastrophic. I also finally believe that war is almost certain not to be the solution to any of the problems that are posed by Saddam Hussein, and they are real problems. The smaller reason, not so small for we Australians, is, I don't know how to put this as simply as possible ... Let me just say that I'm sick to death of the lies that we're being told about this by the Prime Minister of Australia. I heard him again this morning on a national television interview, and it was shocking, it was astonishing to hear him duck and weave, including by the way, say that in answer to a question about the possible deaths of Iraqi women and children, that something broadly like, 'Well, you know, that was unfortunate but it was their fault that Saddam Hussein was their president, and that's how it goes'. Astonishing, and I'm really deeply distressed by his position …

“International law is important here, and we mustn't commit the terrible mistake and folly in our pursuit of a criminal, by ourselves breaking the law. Because then it brings the whole system into disrepute and that is what I fear we face if the Americans go it alone here. We will trash 50 years of post World War II international law and replace it with the rule that might is right, and that's what we've been trying to get away from.” Source

Myths of the ‘War on Terrorism’ and Iraq

Iraq crisis timeline
Chronology from UNSCOM website

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

*Ø* Blogmanac | CIA Report Suggests Iraqis Are Losing Faith in US Efforts

"WASHINGTON, Nov. 12 — A bleak top-secret report by the Central Intelligence Agency suggests that the situation in Iraq is approaching a crucial turning point, with ordinary Iraqis losing faith in American-led occupation forces and in the United States-appointed Iraqi Governing Council.

"The report, sent to Washington on Monday by the C.I.A.'s Baghdad station chief, suggests that the situation is creating a more fertile environment for the anti-American insurgency. Officials said the report was adding to the sense of urgency behind the administration's reappraisal of its policies in Iraq ..."
Source

[I'm sure readers will have heard or read this news already but I thought it important enough to post.]

*Ø* Blogmanac November 14 | Hey Georgie! Flashback!


1969

*Ø* Blogmanac November 12-23| If you missed the Perseids in August, don't miss the Leonids!

Leonids meteor showers (Nov 12-23 annually)
“The Leonids are a prolific meteor shower associated with the comet Tempel-Tuttle. The meteor stream is viewable every year around November 17 and is thought to be comprised of particles ejected by the comet as it passes by the Sun. When the Earth moves through the meteor stream, the meteor shower is visible. The Leonids get their name from usually making their appearance in or near the constellation Leo.

"The Leonids are famous because their meteor showers, or storms, can be among the most spectacular. They seem to follow a 33 year cycle, associated with the 33 year orbit of Tempel-Tuttle. Storms in peak years can feature thousands of meteors per hour; notable events were observed in 1698, 1799, 1833, 1866, 1966, and 2001.”

http://www-space.arc.nasa.gov/~leonid/meteor.html
http://www.leonidstorm.com/
Estimate the best viewing times for your part of the world

Source: Wikipedia

Leonids in Native American history and folklore
“During the last 15 to 20 years, archeoastronomy has uncovered much concerning the astronomical beliefs of native Americans. Unfortunately, the methods of keeping records of astronomical events were not as straight forward as those of the Chinese and Europeans, as there are no books lying around. Instead, the methods of record keeping included rock and cave drawings, stick notching, beadwork, pictures on animal skins and jars, and story telling‹most of which are not dateable.

“One of the few dateable events among the various records of native Americans was the 1833 appearance of the Leonid meteor shower. Historically recognized as one of the greatest meteor storms on record, it made a lasting impression among the peoples of North America.

“The most obvious accounts of the Leonid storm appear among the various bands of the Sioux of the North American plains. The Sioux kept records called ‘winter counts,’ which were a chronological, pictographic account of each year painted on animal skin. In 1984, Von Del Chamberlain (Smithsonian Institution) listed the astronomical references for 50 Sioux winter counts, of which 45 plainly referred to an intense meteor shower during 1833/1834. In addition, he listed 19 winter counts kept by other plains Indian tribes, of which 14 obviously referred to the Leonid storm ...
Much more at source


If you can't see nuthin' ... join the International Dark-Sky Association and help lobby governments to pass some laws to help save the human spirit!

*Ø* Blogmanac November 13 | The bull running at Stamford, UK

Until 1839, the November 13 bull running was a colourful tradition of the town of Stamford, Lincoln, England. The butchers of the town would purchase a wild bull for the purpose, and the shops would all be closed. In a kind of opposite ceremony to the famous bull running of Pamplona, Spain, the hapless creature was turned out of the alderman's house, whereupon the villagers ran after him with their bull-clubs.

According to ancient tradition, the sport went back to 1209, the time when William, Earl of Warren, in the time of King John, saw two bulls fighting for one cow. A butcher of the town, who owned one of the bulls, accidentally set one of his mastiffs upon his own bull which forced it into the town and all the dogs ran after it.

This caused such a commotion in the town that the earl gave the butchers in perpetuity the meadows in which the bulls were found fighting, as long as the butchers each year on this day put a mad bull into the town to be chased. A man in a barrel with both ends removed was rolled up to the animal to taunt it, and the bull would usually toss it.

‘Bridging the bull’
The bull was driven to the local bridge by the locals, who for the day were known as ‘bullards’. Where the populace press in upon him and tumbled him into the water. At night the animal was slaughtered and his carcass sold cheaply to the poor.

Even before the rights of children were fully protected in the English-speaking world, there were laws for the protection of animals. In 1833 the SPCA started its campaign against the spectacle and in 1836 prosecuted several people for "conspiring to disturb the peace by riotously assembling to run and torment a bull". In 1838 the Home Secretary determined to stop the custom, and sent in a large number of dragoons to stop it. A riot ensued, with injuries on both sides.

In 1839 a stronger force was sent to Stamford. The cost of the police and military was placed on the shoulders of the citizens, so the next year they discontinued the ancient tradition. For years afterwards, the townspeople would cry out “Bull! Bull!” whenever they packed out the local theatre, and would not cease until their old Bullards' Song was played.

Excerpt
Come all you bonny boys,
Who love to bait the bonny bull,
Who take delight in noise,
And you shall have your bellyful.
From The Bullards' Song, sung on the day of the running of the bull, Stamford, England, until 1839

The bull running was on or around St Martin’s Day, and might have pagan Horned God associations.

Last person alive (1928) to remember the bull running
The British bulldog, bred for this pursuit

[This article was posted on Thursday Nov 13 at pr3ecisely the moment that Blogger went down for maintenance; hence its lateness by one day. -- PW]

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

*Ø* Blogmanac November 13, 1002 | Ethnic cleansing, English style

1002 Ethnic cleansing: On St Brice's Day, the Anglo-Saxon people rose up and massacred their Danish overlords. This act of carnage so outraged the Vikings that it led to a full scale invasion by them the following year. John of Wallingford suggests that the Vikings had to be killed because they combed their hair daily, bathed every Saturday and regularly changed their clothes – helping to undermine the virtue of married women and even seduce the daughters of nobles to be their mistresses.

For it is fully agreed that to all dwelling in this country it will be well known that, since a decree was sent out by me with the counsel of my leading men and magnates, to the effect that all the Danes who had sprung up in this island, sprouting like cockle amongst the wheat, were to be destroyed by a most just extermination, and thus this decree was to be put into effect even as far as death, those Danes who dwelt in the afore-mentioned town, striving to escape death, entered this sanctuary of Christ, having broken by force the doors and bolts, and resolved to make refuge and defence for themselves therein against the people of the town and the suburbs; but when all the people in pursuit strove, forced by necessity, to drive them out, and could not, they set fire to the planks and burnt, as it seems, this church with its ornaments and its books. Afterwards, with God's aid, it was renewed by me.
From a royal charter

It is widely held that Hocktide games in England commemorated the Anglo-Saxon's inhumane slaughter on that cruel day. Hocktide is the Monday and Tuesday following the second Sunday after Easter.

>Read the whole article at the Scriptorium

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

*Ø* Blogmanac | RESIST BUSH

"George Bush will be coming to the UK for a state visit 19th - 21st November 2003.

"Resist Bush is an umbrella group of activists to help individuals and groups make sure his UK visit is a truly memorable one -- not just for George, but for his host Tony Blair.

Wednesday 19th November - Resist Bush Tea Party

"Mass protest and civil disobedience, 3pm, Buckingham Palace.

"Resist Bush is calling for a day of open mass non-violent civil disobedience for the first day of Bush's visit. This will be a space where all groups and indivuals can come to protest together in large numbers. Please get the word out to as many people as possible.

"Resist Bush is also co-ordinating a mass sit-down protest as part of the Tea Party on the 19th. This will be open to everyone to join. We stress that this action is a call for NON-VIOLENT action i.e. 'action which does not harm or degrade any human being'. Please see the flyer for more details.

"Resist Bush is an initiative of the GROW network ( Grass Roots Opposition to War).

"Other major events have been planned on the 18th, 20th and 21st November. For more information see our calendar of events.

"Our intention is that anyone, regardless of their affiliations, will be able to email us details of protests they are planning. Then we can publish appropriate information on the site ...

"To subscribe to the Resist Bush Yahoo newsgroup email: resistbush-subscribe@yahoogroups.co.uk "

Source and full text

See also this report in the Telegraph, and this "wax off your bush" story at the Mirror.

[Thanks J-9!]

*Ø* Blogmanac | The World's Loudest Belcher

[Don't you think this has got a trifle out of hand? - N]

LONDON (Reuters) - "A burp from the loudest belcher in the world echoed round Britain's Tate Modern Gallery as the Guinness World Records book celebrated the release of its 100 millionth copy. The book, which lists world records from the smallest dog to the highest paid TV guest star, has its own entry in the latest edition as the best-selling copyright book of all time.

"'Everybody has a dream to be the best at something in the world and the public has an incredible imagination,' the book's editor Claire Folkard said at a reception in London. 'That's what has kept us going.'

"One guest who satiated her desire to be entered into the book as a record holder was Elaine Davidson who had 1,903 piercings, studs and rings over her tattooed body."

Full text

*Ø* Blogmanac | United States: Stop Handing Over Detainees to Torturers

Statement from Human Rights Watch



"President George W. Bush should end the transfer of detainees to countries that routinely engage in torture, such as Syria, if he is to fulfill his pledge to champion democracy and human rights in the Middle East and honor the United States' international legal obligations, Human Rights Watch said today.

"In a November 6 speech to the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, President Bush condemned the government of Syria, along with Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, for leaving its people "a legacy of torture, oppression, misery, and ruin."

"According to the U.S. State Department's annual human rights reports, Syria torture methods include beatings, administering electric shocks, pulling out of fingernails, forcing objects into the rectum, and bending detainees into the frame of a wheel and whipping their exposed body parts.

"Yet last year, the United States reportedly transferred Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen, to Syria after having detained him in New York as he was en route from Tunisia to Montreal. On November 4 in Ottawa, Arar publicly asserted that, while held in Syrian prisons for 10 months, he was repeatedly tortured by being whipped with a thick electric cable and threatened with electric shocks.

"Since September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has reportedly facilitated or participated directly in the transfer of numerous persons without extradition proceedings, a practice known as "irregular rendition," to countries in the Middle East known to practice torture routinely."

CONTINUE

*Ø* Blogmanac | Coffee Break



Zombie Machines Fueling New Cyber Crime Wave

By Bernhard Warner, European Internet Correspondent

LONDON (Reuters) - "The rapid growth of broadband home computer connections may be inadvertently fueling what police suspect could be the start of a new crime wave -- cyber-blackmail.

"As more homes connect to faster delivery systems, their computers are becoming vulnerable to hackers and virus writers who can turn them into "zombie" machines, ready to carry out any malevolent command."

Full text

* Ø * Ø * Ø *

Woman Sues Over Condom in Her Clam Chowder

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - "Waiter, there is something worse than a fly in my soup.

"A California woman who found a condom in her bowl of clam chowder has sued the upscale restaurant that served it to her -- saying she has suffered depression and anxiety from the shocking discovery."

Full text

* Ø * Ø * Ø *

Ministers Fall to Own Road Safety Push

PARIS (Reuters) - "Two French ministers being whisked to the unveiling of new radar speed traps outside Paris were caught over the speed limit as their cars raced to the event, French car magazine Auto Plus says.

"It said Monday its reporters used hand-held radars to record Transport Minister Gilles de Robien's car whizzing out of the French capital at 62 mph on a road with a 43 mph limit."

Full text

*Ø* Blogmanac | Half of US now think Iraq war a waste

[Click the pic if you're nostalgic for those heady days when only 100s of millions of people around the world wanted to off the Shrub -- soon it will be a majority]

"Half of Americans, 49 percent, say the war was not worth it, compared to 48 percent who say it was, according to a survey conducted this month by the Annenberg Public Policy Center.

That's a change from results in October, when 52 percent of Americans polled nationwide said the situation in Iraq was worth going to war over, while 43 percent said it was not ..."
Source: SF Gate

* Ø * Ø * Ø *

Dreamers and Idiots
Bush and Blair did everything necessary to prevent the outbreak of peace

By George Monbiot [Read this guy often! - PW]

"The Guardian. 11th November 2003) Those who would take us to war must first shut down the public imagination. They must convince us that there is no other means of preventing invasion, or conquering terrorism, or even defending human rights. When information is scarce, imagination is easy to control. As intelligence gathering and diplomacy are conducted in secret, we seldom discover - until it is too late - how plausible the alternatives may be.

"So those of us who called for peace before the wars with Iraq and Afghanistan were mocked as effeminate dreamers ...

"But a further, and even graver, set of lies is only now beginning to come to light. Even if all the claims Bush and Blair made about their enemies and their motives had been true, and all their objectives had been legal and just, there may still have been no need to go to war. For, as we discovered last week, Saddam Hussein proposed to give Bush and Blair almost everything they wanted before a shot had been fired. Our governments appear both to have withheld this information from the public and to have lied to us about the possibilities for diplomacy ..."
Source: The Guardian via InformationClearinghouse.info

*Ø* Blogmanac November 12 | Festival of Jupiter, ancient Rome

A three-day festival honouring the one Roman deity given the title of God – Jupiter, or Jove to the Romans and Zeus to the Greeks. Jupiter was the god of the sky and thunder, a friendly, mostly happy god, not vengeful or destructive like Jehovah. Worship of Zeus originated among the Minoans, where he was known as the Earthshaker.

Jupiter overthew his Father Saturn (in Greek, Cronus; his mother was Rhea), then drew lots with his brothers Poseidon and Hades to determine who would be the supreme ruler of the gods. Jupiter won this draw and became the ruler of Olympus and the patron of the ancient Roman state.

His weapon is a thunderbolt which he hurls at those who incur his displeasure. Jupiter is married to Hera but, is known for his many affairs. Jupiter had an affair with Juturna but the secret was betrayed by a nymph named Lara, whom Jupiter struck with muteness as punishment. Despite his philandering, he is also known to punish those that lie or break oaths.

This famous statue of Zeus (Jupiter) was created by the famous Greek sculptor Phidius during the 5th century BCE; it was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. According to a contemporary source, it was about 12 metres tall, with the deity carved from ivory and seated on a magnificent throne made of cedarwood and inlaid with ivory, gold, ebony and precious stones. In Zeus’s right hand there was a small statue of Nike, the goddess of victory, and in his left hand a shining sceptre upon which perched an eagle. It stood for more than eight centuries in the temple of Zeus at Olympia in Greece, until the Roman emperor Theodosius I proclaimed Christianity the state religion, and ordered all statues and likenesses of the pagan gods torn down.


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

*Ø* Blogmanac November 12 | The rising of the Nile

St Michael’s day for the Nile, Egypt
The Christians of Egypt placed their life-giving river, the Nile, under the archangel St Michael’s protection. They adopted the feast as kept by the Greeks and kept it on November 12. On the twelfth of each month they celebrate a special commemoration of St Michael, but on June 12, when the river starts to rise, they keep as a holiday of obligation the feast of St Michael “for the rising of the Nile”: euche eis ten symmetron anabasin ton potamion hydaton.

*Ø* Blogmanac November 12, 1815 | Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, American feminist, born on November 12, 1815

I live ...
For the cause that lacks assistance,
For the wrong that needs resistance,
For the future in the distance
And the good that I can do.
Poem quoted on the title page of the diary of Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (November 12, 1815 - October 26, 1902), US social reformer and feminist co-founder, with Lucretia Mott, of the women's rights movement; first president of the National Woman's Suffrage Association.

*Ø* Blogmanac November 12, 1493 | Happy birthday, Paracelsus

1493 (Sources vary as to date) Theophrastus Philippus Aureolus Bombastus von Paracelsus (1493 - 1541), Switzerland, physician and one of history’s greatest alchemists. He called himself para-Celsus because he surpassed even first-century Roman physician Aulus Cornelius Celsus. He broke with tradition by teaching in German rather than Latin, burned Avicenna's Canon to mark his break with academic colleagues at Basel, and lambasted the Greek physician Galen (131 - 201 CE) at every opportunity.

He believed that “magic is a teacher of medicine preferable to all the written books”. He also believed that epileptics were ill, not possessed. Paracelsus was the first to use tincture of opium in medicine, and he correctly associated head injury with paralysis, and miners’ lung with the occupation. He claimed to have discovered the philosopher’s stone and that he was immortal.

On September 24, 1541 Paracelsus made his will, but there was no mention of gold or silver, the alchemists’ holy grail. His only legacy was a 125 grams (approx. 4 oz Troy/Apoth.) silver chalice. Paracelsus died in 1541, possibly from a fall (he was a heavy drinker).

More
More on the philosophers’ stone
More on Paracelsus
Yet more on Paraclesus
And more
More on Paracelsus
The Alchemy Web Site
Shop Alchemy
Science > Anomalies and Alternative Science > Alchemy

*Ø* Blogmanac | Iraq war toll up to 55,000: report

"A new report estimates as many as 55,000 people have died in the Iraq war and in the months after major hostilities ended ..."
Source: ABC

*Ø* Blogmanac | Australia lashed over boat people

"The UN refugee agency has accused Australia of violating its obligation to refugees by turning away 14 asylum-seekers before they could be assessed.

"The group of Turkish Kurds is now in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, after Australia's navy towed their fishing-boat away from its coast last week.

"'Denial of access... is a breach of... obligations under international law,' said a UN spokesman in Geneva.

"He also urged Indonesia not to deport the Kurds, who say they are refugees ...

"Australia's policies towards asylum-seekers who arrive illegally have become among the toughest in the developed world ..."
Source: BBC News

* Ø * Ø * Ø *

We claimed asylum in Australia: Turkish Kurds
"DAVID HARDAKER: The 14 Turkish Kurds who appeared last week on Melville Island now seem likely to have their immediate future determined by Indonesian authorities.

"But on their arrival in Indonesia the men have contradicted Australian Government claims that they at no stage made a claim for asylum in Australia.

"The 14 men have told the ABC that they made it clear to Australian authorities on Melville Island last week that they were refugees and wanted to stay ..."
Source: ABC (Australia)

*Ø* Blogmanac | Hustler boss claims nude pics of Pte. Lynch

"NEW YORK — Pornographer Larry Flynt claims he bought nude photos of former prisoner of war Pte. 1st Class Jessica Lynch last month to publish in Hustler magazine, but changed his mind because she is a 'good kid ... and a victim of the Bush administration.'

"The photos, which Flynt's publicist says show the undressed army supply clerk posing with male soldiers, were sold to Flynt last month, according to a statement from Flynt that was read to The Associated Press today by his publicist ..."
Source: Toronto Star

*Ø* Blogmanac November 11, 1887| the Haymarket Martyrs

If you think that by hanging us you can stamp out the labor movement, then hang us. Here you will tread upon a spark, but here, and there, and behind you, and in front of you, and everywhere, the flames will blaze up. It is a subterranean fire. You cannot put it out. The ground is on fire upon which you stand.
August Spies, one of the Haymarket Martyrs, four innocent men, who were executed in Chicago, USA on November 11, 1887; to the judge


1887 Chicago, USA: The Haymarket Martyrs – August Spies, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fischer and George Engel – were hanged for “inciting” the Haymarket riot, at which they were not present. A fifth, 23-year-old Louis Lingg, had killed himself in his cell the previous evening. The evidence against them was their anarchist ideas and literature. They were found guilty in a trial which Governor John Peter Altgeld subsequently held to be unfair.

Another defendant, Oscar Neebe, received a reduced sentence of 15 years in prison, presumably because even the State Attorney admitted he had been at home during the bombing. Neebe protested to the judge that his sentence wasn't fair.

“Your honor, I am sorry I am not to be hung with the rest of the men,” Neebe said at sentencing.

*Ø* Blogmanac November 11 | St Martin's Day (Martinmas)

If the geese at Martin’s day stand on ice, they will walk in mud at Christmas.
English traditional proverb

If All Saints’ Day will bring out the winter, St Martin’s Day will bring out Indian summer.
American traditional proverb

If ducks do slide at Hollantide
At Christmas they will swim.
If ducks do swim at Hollantide
At Christmas they will slide.
Winter is on his way
At St Martin’s Day.
English traditional proverb. Hollantide is Martinmas.

At St Martin’s Day
Winter is on his way.
French traditional proverb

‘Tween Martinmas and Yule
Water’s wine in every pool.
Scotch traditional proverb

Wind north-west at Martinmas, severe winter to come.
English (Huntingdonshire) traditional proverb

Martinmas
Martinmas, or the feast day of St Martin, was in Europe the time of year for tasting the new season’s wine and for the killing of meat for Winter eating. Because of the christianisation of the Greek day of Dionysus, god of wine, also around November 11, the saint is closely associated with drinking, hence the expression Martin drunk. As fat geese were plentiful, on ancient clog almanacs the day was marked with the image of a goose. In Europe, today was the day for eating goose, but in Britain the day was Michaelmas (September 29).

As recorded by Bonnie Blackburn and Leofranc Holford-Strevens (Oxford Companion to the Year, Oxford University Press, 1999), the breast bone of a goose that is eaten on the Feast of St Martin can be used as part of a weather prognostication. After the meat is eaten off it, the breast-bone is examined. If the bone is fair and clear, winter is likely to be cold and full of hard frosts. A thick and dark bone indicates that the winter will be full of snow, rain and sleet, although warmer in temperature.

Martin and the goose
One day Martin was lecturing the folks in a village about their sinful ways and a goose started honking so loudly that it interfered with his speech. Not to be outdone, the good priest ordered the goose slaughtered, and then finished his sermon. Afterward the goose was cooked and served to him. St Martin choked to death eating the goose.

The associated precept from the Christian tradition teaches us to be very careful about how we treat our critics.

St Martin’s Day
In the European tradition, today marks the onset of Winter. In earlier days that distinction was given to October 31, or Halloween (originally called by the Celts Samhain), but in 1752 the calendar was altered by a few days. Today was also called ‘Tear-Stomach Day’.

Mart
In Scotland and the north of England, a fat ox used to be called a mart, because St Martin’s Day was the day to kill cattle for winter food.



More at the Scriptorium's page on St Martin's Day

*Ø* Blogmanac | The Case of (and for) the Invisible Presidential Candidate

About Dennis Kucinich -- The Progressive Choice

Just because you're not hearing about him on television and in the mainstream press doesn't mean that Dennis isn't the candidate to beat Bush! In fact, I'm beginning to think that he's the one most contenders are most afraid of.

Dennis is unique in so many ways it isn't funny. Consequently, no one knows how to act when dealing with him. He doesn't fit the pigeonholing we're so used to doing and doesn't meet the qualifications to play the "game" of politics. And that is exactly why he is the man of the times.

Dennis is and always has been a "man of the people" -- how refreshing!

Prominent social observer/author, Studs Terkel's article in The Nation, Kucinich is The One, relates Studs' recollection of his first meeting with Dennis 24 years ago which led to a long friendship.

Unlike the other candidates, Dennis is well-versed in all the issues of concern to the people. The press and the people who question him at public appearances are wowed by his "hit the ground running" enthusiasm for answering any questions that come his way without waffling, ducking or denying.

To make up for the mainstream media's avoidance of Dennis' presence as a candidate, do yourself a favor and just give his platform, his ten key issues, a run-through. Then share it with everyone you know. Throughout his impressive political history he has always defeated a Republican and gained a seat for the Democrats--this time the seat he will gain is that of Repug (p)Resident Bush in 2004!


---0---0---0---

Dennis' Progressive Vision
We, the people, deserve no less

"One person can make a difference.

"It's time for America to resume its glorious journey. Time to reject shrinking jobs and wages, disappearing savings and rights. Time to reject the detour towards fear and greed. Time to look out upon the world for friends, not enemies. Time to counter the control of corporations over our politics, our economy, our resources, and mass media. Time for those who have much to help those who have little by maintaining a progressive tax structure. Time to tell the world that we wish to be their partner in peace, not their leader in war. Most of all, it is time for America to again be the land where dreams come true because the government is on the side of its people.

"Unfortunately, America now leads the world in categories we should not be proud of. America is now the world’s leading jailer with an incarceration rate higher than China. We lead the industrialized world in poverty and in the growing gap between rich and poor. And we are the only industrial nation not to provide national health care.

"Learn more about what a Kucinich administration would mean for America."

*Ø* Blogmanac | The Murder Of Dr David Kelly

I have never felt convinced – perhaps not even persuaded – that David Kelly topped himself. For one thing, only hours before his death he emailed a friend to say he intended to fly to Baghdad very soon.

The Murder Of Dr David Kelly adds fuel to the fire. It's another gripping read from Rense.com, and I thank Almaniac Lynn Perry for sending it in.

*Ø* Blogmanac | Men stop watching EV (Electronic Valium) in droves

Absence of television viewers has network executives scratching their heads

"ABSTRACT - Absence of television viewers has network executives baffled; returning hit shows like Friends and E.R. are losing significant numbers of viewers from previous years; new shows have performed far worse than almost anyone expected; men between 18 and 24 are apparently deserting television in droves; nearly 20 percent fewer men in that advertiser-friendly demographic are watching television during prime time than during same period last year ..."
Source: NY Times

"Could they be rebelling against anti-male images?" asks Wendy McElroy from iFeminists.com newsletter, which is feminist but pro-equality.

*Ø* Blogmanac | George's Daddy said it

Iraq: "Incalculable human and political costs" – Bush the First

Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under the circumstances, there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different — and perhaps barren — outcome.
A World Transformed, former President George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, National Security Advisor during the Bush administration, 1998, Chapter 19
Source

If you like quotes like this, you can get them from Almost Prophetic Quotes, our other free ezine.

*Ø* Blogmanac | McDonald's anger over McJob entry

"McDonald's has expressed its outrage over how the latest Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary describes job prospects at the US fast-food giant.
In its latest edition, the dictionary defines the term McJob as 'low-paying and dead-end work'.

"McDonald's CEO Jim Cantalupo dismissed the term as 'an inaccurate description of restaurant employment' ..."
Sauce: BBC News

* Ø * Ø * Ø *



She doesn't see the cheese, she sees the little thing bouncing around and she wants to eat it
Parent Tina Bailey


"Adult obesity rates have tripled since 1982 with 19% of Britons now counted as obese and 39% overweight.

"But childhood obesity is also increasing rapidly with the number of obese children doubling since 1982.

"Around 10% of six-year-olds are obese, rising to 17% of 15-year-olds ..."

Food firms blamed for child obesity

*Ø* Blogmanac | I'm looking for a date

Object: Patrimony

Can anyone help me here?

Since I wrote my piece on Cortes, I've been trying to find the date/s of Noche Triste and the (ten-day?) Festival of Tóxcatl to the god Huitzilopochtli when Aztec/Spanish massacres occurred in 1520 at Tenochtitlán, Mexico. Books and websites I've been searching have given me a variety of dates, from June 30 to July 12 (one site even has June 31!!)

I would appreciate any help with this, and any information about the fiesta and its place in the calendar. Thanx, folks.

*Ø* Blogmanac Australians| Encourage your local Council to Declare themselves a Refugee Welcome Zone

"The following Councils have already declared their willingness to welcome refugees into their area, to celebrate the diversity in their midst and to acknowledge the importance of upholding the human rights of refugees who have escaped persecution:

"Ashfield Council, Bassendean Town Council, Shire of Greater Bendigo, City of Brisbane, City of Brimbank, City of Casey, City of Darebin, City of Greater Dandenong, Gawler Town Council, City of Greater Geelong, City of Fremantle, Fairfield City Council, City of Hume, Ku-rin-gai Council, City of Maribyrnong, Marrickville City Council, Metropolitan Victoria, City of Melbourne, Mildura Rural City Council, City of Mitcham, City of Monash, City of Moonee Valley, City of Moreland, Mosman Municipal Council, Shire of Mount Alexander, North Sydney Council, Murray Bridge Council, Lake Macquarie City Council, Leichhardt Council, City of Port Phillip, City of Port Adelaide/Enfield, Rockdale City Council, South Sydney Council, City of Subiaco, Town of Vincent, Waverley Council, City of Whittlesea, City of Wollongong, and the City of Yarra.

"Encourage your local Council to become involved. Contact Jacki Dillon at RCOA for more details."

Source: Refugee Council of Australia

*Ø* Blogmanac | Bush's corporate juggernaut targets Middle East

Bush: Iraq Part of 'Global Democratic Revolution'
Liberation of Middle East Portrayed as Continuation of Reagan's Policies

"President Bush today portrayed the war in Iraq as the latest front in the 'global democratic revolution' led by the United States. The revolution under former president Ronald Reagan freed the people of Soviet-dominated Europe, he declared, and is destined now to liberate the Middle East as well.

"In a speech to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) described as a major policy address by the White House, Bush avoided issues such as preemptive attack, weapons of mass destruction and 'gathering" dangers to the United States' ..."
Source: Washington Post

Media Transparency article on National Endowment for Democracy
Trojan Horse: The National Endowment for Democracy
Loose Cannon: The National Endowment for Democracy

Bush-Hitler comparisons unjust (says eXile, the Moscow-based alternative newspaper)

*Ø* Blogmanac | Bush visit set to paralyse London

Itinerary details remain secret in record security operation as thousands plan street protests during first state visit by an American President

Martin Bright and Anushka Asthana
The Observer

"London will be brought to a standstill in 10 days' time when the visit of US President George W. Bush will take place under the highest security ever reserved for a foreign head of state.

"A combination of last-minute road closures and a rally at Trafalgar Square by an estimated 100,000 anti-war protesters will paralyse the capital when Bush arrives on 19 November for a three-day stay in Britain. It will be the first ever state visit by an American President, who will be the guest of the Queen for the duration of his stay ...

"Bush's arrival is likely to follow the pattern of his visit to Australia last month, when he was spirited away from protesters along empty streets cleared of ordinary people. All police leave has been cancelled and armed units and US special agents will be assigned to the streets of London.

"Whitehall sources have confirmed that the itinerary for the visit has still not been finalised, and officials on both sides of the Atlantic say that a visit which places the American President, Prime Minister Tony Blair and Queen Elizabeth II in the same place calls for an unprecedented level of protection.

"The chaos will be compounded by the fact that protesters are not co-operating with the police in their plans for a demonstration against the two leaders of the coalition war in Iraq. Protesters last night said they will see it as a victory if they are kept away from Bush's cavalcade altogether. Andrew Burgin of the Stop the War Coalition said: 'I think it is a back-handed compliment, because it shows they realise he is such an unpopular political figure held in very low esteem and the war was so wrong. Other Presidents have come here and there have not been demonstrations, but against Bush there will be. The police have promised us we will be allowed a legitimate right to protest and we intend to continue with our plans.'

"Tim Ireland, 33, marketing consultant of anti-war website Bloggerheads.com, said: 'Demonstrators should not be kept away from him. We expect them to make it difficult for us, and there will be a lot of misinformation.' ...

"The centrepiece of the protest will be a huge march on 19 November arranged by the Stop the War Coalition which will go through the capital and end at Trafalgar Square, where a giant statue of George Bush will be pulled down in a parody of the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad. It will be led by American nationals living in the UK who have gathered under the title Expats Against Bush. They will carry banners reading 'Proud of my nation. Shamed by my President'."

FULL TEXT

*Ø* Blogmanac November 9 | Sadie Hawkins Day

In 1288 Scottish parliament legislated that any woman could propose to a man in Leap Year. If refused, the man had to compensate her by one pound. This law was adopted in France, Switzerland and Italy, and the tradition was carried to America, Australia and other countries. Today it is often said that Leap Year Day is the time that women may legitimately propose to men, while some people hold that the whole of a Leap Year is suitable.

American cartoonist Al Capp introduced the concept into his long-running syndicated comic strip L'il Abner. Sadie Hawkins Day, in the hillbilly town of Dogpatch, always featured a race for spinsters, and any bachelor must marry them if caught. Sadie Hawkins Day, which made its debut in the strip of November 15, 1937, is officially November 9, but by association with the Scottish tradition, February 29 is often given that name. When Capp created the event, he didn’t intend the event to occur annually on a specific date. However, numerous fan ensured that the event became an annual event for four decades in the strip during the month of November.

Sadie Hawkins Day e-cards

Shop Comics

In the UK, it's also Remembrance Sunday. Here are some free e-cards.

*Ø* Blogmanac | Jessica Lynch: 'I'm No Hero'

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - "Army private Jessica Lynch, the badly injured U.S. prisoner of war who was rescued from a hospital during the Iraq war, said in her first interview that she is not the Rambo-style hero she has been portrayed as by American media and the military.

[It wasn't a war, it was an invasion and massacre, and Iraqi medical staff had already tried to give her back but were shot at - N]

"Lynch, 20, told ABC network reporter Diane Sawyer in an interview to be aired on 'Primetime' next Tuesday, the same day as her authorized biography is published, that she never fired a shot when ambushed.

"'My weapon did jam and I did not shoot, not a round, nothing. I don't look at myself as a hero. My heroes are Lori (Private Lori Piestewa, who died in the ambush of Lynch's convoy), the soldiers that are over there, the soldiers that were in the car beside me, the ones that came and rescued me,' she said.

"Lynch is still recovering from injuries to her spine, and cannot walk without crutches. She has no feeling in her left foot and has other medical problems.

"Lynch, who became a symbol of U.S. heroism during the early stages of the war on Iraq, insisted, 'I am just a survivor.'

"In an advance, partial copy of the ABC interview, Lynch said she was hurt that other people had 'made up stories' about her fiercely fighting her Iraqi captors.

"'I'm not about to take credit for something that I didn't do ... It hurt in a way that people would make up stories that they had no truth about. Only I would have been able to know that because the other four people on my vehicle aren't here to tell that story.'"

Source/Full text

*Ø* Blogmanac November 8, 1519 | Moctezuma's fall

Tenochtitlán and the arrival of Cortés

How the Venice of the New World fell to just 400 Spanish invaders

Gazing on such wonderful sights, we did not know what to say, nor whether what appeared before us was real, for on one side, on the land, there were great cities, and in the lake, so many more ... and in front of us stood the great City of Mexico, and we – we did not even number four hundred soldiers!
Diaz, one of Cortés’s men


It was the year that Italy saw the death, on May 2nd, of Leonardo da Vinci, followed shortly by his countrywoman Lucrezia Borgia on June 24th. In Rome, Germany’s Martin Luther was gazing on new works by Michaelangelo and Raphael adorning the Pope’s palace, while answering charges that he had called the pontiff “fallible”. Meanwhile, off the coast of Italy, Mediterranean traders sailed in fear of the notorious North African pirate, Aruj al-Din Barbarossa.

At the time, in England, the ink was scarcely dry on Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), while elsewhere in Europe, King Charles of Spain was being elected Emperor Charles II of the Holy Roman Empire. Meanwhile, across the big pond, the new Governor of Panama was no doubt explaining to his superiors in Spain why in January he had beheaded Vaco Nunez de Balboa, the explorer and conquistador.

To the east, Persia’s great empire now rivalled that of the Ottomans, and in Switzerland, Protestant reformer Ulrich Zwingli was busy banning the sale of Roman Catholic indulgences. On September 20, Portugal’s intrepid navigator, Ferdinand Magellan embarked to circumnavigate the globe, while over in Venice, Italy, rich citizens enjoying the full flush of the Renaissance were revelling in the works of the likes of Bellini and Giorgione, and the city was glory of Europe.

Tenochtitlán, Mexico’s great city of the world
Across the Atlantic Ocean, the great Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán, sited where Mexico City stands today, was the Venice of the New World, criss-crossed as it was with canals, with many aqueducts and markets, and a grand lake featuring floating gardens. According to early Spanish accounts, it was unlike the European cities they knew, but more like the ones they had seen in romantic books, as it was not crowded and dirty. The population of the lake city was some 90,000 people at a time when London’s numbered about 40,000 and only 65,000 people lived in Paris. Tenochtitlán’s craftsmen, such as its fine goldsmiths, were a match for those in Europe, and the grandeur of the city’s pyramids rivalled that of the Egyptian wonders ...

Omens of the arrival of Cortés
The expedition of Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés arrived at Tenochtitlán after nine months of fighting indigenous people and trudging across rough country, on up to the high Mexican plateau. So determined was their leader to find treasure that he had ordered his men to burn their boats in the harbour, ominously fulfilling a ten-year-old Aztec prophecy that a fire in the night sky would be a portent of doom. However, there are some reports that a spectacular heavenly light shone for a year before the arrival of the conquistadors ...

Read on at the new article at the Scriptorium on Moctezuma's fall: Tenochtitlán and the arrival of Cortés.

My ISP has been down for 24 hours, so i had a break from the Almanac ezine today, but I managed to get this article up, because I didn't need to go online to make the page, and because I find the subject so fascinating. It's the first in a series of articles I'm putting together about European imperialism, which I'm calling Greed, gold and God. I hope you enjoy these true tales. On November 16, I'll put something here about how Pizarro and 168 men defeated 80,000 Inca warriors one lazy afternoon in 1532.

*Ø* Blogmanac | Navy tows asylum seeker boat out to sea

"An Australian navy ship is towing an asylum seeker boat out to sea, away from Australia.

"The boat is being towed away from Melville Island, north of Darwin.

"The Immigration Department says the boat is carrying 14 people, who claim to be Kurds from Turkey.

"Defence Minister Robert Hill says the asylum seeker boat has been fixed and this afternoon is being towed further out to sea by HMAS Geelong."
Source: ABC
Ministers tight-lipped on boat

* Ø * Ø * Ø *

More on Aussie govt's racist oppression of people fleeing persecution

Going Overboard in the Abuse of Human Rights Law

Vanstone chops off more of Australia to avoid refugees
"One of Amanda Vanstone's first acts as new immigration minister has been to rush through parliament the excise of a large part of Australia to avoid the claims of a boatload of refugees who arrived on Melville Island on Tuesday night. (This excise is in response to the arrival of only 14 refugees and 4 crew).

"They have also placed an exclusion order on the area so that the media cannot film or approach the area. Over 3000 islands have to date been cut from the Australian migration zone as the Federal government continues to shirk it's responsibilities to the human rights of refugees."
Source: Indymedia Brisbane (with a good cartoon)

* Ø * Ø * Ø *

Detainees riot at Port Hedland
"A riot at the Port Hedland Detention Centre in Western Australia overnight has caused extensive damage to facilities.

"The Immigration Department says the disturbance was started by a group of male detainees in the dining hall of the facility.

"Sources at the centre say many detainees are frustrated at the length of time they have been in detention and this has led to several disturbances in recent weeks.

"Earlier this week, two detainees attempted to harm themselves by slashing their bodies with razors."
Source: Indymedia Sydney

* Ø * Ø * Ø *

Asylum seekers in limbo as excision remains
"Moves to overturn regulations excising thousands of islands from Australia's migration zone failed today in the Senate as the fate of 14 asylum seekers hangs in limbo.

"The government on Tuesday retrospectively gazetted regulations excising thousands of islands from the migration zone to prevent a boatload of asylum seekers applying for refugee status."
Source: Sydney Morning Herald

* Ø * Ø * Ø *

Asylum seekers refused refugee status on Christmas Island
"A group of 53 asylum seekers has been refused refugee status after being detained at the Christmas Island detention centre since July.

"The fishing boat was intercepted off Western Australia's north-west coast near Port Hedland, and was the first to be seized in Australian waters since 2001."
Source: ABC News

* Ø * Ø * Ø *

Ministers tight-lipped on boat
"The Federal Government remained tight-lipped today about with whom it was negotiating to accept 14 asylum seekers whose boat reached an Australian island this week.

"Moves to overturn regulations excising thousands of islands from Australia's migration zone failed in the Senate as the fate of 14 suspected Turkish Kurds and four Indonesian crew remained in limbo.

"Defence Minister Robert Hill said the patrol boat HMAS Geelong was towing the fishing boat, which landed on Melville Island on Tuesday, away from the Australian coast today.

"But he refused to say where HMAS Geelong might be headed.

"'I think it will ultimately go somewhere, but I think you should wait for that,' Senator Hill said."
Source: News.com.au



Read about Australia's shame: The SIEVX Disaster

*Ø* Blogmanac | Dr Strangelove goes live

Secret Israeli missile test is mistakenly shown on TV

Chris McGreal in Jerusalem
The Guardian

"Reality television has finally caught up with the Israeli military. But the country's generals had no idea that their every move was being watched, their secret missile codes broadcast to their enemies or their conversations potentially overheard from Libya to Iran.

"For two days this week, Israel's communications satellite accidentally beamed a live feed from the control room of a highly classified test missile firing, meaning that they could be viewed by anyone in the Middle East with the simplest satellite dish.

"Four of Israel's most senior generals and their foreign guests were shown in the control room discussing the relative merits of weapons systems and who they might be used against. Officials were seen punching in launch codes, and the latest missile control equipment and maps were on full display to anyone viewing."

Full text

*Ø* Blogmanac | US 'snubbed last-minute effort to avoid war'

The Guardian

"Just days before the invasion of Iraq US representatives rebuffed a last-ditch attempt to avert the war by officials claiming to represent a frantic Iraqi regime, according to reports.

"Richard Perle, an influential adviser to the Pentagon, received a secret message from a Lebanese-American businessman indicating that Saddam wanted to make a deal, ABC News and the New York Times reported last night.

"The chief of the Iraqi intelligence service and other Iraqi officials had told the businessman that they wanted Washington to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction and offered to let American troops and experts do an independent search, the New York Times said."

Continue here

*Ø* Blogmanac | Help Mexican Garment Workers Unionize

Source: Centro de Apoyo al Trabajador (CAT)
November 5

"800 workers are calling for justice and have organized an independent union SUITTAR (Sindicato Unico Independiente de Trabajadores de la empresa Tarrant Mexico) at the Tarrant México - Ajalpan factory located in the State of Puebla, Mexico. The factory has responded to the organizing attempt by firing workers and blacklisting them to surrounding factories. They opened in 1999 and have employed up to 1400 workers who assemble and sew denim clothing for such international brands as LEVI'S, TOMMY HILFIGER, EXPRESS, LIMITED, MOSSIMO, AMERICAN EAGLE, CALVIN KLEIN, GAP, DKNY, WAL-MART, VENEZIA, AMERICAN EAGLE, WET SEAL, POLO/RALPH LAUREN, SONOMA JEANS, AND KMART.

"These workers need solidarity and support from individuals and organizations.

"The majority of the workforce is women, the average wage at the factory is 400 and 700 pesos a week, or between $40 and $70 USD a week. Workdays are 10 hour days, workers endure constant verbal and sexual harrassment, are forced to reach unreachable quotas and suffer salary reductions for failure to make these quotas."

Click here to read the Workers Fundraising Appeal

Click here to read the most recent Miami Herald article

Source

Meanwhile:

Minnie Driver taking a job in Cambodian sweatshop

Associated Press

LONDON -- "Oscar nominee Minnie Driver plans to spend time in a Cambodian sweatshop for a project she hopes will draw attention to the plight of exploited workers in poor countries, a newspaper reports. 'I will be working alongside other young women for as long as it takes for me to raise awareness of the fair trade issue,' Driver told The Evening Standard at the London premiere of the movie Seabiscuit.

"The newspaper reported that Driver said she and a photographer friend hoped to make a documentary or perhaps write a book about the experience. She said she hoped her effort would help improve pay and working conditions for those in poor nations.

"'We in Britain and the Western world fuel the problem every time we buy clothes from any one of the major manufacturers which make goods in the third world using cheap labor,' Driver said."

Source

Original

*Ø* Blogmanac November 6, 1796 | Nay to Catherine's horse story

1796 Ekaterina (or Yekaterina) II (April 21, 1729 - November 6, 1796), also known as Catherine the Great, the German-born Empress of Russia, died without having regained consciousness following a stroke that she suffered on November 5, 1796 while sitting on a commode at her St Petersburg palace.

A distant cousin of Queen Victoria, Catherine the Great reigned as empress of Russia from June 28, 1762 to her death.

Catherine is still famous for her sexual appetites and many lovers. She even had a secret room constructed, filled with paintings and sculptures depicting many sexual acts, rape, pedophilia and bestiality in realistic and graphic detail. Even the furniture incorporated depictions of giant sexual organs. However, there is no historical base for the often-told story that she was crushed to death when attendants lost their grip on ropes supporting a horse that was being lowered on her for sexual purposes.

Some have suggested that Polish emigrés might have invented the story in order to discredit her and the Russians in general, because Poland fared badly at the hands of Russian armies during her long and authoritarian reign.

*Ø* Blogmanac | Butt out: Premier warns military man

"New South Wales Premier Bob Carr warned an Australian army officer serving in Baghdad not to get involved in political issues, after he criticised Mr Carr's decision to present a peace prize to a Palestinian activist.

"Colonel Mike Kelly, an adviser with coalition forces in Iraq, wrote to the Premier accusing him of legitimising terrorism through his determination to present the Sydney Peace Prize to Palestinian MP Hanan Ashrawi.

"Mr Carr said Colonel Kelly's remarks contravened the Australian tradition that 'the military doesn't intervene in Australian politics'."
Source

* Ø * Ø * Ø *

Sydney Peace Prize winner says will and courage needed in Mid-East peace process
"Sydney peace prize winner Dr Hanan Ashrawi has delivered the 2003 Sydney Peace Prize Lecture. In a speech entitled: 'Peace in the Middle East: A Global Challenge and a Human Imperative', Dr Ashrawi says the two-state solution is still possible, though becoming increasingly more difficult. She also says the need for third party intervention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not only a factor of balance, but an indispensable force for breaking the lethal cycle of violence and revenge, while providing a context for legality, arbitration, and guarantees.

"Edited transcript of the 2003 Sydney Peace Prize lecture delivered by Dr Hanan Ashrawi at the University of Sydney on November 5, 2003 ..."
Source

*Ø* Blogmanac | Openly Episcopal man joins Village People

Controversy threatens to tear disco band asunder

"For the first time in their three decades of existence, the disco band The Village People have inducted an openly Episcopal man, igniting a controversy that threatens to tear the fabled group asunder.

"Holding a press conference in New York City today, The Construction Worker, a prominent member of The Village People since its inception in the 1970’s, urged 'tolerance and understanding' for its latest member, The Episcopal Guy, who joined the group over the weekend.

"'From the start, The Village People have been all about inclusiveness,' The Construction Worker said. 'And introducing The Episcopal Guy as our latest member is part of that tradition' ..."

From SatireSearch.com

*Ø* Blogmanac | Flying in the face of privacy

5 November, Irish Times

"An intending traveller to the US could be branded a security threat without right of appeal under new plans, writes Ian Kilroy in Boston

"In Steven Spielberg's science fiction film Minority Report suspects are arrested before they commit a crime. A "pre-crime" police unit apprehends them based on the predictions of clairvoyants who can apparently see crimes to be committed in the future. People who have yet to do their wrongs are taken away. The authorities assume the information they act on is flawless.

"It turns out to be anything but.

"Today, something like this sci-fi scenario is becoming reality. Based on who you might turn out to be, the US wants a lot of your personal details before you arrive. The EU, among others, isn't too happy with the proposal.

"The Department of Homeland Security says it needs to introduce the passenger screening system for everyone travelling to or within the US. [My emphasis - N]

"The idea is to delve into private, commercial and government records to compile profiles of every US-bound traveller, instantly colour-code them as green, yellow or red security threats and draw up a no-fly list of everybody who is considered potentially dangerous."

Continue at Vee's blog "A-Changin' Times (ACT)"

*Ø* Blogmanac | "Ghost fleet" row heads to court

BBC News, 5 November

"Environmental campaigners are taking legal action over a fleet of rusting US navy vessels heading to the UK for wrecking.

"Friends of the Earth will ask the High Court in London to quash a modification to a waste management licence allowing the work to go ahead.

"Three Hartlepool residents are also applying to the court on Wednesday, for an immediate injunction to stop the ships arriving ...

"On Tuesday there was confusion about whether the so-called 'ghost fleet' -- contaminated with chemicals including asbestos and heavy diesel -- would be allowed into the UK."

Continue HERE

*Ø* Blogmanac | Are we ready for a global political party?

The case for a global political party
By William Bowles

"Are you fed up with the existing political status quo? Can’t tell the difference between one party and another? Do you want to find one that more closely reflects your philosophy or are you even thinking about starting up your own political party? Or perhaps it'll be the 'local' section of a global one?

"I’ve been involved with the left for pretty well my entire life and, like many others of my ilk, I’ve been cut adrift from my socialist roots over the past decade or so. Okay, I can and have, gotten involved in specific ‘causes’, like liberation movements and my work with information technology and social change over the past twenty years. But since returning to the UK after such a long absence and looking at the complete lack of organised political activism outside the traditional left parties (or what remains of them), I’ve long been considering the possibility of a new progressive formation and the form it would take.

"The question is however, are we doomed to duplicate the mistakes of the past? Does the new political and economic reality demand a new kind of political party of the left, and if so, what form will it or should it, take?"

CONTINUE

*Ø* Blogmanac November 5, 1952 | Happy birthday, Vandana Shiva!

Physicist, philosopher, ecofeminist, environmental activist, writer

Vandana Shiva was born in the northern Indian city of Dehra Dun, nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas. Her grandfather went on hunger strike to get a girls' college built in the countryside, and her mother made it to inspector of schools. Her love of nature has its roots in her childhood. She often rode through the forests of the Himalayas with her father, a forest official.

In 1978 she completed her Ph.D. in the philosophy of science. After that she did research at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore until 1982. In that year, she created the Research Foundation For Science, Technology and Ecology, which works on biodiversity conservation and protecting people's rights from threats to their livelihoods and environment by centralised systems of monoculture in forestry, agriculture and fisheries.

More recently, she has initiated an international movement of women working of food, agriculture, patents and biotechnology called, Diverse Women for Diversity.

At Cafe Diem! Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature & Knowledge by Vandana Shiva

*Ø* Blogmanac November 5, 1605 | Gunpowder, treason and plot

Britain's Burning Man

Please to remember the Fifth of November,
Gunpowder Treason and Plot.
We know no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.
Holla boys! holla boys! huzza-a-a!
A stick and a stake, for King George’s sake,
A stick and a stump, for Guy Fawkes’s rump!
Holla boys! holla boys! huzza-a-a!
Traditional English rhyme on the Gunpowder Plot of 1605

1605 The Gunpowder Plot: Guy Fawkes (“the only man ever to enter Parliament with honest intentions”) and collaborators attempted to blow up the English Houses of Parliament.

“During the period from 1563, successive legislation, starting with the (second) Act of Supremacy, required an oath from all subjects that the monarch was Supreme Governor of the Church and any refusal was punishable by death. Catholics continued their religion in secret and the great houses were equipped with secret rooms where Mass would still be celebrated by priests smuggled in from the Continent and using false names. This had been tolerated in the early part of Elizabeth's reign. But it was not to last.” Source

Yorkshire-born Guy Fawkes (April 13, 1570 - January 31, 1606), was one of a number of Catholics who plotted to blow up England’s parliament, along with King James I. By upbringing a Protestant, he converted to Catholicism and in 1593, had served as a mercenary in Spain’s army in the Netherlands. He was at the capture of Calais in 1595, where, apparently, he distinguished himself greatly. He was perhaps selected for his skill in siege-craft when the plot was hatched to tunnel under Parliament. Probably he was suited to the conspiracy, too, because, as a Yorkshireman and having been abroad for some time, he was unknown in London.

The Gunpowder Plot was concocted in May of 1604 with Robert Catesby, Thomas Percy, John Wright and Robert Wintour. Working for more than a year, in March 1605 the conspirators rented a vault under the House of Lords, which they filled with 36 barrels of gunpowder which they hid under some firewood, and then waited. Fawkes was to have lit the fuse to the barrels of gunpowder (he declared he would have fired the powder when Knyvett discovered it, had he been present; in fact, he was outside the house at the time), but one of the conspirators, Tresham, warned his Catholic relative, Lord Monteagle, of the plot (in order to save Catholic lives) and the Catholic uprising that was to have ensued.

Fawkes was interrogated under torture. However, torture was forbidden except by the express instruction of the monarch or the Privy Council, so King James stated in a letter of the day after the incident: ‘The gentler tortours are to be first used unto him, et sic per gradus ad mia tenditur [and thus by increase to the worst], and so God speed your goode worke’. On November 7, Fawkes confessed all and revealed the names of his co-conspirators. His signature is noticeably shaky, indicating the pains of torture he endured.

A trial in name only followed, but the sentences had already been predetermined. On January 31, 1606, Fawkes, Wintour, and a number of others implicated in the conspiracy were taken to Old Palace Yard in Westminster, where they were hanged, drawn and quartered.

Wikipedia recounts: “According to historian Antonia Fraser, the gunpowder was taken to the Tower of London and would have been reissued if in good condition, or otherwise sold for recycling. However a sample of the gunpowder may have survived – in March 2002 workers at the British Library, investigating archives of John Evelyn, found a box containing various samples of gunpowder and several notes: ‘Gunpowder 1605 in a paper inscribed by John Evelyn. Powder with which that villain Faux would have blown up the parliament.’ and ‘Gunpowder. Large package is supposed to be Guy Fawkes' gunpowder.’ and ‘But there was none left! WEH 1952.’

Guy Fawkes appears in the 2002 List of "100 Great Britons" (sponsored by the BBC and voted for by the public), alongside such luminaries as David Beckham, Aleister Crowley, Winston Churchill and Johnny Rotten.

It is an annual ceremony for Yeomen of the Guard to search the cellars prior to the opening of Britain’s Parliament, as it is for English people to burn bonfires upon which are placed effigies of Fawkes, called ‘guys’. Because these fantastically dressed effigies have long been called ‘guys’, the word came to mean any strange-looking person (hence WS Gilbert in the Mikado has a “little list” for possible extermination “The woman who … dresses like a guy”) and later came to be applied in a derogatory sense to any man. However, some American lexicographers derive ‘guy’ from a Spanish word.

Was Guy framed?

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

* Ø * Ø * Ø *

Guy Fawkes Night, Britain
Guy Fawkes Night (often referred to as bonfire night) is celebrated with bonfires and fireworks on November 5th, or the closest Friday or Saturday night. Until the nineteenth century there was a special Church of England service for this commemoration in the Book of Common Prayer. Guy Fawkes Day became a public holiday in 1606 when it was proclaimed by an Act of Parliament.

In commemoration of the Gunpowder Plot on this day in 1605, when Guy Fawkes and his comrades tried to blow up James I and the whole English Parliament, English people still burn a guy in effigy. Traditionally the guy’s cap was made of paper and knotted with ribbon-like paper strips. The dummy carried matches in one hand and a dark lantern in the other. Children would go around the streets asking for money, saying “Please to remember the guy!”

In 1850 in Britain there was a strong wave of anti-Catholic sentiment, and the guy was often in the likeness of the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster. In 1857 the popular guy was Nana Sahib who had brought military injuries to the British in the East.

At Lincoln’s Field, England, the huge Guy Fawkes Night bonfire used to be made of 200 cartloads of fuel and was topped by 30 guys, or effigies of Guy Fawkes.

The bone-fire
Guy Fawkes Night in Britain has for centuries been a bonfire night. Anciently, a bonfire was actually a bone-fire, burning animal bones amongst the wood. Before that, in pagan ceremonies human beings were burned in sacrifice.

One old name for Guy Fawkes Night was Gunpowder Treason. In London on Gunpowder Treason, butchers used to thrash each other with sinews from slaughtered bulls.

A Halloween/Samhain custom
Guy Fawkes Night, coming as it does nearly on the ancient pagan cross-quarter day of Samhain (half way between the northern Autumn Equinox and the Winter Solstice), otherwise known as Halloween, continues the old custom of burning in effigy the evil spirits of the old year.

At Lewes, Sussex, the British tradition of Guy Fawkes Night is celebrated with greater enthusiasm than practically anywhere else. This is because long ago Bloody Mary, the Catholic monarch, executed seventeen citizens of that town. Guy Fawkes Night is, unfortunately, a hangover from the days of intense hatred between Catholics and Protestants. At Lewes, mock Catholic clergy enact mock death sentences.

Bonfire Society Webring
Guy Fawkes Carnival, Bridgewater, Somerset, UK
Lewes Bonfire Night, Lewes, Sussex, UK
Turning the Devil's Stone, Shebbear, near Holsworthy, Devon, UK
Burning barrels, Ottery St Mary, UK
More on the burning barrels of Ottery

This article is new at this page at the Scriptorium

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

*Ø* Blogmanac | Letter shows Hicks's condition deteriorating, father says

American torture of Aussie starting to break him?

"Australia: The father of a man detained by the US military at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba says a letter from his son received yesterday indicates that his condition has deteriorated mentally and physically.

"The letter is dated September 1 and was received by his family yesterday.

"Detainee David Hicks writes of being isolated from other prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and seeing only military police.

"His father Terry Hicks says it also describes how food is his main concern and that his weight is fluctuating between 59 and 72 kilograms.

"'But he was always well-built; he looked after himself pretty well,' Mr Hicks said.

"For him to talk about weight loss like that then yes, something is definitely wrong."

"The family's lawyer Stephen Kenny says medical advice bears out Terry Hicks concerns.

"'It's an indicator that all else is not well and I've spoken to a psychiatrist today about weight loss as a result of stress and he indicates that clearly could be a factor,' Mr Kenny said.

"Terry Hicks says the letter suggests his son is also struggling to keep a grip on what is happening outside his prison.

"'To me just reading that letter is I think, his mental stability is now starting to weaken... they don't tell him what time it is or what month it is, so he wouldn't have a clue,' he said.

"Australian Federal Police and ASIO staff are expected to travel to Cuba in the near future to speak to David Hicks and the other Australian captive Mamdouh Habib."

Source

[Hicks and Habib are being held without trial by Shrub's goons but the complicit and compliant Australian government is doing nothing while the men are being subjected to cruel and unusual punishment and held in tiny cells. Hicks's letter this week says "my main worry now is food". Readers: please tell your countrymen and women about The Campaign for Justice for Hicks and Habib, and sign the petition. More info www.fairgofordavid.org.]

*Ø* Blogmanac | Risen from the Grave

So-called modernisers in the Tory Party like Michael Portillo who, in his own words is "white, middle-aged, from the south-east of England, [and] middle class" are nevertheless prepared to climb on board Dracula's coffin in a last ditch attempt to rescue the Tories from political oblivion. (Where's the wooden stake when you need one?)

FULL TEXT

*Ø* Blogmanac | Randy ram gets the secret world overexcited

The Times, 4 November

"Staff at the top secret GCHQ monitoring base were baffled. They had nothing like it before. Was the high frequency transmission a covert signal from a spy? Or something more sinister? Now the origin of the signal which puzzled British Intelligence can be revealed: an over-excited ram was rubbing himself against a radio mast. The intelligence community’s finest moment has been revealed in the Daily Observer, a spoof newspaper for staff at GCHQ in Cheltenham, which employs 4,500 people ...

"A GCHQ spokesman, Bob McNally, said: 'It was part of the ritual that the ram went through after it had made a conquest. I believe the ram was notching up a mark on the pylon, so to speak.'

"The tabloid paper is a rare glimpse of humour in the normally po-faced world of secret intelligence. GCHQ monitors communciations from around the world, from e-mails to mobile telephone calls [isn't that nice??? - N] but this was their first message from a randy ram."

Full text

*Ø* Blogmanac November 5, 2000 | Japanese archaeologist's fraud

Devil undermines Japan's Palaeolithic research

2000 Japanese archaeologist and Vice Chairman of the private Tohoku Palaeolithic Cultural Research Institute, Shin’ichi Fujimura, apologised for faking sensational archaeological discoveries. He had been caught on the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper’s video cameras as he buried planted eight stoneware pieces shortly after 6 a.m. on October 22.

Formerly known as ‘God’s hand’ or the ‘divine digger’ for his luck in finding important artefacts, Fujimura began making his earliest discoveries as an amateur archaeologist in the 1970s. The self-taught scientist had earned his reputation with a series of finds including a remarkable discovery in 1981 of stoneware dating back 40,000 years. He is said to have been involved in research centred around 186 sites. Although in a brief press interview on December 18, 2001 Fujimura would deny rumours that more dig finds he was involved in were also fakes, he later admitted to having falsely planted items at another 41 sites, including pieces he once labelled as the world's oldest connected stone tool. The two parts had been excavated separately at two different sites about 30 km apart. Fujimura had claimed that both were 100,000 years old.

“The devil made me do it”
Rumours of problems in Japan's Early and Middle Palaeolithic research had been circulating for a long time and Mainichi Shimbun put together an investigation team to look into all of these rumours. Confronted with the damning evidence the disgraced archaeologist admitted that he buried the items because he was “desperate [to find stone tools] ... voices in my head told me that I had to do something”. Asked why he had perpetrated such a deceit, Fujimura answered tearfully, “The devil made me do it”.

The fraudster, his grand career now in tatters, broke down in tears as he faced the media at a news conference at the Miyagi Prefectural Government headquarters in Sendai. “I personally planted them and no one else took part. Please don’t discredit the whole dig, because there were some authentic finds,” Fujimura said. “My actions were a disgrace ... I’m really sorry for my family and friends.”

The fraud had yielded unintended consequences. Since the unearthing of Fujimura’s so-called Stone Age tools was announced Tsukidate in 1993, the town had been in the epicentre of a Japanese archaeology boom. Flintstone-like characters became town mascots, and Tsukidate adopted as a motto: “Come and see the skies that were admired by the original man”. Soon tourists were flocking by the thousands to admire the region’s archaeological sites, and ‘original man’ noodle shops sprang up in town. A road was renamed The Original Man Way, and an Original Man Marathon quickly became a popular annual event drawing runners from all over Japan.

Fujimura publicly confessed that he had buried 61 out of 65 items that were unearthed from the Kami-Takamori dig at Tsukidate, Miyagi Prefecture. He had also fabricated caches at the Soshin-Fudozaka site in Hokkaido. On at least one occasion, he had even taken reporters straight from a news conference to a site and ‘discovered’ artefacts on cue. Despite this, and the fact that any trained archaeologist could have seen that the soil around the caches had been disturbed, the deception was well received in Japanese academic circles for two decades.

The dig at Kami-Takamori, thanks largely to Fujimura, had become famous worldwide as the oldest Early Palaeolithic site in Japan, with the ages of eight or more cultural layers ranging from 500,000 to 700,000 years. Even more significant amongst scientists was the fact that several finds of stone artefacts indicated levels of symbolic cognition in Homo erectus much earlier than anything suspected from African and European evidence.

Rewriting the textbooks
If it had been true, the Kami-Takamori ‘finds’ could have rewritten the textbooks on human evolution. However, some archaeologists, such as Oda Shizuo and Charles T Keally, had, since at least 1985, published skeptical papers on the direction in which Japanese Palaeolithic archaeology was travelling.

Most scholars today accept that human beings lived in northern China at least by 700,000 years ago. We know Japan was connected to the continent by land bridges at least twice during the past 700,000 years, and that large terrestrial mammals migrated into the islands over those land bridges. However, Fujimura’s fraud has raised questions of whether humans beings really were in Japan before 35,000 years ago.

Fujimura’s fraudulent discoveries perhaps had been accepted by the Japanese academic elites, as well as the public, because they confirmed a popular notion – the great antiquity of the Japanese people. Even the Mainichi English edition reportage, which used the word ‘fraud’ on November 7, had attenuated this to the more comfortable term ‘fabrication’ the next day. Many scholars have also begun to question not only the closed academic environment, but also the Japanese educational standards that allowed such a hoax to take root and thrive.

Dirty digger comes clean on more faked sites
Meet a 'Stone Age' Man So Original, He's a Hoax
Undermined archaeologist kills himself
More scientific hoaxes
Strange Hoaxes That Endure
Akashi Man, Nipponantropus akashiensis, another Japanese fraud

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

*Ø* Blogmanac November 4 | To do today

Collect faggots of wood for Guy Fawkes Day bonfire, England
It’s also a day to make gingerbread and ‘Plot Toffee’.

A stick and a stake For King George's sake
Will you please to give us a faggot
If you won't give one, we’ll steal two
The better for we and the worse for you.
Warwickshire rhyme

To make Gingerbread: Take Claret-wine, and put in sugar, and set it to the fire; then take wheat bread finely grated and sifted, and Liquorice, Anniseeds, Ginger and Cinnamon beaten very small into powder. Mix your bread and your spice together, put them into the wine, and boil it, and stir it until it be very thick. Then mould it and print it at your pleasure, and let it stand in a place neither too moist nor too warm.
Markham, The English Housewife, 1683

*Ø* Blogmanac November 4, 1956 | USSR crushes people power, Hungary

1956 The Hungarian Revolution was crushed by Soviet troops in Budapest. Two hundred thousand troops attacked the anti-Stalinist uprising in this second invasion of Hungary and a new pro-Russian government was installed. Civilians set up barricades along all the major roads leading to Budapest. Soldiers and Hungarian National Guard troops participated in the resistance. Only Communist Party functionaries and security police fought along with the Russians in the name of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’.

The rebellion had begun in October, when thousands of protesters took to the streets demanding a democratic political system and freedom from Soviet oppression. From October,

“Russian tanks, entering Budapest to aid the threatened Government, met furious resistance. Armed only with light weapons and molotov cocktails, thousands fought back. After three days thirty tanks were destroyed and Russian tank crews began siding with the rebels.

“Workers' councils were formed in factories, steel mills, power stations, coal mines and railway depots throughout Hungary. Peasants spontaneously formed their own councils, redistributed land, and supplied the towns with food. From the first day liberated radio stations broadcast the news across the country.” Source

Red Army tanks had pulled out of Hungary, as demanded by the workers' councils. It seemed as if the people had won. However, on this day the tanks returned. Having regrouped beyond the borders, 15 Russian divisions, now with 6,000 tanks, fell upon the Hungarian people. All major cities were pounded by artillery fire. In Budapest, the workers’ districts bore the brunt of the assault. The people fought back as best they could, but the entire city was shelled continuously for four days and soon lay in ruins. Probably 30,000 people were killed and tens of thousands wounded, and nearly a quarter-million Hungarians fled the country. Tanks dragged round bodies through the streets of Budapest as a warning to others who were still protesting.

After ten days of ferocious fighting, the people finally capitulated. Prime Minister Imre Nagy (who on October 27 had announced Hungary's removal from the Warsaw Pact) was captured shortly afterwards and executed on June 16, 1958, after a secret trial. He was buried along with others in a distant corner of the Municipal Cemetery to which access was not allowed until 1989. Next to his grave stands a memorial bell inscribed in Latin, Hungarian, German and English. The Latin reads: "Vivos voco Mortuo plango Fulgura frango," which is quaintly translated as: I call the living persons, I mourn for the died persons, I chase the lightnings.

After World War II, Hungary had been virtually handed over to Josef Stalin by Franklin D Roosevelt, who apparently failed fully to recognize Soviet Communism’s appalling history and potential. Winston Churchill by the end of the war had realized that Stalin was not all he claimed to be, while Roosevelt did not. Roosevelt's miscalculation allowed Stalin to gain control over the Eastern European nations and reduce them to cruelly oppressed Soviet satellites, with the loss of millions of lives.

Betrayed by the West
The events of November 1956 were echoed decades later in 1992, when the people of Iraq, especially the Kurds, were actively encouraged by President George Bush to rebel against Saddam Hussein, but were not given the expected support when they did so, leading to many massacres when American forces stood by as Hussein’s helicopter gunships crushed the rebellion.

In Hungary in ’56, Voice of America radio broadcasts and speeches by US President Dwight D Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles ("To all those suffering under communist slavery, let us say you can count on us.") were suggesting that the United States supported the “liberation” of “captive peoples” in communist nations, and Hungarian pro-democracy revolutionists clearly believed they would be supported. However, as in Iraq in ’92, when the tanks bore down on the rebels the United States did nothing beyond issuing public statements of sympathy for their plight. The ‘Free World’ did no more than cheer the freedom fighters on. Devastated, the rebels soon realized that the promises of Radio Free Europe and VoA were empty and that Hungary was left alone in her confrontation with the mighty Soviet Union.

The sight of the Hungarian massacres helped weaken Communist parties worldwide, but perhaps nothing greater than this example of the crushing of Hungarian spirit, and a sense of betrayal by so called champions of liberty, contributed to the captive nations of Europe remaining captive for another generation.

“Even though Hungary did not gain her independence, the lives of those who died for freedom were not wasted. For their plight showed the world that communism is not what it claims to be. Because of Hungary, the Soviet Union showed its true character to the world: a monster who holds its satellites not by friendship but by brute force. Communists in other countries could no longer claim ‘communism is the friend of man’.” Source

Time Magazine gave the ‘Man of the Year’ honours on its cover to the Unknown Hungarian Freedom Fighter. In reference to the Hungarian Freedom Fighter, Time said: “This man was seen to have shaken history's greatest despotism to its foundations”.


See Peter Fryer, The Hungarian Tragedy; Andy Anderson, Hungary '56; and The Hungarian Workers' Revolution by the Syndicalist Workers' Federation.

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

*Ø* Blogmanac November 4, 1796 | USA is not one nation under God

Treaty between USA and Libya signed

“As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Musselmen; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

So reads Article 11 of the Treaty with Tripoli (Libya), made during the presidency of George Washington and signed on this day in 1796.

The Tripoli Treaty is frequently cited to indicate that the USA was not founded on Christianity.


“The Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense founded on the Christian religion …”
The Founding Fathers were not Christians

*Ø* Blogmanac | Heart attack man now in seventh heaven

Seven marathons on 7 continents in 7 days
Taking it 'one day at a time' works for 59-year-old British adventurer

"FOUR months after a heart attack and double-bypass operation, explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes yesterday completed the near-impossible feat of running seven marathons on seven continents in seven days.

"Sir Ranulph, 59, and his running partner, Dr Michael Stroud, 49, left behind the lonely struggle of their previous six efforts when they joined about 34,000 participants in the New York marathon, on a course that took them round the city’s five boroughs.

"The run made North America the seventh continent - after South America, Antarctica, Australia, Asia, Europe, and Africa - in which the two men have completed a punishing marathon in the space of a week.

"Wearing shirt number 33122, Sir Ranulph completed the run of 26 miles and 385 yards in five hours and 25 minutes, finishing in Manhattan’s Central Park ...

"'We took it bit by bit. If we thought when we were running, that we would have another marathon the next day we couldn’t have done it.' ..."
Source: The Scotsman

*Ø* Blogmanac | Five Israelis were seen filming as jet liners ploughed into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001 ...

"Were they part of a massive spy ring which shadowed the 9/11 hijackers and knew that al-Qaeda planned a devastating terrorist attack on the USA? Neil Mackay investigates

"THERE was ruin and terror in Manhattan, but, over the Hudson River in New Jersey, a handful of men were dancing. As the World Trade Centre burned and crumpled, the five men celebrated and filmed the worst atrocity ever committed on American soil as it played out before their eyes.

"Who do you think they were? Palestinians? Saudis? Iraqis, even? Al-Qaeda, surely? Wrong on all counts. They were Israelis – and at least two of them were Israeli intelligence agents, working for Mossad, the equivalent of MI6 or the CIA.

"Their discovery and arrest that morning is a matter of indisputable fact. To those who have investigated just what the Israelis were up to that day, the case raises one dreadful possibility: that Israeli intelligence had been shadowing the al-Qaeda hijackers as they moved from the Middle East through Europe and into America where they trained as pilots and prepared to suicide-bomb the symbolic heart of the United States. And the motive? To bind America in blood and mutual suffering to the Israeli cause ..."
Source: Sunday Herald
via Information Clearinghouse, which, like your Almanac, is owned and paid for by one person and requests your continuing generous support.
Support the Almanac

Israel Is Spying In And On The U.S.?
Published: 12/12/01 FOX News. 4 Part Series
These items have since been removed from the FOX News website.
But now you can watch the show online thanks to Information Clearinghouse

*Ø* Blogmanac | Blair waged war illegally, say leading lawyers

"Tony Blair is facing a formal complaint to the international war-crimes tribunal by a panel of senior international legal experts for unlawfully waging war in Iraq.

"The panel of eight law professors, including experts from Oxford University and the London School of Economics, is studying evidence that alleges Britain has broken international treaties on war and human rights in Iraq.

The allegations centre on Iraqi civilian deaths caused by British cluster bombs, the targeting of power stations and the use of toxic depleted uranium shells against tanks ..."
Source: The Independent

Thanks to my mate Philo at Global Media Lightning Headlines for this. Highly recommended emailed headlines.

*Ø* Blogmanac November 3 | St Hubert and the Sacred Stag

Feast day of St Hubert of Liege (Belgium)

Patron saint of hunters

(Born c. 656; died at Fura (the modern Tervueren), Brabant, 30 May, 727 or 728.)

St Hubert of Liege, who is believed to have been the son of Bertrand, Duke of Guienne in Belgium, is the patron saint of hunters, metal-workers and mathematicians.

He spent so much of his time and energies hunting, thereby neglecting his religious duties, that one day in the woods, a stag bearing a crucifix threatened him with eternal damnation if he did not mend his ways.

On a Good Friday morning, when the religious were crowding the churches, Hubert instead went out hunting. As he pursued a magnificent stag, the animal turned and, according to the legend, he was astounded to see a crucifix between its antlers. Hubert heard a voice saying: “Hubert, unless thou turnest to the Lord, and leadest an holy life, thou shalt quickly go down into hell”. Hubert dismounted, prostrated himself and said, “Lord, what wouldst Thou have me do?” He received the answer, “Go and seek Lambert, and he will instruct you.”

More about St Hubert and the stag at The Horned God and Western Saints

*Ø* Blogmanac November 3 | And today is ...

The Isia, ancient Egypt (Oct 28-Nov 3); seventh and final day, known in one form to the Romans as the Hilaria

The cult of Osiris became a mixture of the primitive rites of savage community and some of the highest ideals of an advanced form of religion.
Margaret A Murray


The Rebirth of Osiris via the milk of Isis, representing resurrection;
The Time of the Receding Waters of the Nile

According to one legend, Isis, mother and consort of God, Lady of Heaven (Heq) collected the dismembered parts of her husband's body and united the fragments by magic powers. On this last day of the Isia, after an enactment of the story of the death of Osiris at the hands of his brother Set, the people followed the mourning cortege of Isis, to her temple.

It was a public occasion, marked in the Roman calendar with the name Hilaria – “Osiris has been found”, the crowd shouted for joy. At the end of the festival, when the above words had been shouted, the priests would fashion a small image in the shape of the crescent moon. Images of Osiris were made of paste and grain; these were watered until the barley sprouted and then floated down the Nile with candles as part of the planting ceremonies. The crowd departed from the temple and made its way down to the sea on the final night. The Hilaria was given over to unrestrained rejoicing, because the god, now risen to immortality, would assess all who had become divine by drinking the milk of Isis.

Osiris would sometimes appear as the Tet pillar, symbol of strength and stability in life and renewed power after death, and he was then called Osiris Tet.

“Herodotus tells us that the grave of Osiris was at Sais in Lower Egypt, and that there was a lake there upon which the sufferings of the god were displayed as a mystery by night. This commemoration of the divine passion was held once a year: the people mourned and beat their breasts at it to testify their sorrow for the death of the god; and an image of a cow, made of gilt wood with a golden sun between its horns, was carried out of the chamber in which it stood the rest of the year. The cow no doubt represented Isis herself, for cows were sacred to her, and she was regularly depicted with the horns of a cow on her head, or even as a woman with the head of a cow.” Source

The legend and cult of Osiris indicate belief in the Incarnate God and the ritual custom of killing of the king (cf Lammas at the Scriptorium). In the resurrection of Osiris the Egyptians saw the promise of everlasting life for themselves beyond the grave. They believed that every man would live eternally in the other world if only his surviving friends did for his body what the gods had done for the body of Osiris.

A great feature of the festival was the nocturnal illumination: throughout the whole of Egypt, people fastened rows of oil lamps to the outside of their houses, and the lamps burned all night long. This universal illumination of the houses on one night of the year suggests that the festival might have been a commemoration not merely of the dead Osiris but of the dead in general, like the night of All Souls’, discussed in yesterday’s Almanac.

em xena ba-a sauti
Let not be shut in my soul;
sauti xaibita un uat
let not be fettered my shadow
en ba-d en xaibit-a maa-f neter aa
for my soul and for my shadow, may it see the great god.
Chapter XCII of the Egyptian Book of the Dead

“… the khaibit or shadow of the man, which the Egyptians regarded as a part of the human economy. It may be compared with the {Greek skia'} and umbra of the Greeks and Romans. It was supposed to have an entirely independent existence and to be able to separate itself from the body; it was free to move wherever it pleased, and, like the ka and ba, it partook of the funeral offerings in the tomb, which it visited at will.” Source

Note: Frazer (Golden Bough), following Plutarch, fixes the dates of the Isia at 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th of November.

Osiris and other ancient gods and saviours similar to Jesus


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


* Ø * Ø * Ø *

Feast Day of St Winifred (Winefride)
The patron of North Wales, a virgin martyr, was the daughter of a Welsh chieftain who was instructed by St Bueno, her uncle. When Prince Caradoc made unwanted advances to her; she fled, but he cut off her head. Miraculously, St Bueno breathed life into her again. She died a second time about 660.

The miraculous healing spring of Holywell (Flintshire, UK) flowed from where her head had come to rest; pilgrims in former days travelled to bathe in its charmed waters.

A history published in 1485 claimed that the waters from this saint’s well could heal both man and beast:

... sprang up a welle of spryngyng water largely enduring unto this day, which heleth al langours and seknesses as well in men as in bestes ...

At the Scriptorium: Sacred wells, springs and grottoes

*Ø* Blogmanac | Microsoft Made Advances Toward Google

NEW YORK (Reuters) - "Microsoft Corp., seeking a foothold in the Internet search business, approached Google within the last two months to discuss a partnership or even a merger, The New York Times said on Friday.

"Microsoft may still be interested in pursuing the Web search company at a later date, the report said, citing an executive briefed on the discussion, though its recent advances gained little traction."

Full text

*Ø* Blogmanac | Israel and US labelled biggest threats to World peace

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - "Over half of Europeans think that Israel now presents the biggest threat to world peace according to a controversial poll requested by the European Commission.

"According to the same survey, Europeans believe the United States contributes the most to world instability along with Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and North Korea."

Full text

*Ø* Blogmanac | Lemming myth takes fall

"Scientists have solved one of the world's great mysteries. The reason lemmings suicidally hurl themselves over cliffs is that ... they don't.

"The myth arose because of sudden, severe falls in the population of the hamster-like rodent. Scientists have long been puzzled by the four-year cycle of boom and bust.

"But now researchers have pinned the blame on a quartet of Arctic predators: the arctic fox, the snowy owl, the stoat and the long-tailed skua.

"'It's been an unsolved question for 80 years,' Olivier Gilg, a researcher at the University of Helsinki, said.

Dr Gilg and his colleagues studied the collared lemming in Greenland's high Arctic tundra for 15 years and published their research in the journal Science this week.

"They found that when the lemming population increased, so did foxes, owls and skuas. The stoats took a year to catch up, because of slower reproduction.

"By the time they did, the number of predators feasting on the lemmings drove their numbers down. Then the foxes, skuas and owls moved on to other prey, but the stoats ate only lemmings and died away, starting the cycle again.

"Dr Gilg said the myth of mass suicide lay with an unlikely villain - Walt Disney. The 1958 Disney documentary White Wilderness is said to have faked footage of lemmings hurling themselves over the nearest cliff. 'If a Disney documentary presented it as lemming suicide, then it must have been true,' Dr Gilg said."
Source: The Australian

Thanx, Mister Peg for this one.

* Ø * Ø * Ø *

Claim: During the filming of the 1958 Disney nature documentary White Wilderness, the film crew induced lemmings into jumping off a cliff and into the sea in order to document their supposedly suicidal behavior.
Status: True.

" ... Disney's White Wilderness was filmed in Alberta, Canada, which is not a native habitat for lemmings and has no outlet to the sea. Lemmings were imported for use in the film, purchased from Inuit children by the filmmakers. The Arctic rodents were placed on a snow-covered turntable and filmed from various angles to produce a "migration" sequence; afterwards, the helpless creatures were transported to a cliff overlooking a river and herded into the water."
Source: Urban Legends Reference Pages

*Ø* Blogmanac | Big cats not a tall tale


Sydney, NSW, Australia: "A State Government inquiry has found it is 'more likely than not' a colony of "big cats" is roaming Sydney's outskirts and beyond.

"The revelations are the result of a fresh four-month investigation into the 'black panther phenomenon" which for years has plagued residents across Sydney's west, north-west, Richmond, the Blue Mountains and Lithgow ...

"Although big cat sightings across NSW date back more than 100 years, speculation intensified in May 2001 when a successful Freedom of Information request revealed the NSW Government had been maintaining a secret file on the creature ..."
Source

Baz le Tuff sent this to me, with the apt comment: "Interesting, but why has the NSW Government had been maintaining a secret file on the creature. Jesus! If they deemed this important enough to keep secret, what else are they hiding?"

*Ø* Blogmanac November 2, 1648 | Cossacks’ Uprising

In the Cossacks’ Uprising, 12,000 Jews were massacred by Chmielnicki's hordes in Narol, the Ukraine. Under the leadership of Bogdan Zinovi Chmielnicki (pictured) (c. 1595 - August 6, 1657), Cossacks (Russ. Kazak; plural, Kazaki, from the Turkish quzzaq, ‘adventurer, free-booter’) from what is now the eastern Ukraine cruelly killed Jews and Catholics alike in raids.

Chmielnicki was born in Chigirin, in the Ukraine, and educated by Jesuits. However, unlike many of their other pupils, Chmielnicki did not embrace Roman Catholicism, but early in life became a champion of the Greek Orthodox faith, to which most of the Cossacks and the Little-Russian peasants belonged. He was a relatively poor but very ambitious Polish nobleman who in his action was, to a great extent, motivated by revenge for an outrage suffered at the hands of a dignitary of the Polish Crown, who abducted his wife and burned his manor.

Telling his people that the Poles had sold them as slaves “into the hands of the accursed Jews”, Chmielnicki incited the Cossacks who took these words as their battle-cry. During 1648-1649 they went on a rampage with cruelties as the world had seldom witnessed, massacring at least a hundred thousand Jews.

“The total number of [Jewish] victims will never be known for sure, since the killing machine wasn't efficient enough yet in those days to compile statistics – but estimates range between 100,000 and 670,000 dead.” Source

The Polish troops, especially those under Jeremiah Wishnevetzki, subdued the Cossacks here and there, but they were unable to put down the rebellion. Two historic enemies of Poland joined Chmielnicki: the Crimean Tartars and the Turks. Those Jews who fell into Turkish hands were ‘only’ carried away on ships to be sold as slaves in Constantinople and Salonika, where the Sephardic communities later came to their rescue and redeemed them from captivity.

However, those Jews who fell into the clutches of the Cossacks themselves were doomed. The Cossacks massacred Jews with grisly tortures that read like a manual for Adolph Hitler. Astonishingly, there are modern historical accounts that view Chmielnicki as a Ukrainian national hero.

In August, 1649, after a series of battles unfavourable to the Poles, a treaty of peace was concluded at Zborowo, between John Casimir and Chmielnicki, with a clause forbidding the Jews to live in the Ukraine.

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

*Ø* Blogmanac November 2 | All Souls' Day

All Souls' Day (or the Solemnity of All Souls;
or the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed)

Soul, soul, for a souling cake,
I pray, good missus, a souling cake.
Apple or pear, a plum or a cherry,
Any good thing to make us all merry.
All Souls’ Day ‘soul-caking’ song, England

Celebrated much more in former days, on All Souls’ Day (the day following All Saints or All Hallows’ Day) people pray for the souls of the dead, particularly those believed to be in Purgatory.

It is celebrated in the Roman Catholic Church which has set it aside for a service for the repose of the deceased. Roman Catholic doctrine holds that after death, human spirits might spend time in a punishing place called Purgatory, which the Catholic Encyclopedia defines thus: “Purgatory (Lat., ‘purgare’, to make clean, to purify) in accordance with Catholic teaching is a place or condition of temporal punishment for those who, departing this life in God's grace, are, not entirely free from venial faults, or have not fully paid the satisfaction due to their transgressions … since our prayers and our sacrifices can help those who are still waiting in purgatory, the saints have not hesitated to warn us that we have a real duty toward those who are still in purgatorial expiation.” Apparently, purgatorial punishment can be for seemingly minor sins: a long time after his death, Saint Severin, Archbishop of Cologne, appeared to a friend and told him that he had been in purgatory for having postponed until evening a prayer that he should have said in the morning.

In England it used to be observed by the ringing of the soul bell, the eating of soul cakes (flat, round, spicy cakes), and the blessing of beans.

(A bell, the ‘passing bell’ was also rung when a person was in extremis, to scare away evil spirits. [Similarly, the ancient Athenians used to beat on kettles at the moment of one's death, to frighten away the Furies.] )

The English would distribute soul cakes to the poor who went a-souling at the church door. The poor would say:

Soul, soul, for soul cake,
Pray you, good mistress, a soul cake.

Papers called Soul-papers were given away with these cakes. They contained requests for prayers for the souls of the departed.

Before 998, All Souls was marked with celebrations from the festival of Woden (Odin) as god of the dead, “parading the Hodening wild horse and other guising including mummers’ plays enacting the mysteries of life, death and rebirth.” (Pennick, Nigel, The Pagan Book of Days, Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont, USA, 1992) Hodening is a custom which used to be found in Wales, and locally in Kent, Lancashire, and other English counties, at various dates during the Christmas and new Year seasons, and seems to be a survival of the hobby-horse tradition once common during the Christmas season in the British Isles.

In Naples, Italy, charnel houses were opened up, lit with torches and decked with flowers. The skeletons were dressed in robes, and families visited loved ones.


Soul Cakes

Ingredients:

Two sticks butter
3 and 3/4 cups sifted flour
1 cup fine white sugar
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg or mace
1 teaspoon each, cinnamon, ginger, allspice
2 eggs
2 teaspoons malt vinegar (or cider vinegar)

Oven:
350 degrees; bake 20-25 minutes
Method: Cut the butter into the flour with a pastry blender (or a large fork). Blend in the sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon and spice and mix to a stiff dough with the beaten eggs and vinegar. Knead thoroughly and roll out, 1/4 inch thick. Cut into 3-inch rounds and set on greased baking sheets. Prick cakes with a fork and bake. Sprinkle lightly with powdered sugar.

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

*Ø* Blogmanac November 1, 1290 | The expulsion of English Jewry

1290 Edward I of England (June 17, 1239 - July 7, 1307), on his sick-bed, make a vow to God that if he recovered his health, he would undertake another crusade against the ‘infidels’. Some of the Jewish people of England had prospered as financiers when the country had squandered its wealth on the invasions of Palestine (the Crusades).

Edward's proclamation, on August 31, gave all Jews just two months to leave the country, under penalty of death. They were permitted to take with them a small portion of their movable possessions, and only sufficient money to pay their travelling expenses.

It was a time of great hardship for English Jews. Many people bashed and robbed them as the flight began. One ship master played a trick that had his complement of Jewish passengers drowned near London Bridge, and he was rewarded by the king for his cruelty. For centuries afterwards, it was believed by Jewish locals and visitors that God caused the turbulence always seen at that part of the Thames.

The king profited greatly by his racist deeds, as his state gained Jewish property. The number of banished men, women and children amounted to some 15,000. Jewish people were not seen again (apart from the occasional tolerated physician or foreign agent) in England until 1656, when Oliver Cromwell permitted their return after nearly four centuries, despite some opposition from merchants, politicians and others.

*Ø* Blogmanac November 1, 1755 | Lisbon devastated

1755 Earthquake at Lisbon, Portugal; 60,000 people killed
Many lost their lives while worshipping on the Feast of All Saints. It had never had a rival in Europe before and killed perhaps half of the population of this major cultural centre of Europe.

A tsunami nearly 20 metres (about 65 feet) high soon hit the harbour. Near Morocco a town of 8,000 people was also swallowed up. The shock was felt at Loch Lomond, Scotland.

Images of Lisbon Earthquake, 1755

*Ø* Blogmanac | No .... vember!



No sun – no moon!
No morn – no noon –
No dawn – no dusk - no proper time of day ...
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member –
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds, –
November!
Thomas Hood, English poet, 1799-1845, No!

If on All Saints’ Day the beech nut is dry, we shall have a hard winter; but if the nut be wet and not light, we may expect a wet winter.
English traditional proverb

If All Saints’ Day will bring out the winter, St Martin’s Day will bring out Indian summer.
American traditional proverb

On All Saints day hard is the grain,
The leaves are dropping, the puddle is full;
At setting off in the morning
Woe to him that will trust a stranger ...
All Saints day, a time of pleasant gossiping,
The gale and the storm keep equal pace,
It is the labour of falsehood to keep a secret ...
On All Saints day the stags are lean,
Yellow are the tops of birch; deserted is the summer dwelling.
Woe to him who for a trifle deserves a curse.
From the Heroic Elegies of Llywarch Hên (6th Century Welsh), translated by Dr W Owen Pughe, 1792

Third Station of the Year (Pagan)
The Isia, ancient Egypt, (Oct 28-Nov 3)
Kalends of November, ancient Rome
El Día de los Muertos, Mexico (Day of the Dead)

Bamboches for guédé mystères: the dead who come out of the cemeteries, possess their ‘horses’, and come into the oum´phors to amuse themselves in the form of souls incarnated or reincarnated, Voudon (Voodoo) (Nov 1, 2)

November
(Lat. novem, nine). It was the ninth month in the ancient Roman calendar, when the year began in March. The old Dutch name was Slaghtmaand (slaughter-month, the time when the beasts were killed and salted down for winter use); the old Saxon Wind-monath (wind-month, when the fishermen took their boats ashore, and put aside fishing till the next spring); it was also called Blot-monath – the same as Slaghtmaand. In the French Republican Calendar it was called Brumaire (fog-month, 23 October to 21 November).

Saxons called it blot-monath, meaning blood month, because they killed cattle for Winter store; the name might also have referred to human sacrifice.

Frankish name: Herbistmanoth, or harvest (of animals) month. Asatru: Fogmoon. American backwoods: Beaver Moon.

Almost the whole month coincides with the goddess-calendar month of Samhain (pronounced sow-ain), the feminine personification of the Nove. She is an aspect of the Cailleach (veiled woman).

*Ø* Blogmanac | And no one even knew they were there.

The Revolution Was Not Televised
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Friday 31 October 2003

There was a large anti-war rally in Washington last week. The standard slogans were on display for all to see: Impeach Bush, Bring The Troops Home, No Blood For Oil. On the periphery of the protest stood a few dozen 'patriots' holding a counter-demonstration in support of Bush and the Iraq war. Among the signs carried by this crew was a banner that succinctly summed up the madness of the age, and the dangerous nature of the current ruling class.

Across the top of the banner, which was clearly professionally made and not hand-lettered, were the block-letter words "SUPPORT PRESIDENT BUSH." Through the center of the banner were black outlines of a fighter aircraft, a tank, an M-16 rifle, a .45 caliber pistol, an attack helicopter, a surface-to-air missile battery, and a thermonuclear bomb. Underneath these images were two more block-letter words: "TRUST JESUS."

The sentiment apparently finds resonance with Senator Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi. The Wednesday edition of The Hill carried a story about GOP concerns over the manner in which the post-war war is unfolding. The trepidation is understandable; more American troops have been killed in the 'Mission Accomplished' phase of the war than in the war itself. Lott responded to the crisis in Iraq by saying, "If we have to, we just mow the whole place down, see what happens."

The Bush administration has tried to frame their wars as not being a religiously-based crusade against the Islamic world. This has been a hard-sell with Muslims, especially since Bush used the word "crusade" immediately after September 11. Norman Podhoretz, one of the ideological fathers of the cadre of hawks currently running our foreign policy, publicly described our conflict in the Mideast as being a process aimed at bringing about "the reformation and modernization of Islam." The religious overtones are difficult to miss.

Perhaps the best example of where we stand today comes in the guise of Lt. General William Boykin, deputy undersecretary for defense, who is charged with finding important enemies like Osama bin Laden. Boykin, when not smoking 'em out of their holes, has been touring the fundamentalist pulpits across the America. Describing the hunt for a Somali warlord last January, Boykin said, "I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol."

CONTINUE

Smile awhile ... some new definitions for you:

1. Coffee (n.), a person who is coughed upon.
2. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.
3. Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4. Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.
5. Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent
6. Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightie.
7. Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.
8. Gargoyle (n.), an olive-flavored mouthwash.
9. Flatulence (n.) the emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.
10. Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.
11. Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.
12. Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified demeanor assumed by a proctologist immediately before he examines you.
13. Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddish expressions.
14. Circumvent (n.), the opening in the front of boxer shorts.
15. Frisbeetarianism (n.), The belief that, when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck there.
16. Pokemon (n), A Jamaican proctologist.

[Thanks for these, Johnny]

*Ø* Blogmanac | Iraq's real WMD crime

by Lawrence Smallman

"There are weapons of mass destruction all over Iraq and they were used this year. Iraqi children continue to find them every day.

"They have ruined the lives of just under 300,000 people during the last decade -- and numbers will increase.

"The reason is simple. Two hundred tonnes of radioactive material were fired by invading US forces into buildings, homes, streets and gardens all over Baghdad.

"The material in question is depleted uranium (DU). Left over after natural uranium has been enriched, DU is 1.7 times denser than lead -- effective in penetrating armoured objects such as tanks.

"After a DU-coated shell strikes, it goes straight through before exploding into a burning vapour which turns to dust.

"'Depleted uranium has a half life of 4.7 billion years –- that means thousands upon thousands of Iraqi children will suffer for tens of thousands of years to come. This is what I call terrorism,' says Dr Ahmad Hardan.

"As a special scientific advisor to the World Health Organisation, the United Nations and the Iraqi Ministry of Health, Dr Hardan is the man who documented the effects of depleted uranium in Iraq between 1991 and 2002.

"But this year's invasion and occupation has doubled his workload ...

"Leukaemia has already become the most common type of cancer in Iraq among all age groups, but is most prevalent in the under-15s. It has increased way above the percentage of population growth in every single province of Iraq without exception.

"Women as young as 35 are developing breast cancer. Sterility amongst men has increased ten-fold.

"But by far the most devastating effect is on unborn children. Nothing can prepare anyone for the sight of hundreds of preserved foetuses –- barely human in appearance."

Full text HERE