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The Blogmanac: "On This Day" ... and much more
Think universally. Act terrestrially.
For in a hard-working society, it is rare and even subversive to celebrate too much, to revel and keep on reveling: to stop whatever you're doing and rave, pray, throw things, go into trances, jump over bonfires, drape yourself in flowers, stay up all night, and scoop the froth from the sea.
Anneli Rufus*
"LONDON, March 11 — One of the British detainees released from Guantánamo Bay has charged that he was brutally beaten by the American military police, and that he and his fellow captives were subjected to mistreatment and humiliation.
"In an interview published Thursday in The Daily Mirror, Jamal al-Harith, 37, who goes by the name Jamal Udeen, also said that American military officials had brought prostitutes to the detention facility 'about 10 times' and had paraded them before the younger and more devout Muslim prisoners as a form of 'psychological torture' ..." Source: NY Times
Thanks to Lynn Perry who sends so much good stuff to us.
1962 USA: The Joints Chiefs of Staff (the heads of the US Army, Air Force and Navy) presented a plan to Secretary of Defense, Robert S McNamara, which suggested using terrorism in the USA to turn opinion towards a US invasion of Cuba.
Long believed to be residing in the imagination of conspiracy theorists, the Operation Northwoods document was declassified in recent years by the Freedom of Information Act [Book of Days shows images of two of these documents].
We can be thankful that the military's plan was not enacted, for more reasons than one. McNamara has recently revealed that it was not till years after the Cuban Missile Crisis (began October 15, 1962), he discovered that Castro's Cuba had complete nuclear missiles; he and Kennedy had been incorrectly briefed by the CIA that the delivery systems were 'on the water' in a shipment from the USSR ...
This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives, with more links, at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.
Have you ever heard Father Cares, the NPR documentary about Jim Jones and Jonestown?
It's one of the most gripping docos I've ever heard, mainly because so much of it isn't just dry academics and journalists discussing the Jonestown tragedy of November 18, 1978, but because of the extensive tape recordings of the evil maniac, Jim Jones himself. Like Nixon, he seemed to need to record everything.
It's unsettling, troubling, compelling. The audio fleshes out one of the weirdest events of last century, and a man whose charismatic wickedness is really quite unbelievable.
*Ø* Blogmanac | League of Liberals' Bloggers' Round-Up
Caution: Some posts contain adult references to certain members of the administration.
"TRICKS? YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRICKS!"
No doubt this was one of the proposed anti-Bush ads that Move-On decided not to accept for their contest, perhaps because it doesn't say anything about Hitler or Nazis. I'll only point out the philosophical flaw when this says Our Noble Leader has "the total combined intelligence of a wet sock and a mud brick". That is mixing apples and oranges, since it is no more possible to combine the minds of such different substances than it is to have a "marriage" between two people of the same gender. Don't try this at work, but if you want to see how juvenile liberals' sense of humor is, turn on your computer's sound and visit THIS SITE. There's another example of how silly leftists are, with absurd charges of racism in a Texas Republican primary, (no, really!!) in my March 2 posting. --Ayn Clouter.
To fix the economy, we need to send a signal to the world, and to average Americans, that help is on the way. Real help this time. Not help in the form of a moribund economy. Not in the form of Shock and Awe and other environmental hazards. Not in the form of a secret Business Government whose goal is "Big Cookie", but whose means is raiding the cookie jar.
Democrats have proven that they can better be trusted with the common well, and the common wealth.
America can be a generator of healing. Healing ourselves and the world on many levels, none of which entail surgical strikes or Shock and Awe.
Help is on the way. If Bush were a good man, he would step out of the way.
Please. You cried when you left Crawford.
Be happy. Go home.
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Mad Kane Hires An Ombudsman
For years I've been flooded with emails challenging the accuracy of MadKane.com. At first I did what most publications do -- I ignored them. But as time went by, I realized that something had to be done. So in keeping with recent trends and in the interest of sound journalism, I've appointed an ombudsman who'd like to be known only as "Bud." Here's part of Bud's first report:
The poem entitled Dubya's Poetic Injustice states that during George W. Bush's Election 2000 campaign, Bush promised to be a "compassionate conservative" and to have a "humble foreign policy." After this poem was published, we learned that Bush was "crossing his fingers" whenever he made those promises, so "they didn't really count." We regret this error.
According to a State of Disunion crossword puzzle clue, President Bush believes that raising twins is even harder than waging war. While Bush did in fact make that statement, he has since changed his mind and now acknowledges that waging war is "an itsy-bitsy bit harder than raising twins." We are sorry for failing to keep up to date on this issue.
In Dubya's Don't Blame Me Song the lyricist itemizes several things as not being George W. Bush's fault, including the jobless rate, 9/11, the mission accomplished banner, and the lack of WMD's. We have since learned that many more things weren't the President's fault and we regret our lack of comprehensiveness.
More than 1,000 of approx. 2,700 subscribers to Wilson's Almanac ezine are bouncing today and it keeps growing every day. I've been bouncing too, twice in the past two weeks. Unless I'm very much mistaken, Yahoogroups has its settings way too sensitive as the Bounce mechanism just keeps getting worse.
The other big bug I have with YG is that this year they've been putting the footer at the head of YG messages, ezines and newsletters. It happened overnight and seems to apply to all groups. Some footer. What to do? I'm considering my options.
The whole Bounce routine is ridiculous, as I'm sure any YG moderator will agree. If they must bounce subs, surely the moderator should be able to unbounce them en masse. Each one takes half a minute to unbounce manually. Just try doing that with 1,000 subscriptions in your spare time, Mr Yahoogroups. Five hundred spare minutes isn't easy to find.
Was Martha Stewart Targeted Because She is a Major Democratic Contributor and a Woman? Where is Ken Lay? Thursday, March 11th, 2004
No charges have yet been brought against former Enron chairman Ken Lay who was a close friend of President Bush and a major Republican campaign contributor, while Martha Stewart, who is a major Democratic contributor, faces up to 20 years in prison for lying to a federal investigator.
The Bush presidency has been marked by war. The invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and now the apparent overthrow of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti. But these three years have also been marked by rampant corporate crime. Enron, Tyco, Adelphia, WorldCom have all become household names. The Bush administration has said that it is a priority of the president to crack down on corporate crime. But most of the CEOs and corporate officials responsible for the collapse of huge companies and the loss of thousands of jobs walk the streets with no criminal charges and no jail sentences hanging over their heads.
No charges, for instance, have been brought against Ken Lay, who was chairman of Enron when its $9 billion collapse in 2001 ended the jobs of more than 5,000 workers and decimated the retirement savings of millions of investors. Lay is a close friend of Bush and a major Republican campaign contributor. In fact, Lay was one of his closest advisers, one of his "pioneers," raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for Bush's campaign. After Enron collapsed, Kenny Boy--as Bush referred to his friend--became Mr. Lay.
Instead, the poster-child for this new crack-down on corporate crime is Martha Stewart. She is facing up to 20 years in prison after a jury found her guilty on all charges last week for covering up her sale of ImClone stock just before the price plummeted. Quite the opposite of Lay, who is deeply tied to the Republicans, especially the Bushes, Martha Stewart is a major contributor to the Democrats. She has given more than $150,000 in political contributions--all of it to the Democrats. This according to United Press International.
The Stewart decision was frontpage news across the country. Headlines screamed "Martha Stewart convicted on all counts in stock-trading trial." But what many people don't know is that the government did not charge Stewart with insider trading. In addition, the judge threw out the most serious charge in the case - securities fraud. So what was Martha Stewart guilty of? Basically, of lying to a federal investigator. The law, which lawyers usually call 1001, for the section of the federal code that contains it, prohibits lying to any federal agent, even by a person who is not under oath and even by a person who has committed no other crime. [Emphasis added. -v]
Harvey Silverglate, a criminal defense and civil liberties attorney based in Cambridge, Mass. Elaine Lafferty, Editor-in-Chief of Ms. Magazine. Bethany McLean, co-author of "Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron." She is also a staff writer for Fortune magazine.
[Think about it! She's found guilty of lying while NOT under oath about a charge for which she was found NOT GUILTY! And there are people who are saying "She got what she deserves." It makes no sense! Why such hate? As it turns out, there are notes that show she had planned to sell Imclone at 60; besides, the mere fact that Wachsel was selling his shares is NOT insider information! Insider information is something known only by a few about the company itself--not about what someone else is doing with shares. Total railroading. Alan Dershowitz, on The Charlie Rose Show last night, said that it was very bad use of a bad law by the prosecutors and very bad defense on the part of Martha's attorneys, to say nothing of the fact that jurors said they would have liked to acquit but, according to judge's instructions, they had nothing to work with for that choice! Miscarriage of justice, much? Horrible! -v]
*Ø* Blogmanac | Ireland - referendum to be held to restrict citizenship
"The Government is preparing to hold a constitutional referendum in June to remove the automatic right to Irish citizenship from the Irish-born children of non-nationals.
"Voters will be asked to empower the Government to restrict citizenship rights in what the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, described last night as a measure to remove an incentive for foreign mothers to give birth in Irish hospitals.
"The move comes after several years of Government concern over the growing number of foreign women presenting late in their pregnancies to give birth in Ireland ...
"Mr McDowell characterised the initiative as an effort to prevent 'citizenship tourism'.
"He said the Republic was the only EU member to grant an automatic citizenship right and, therefore, an EU passport."
"For the first time in 10 years, Mary Wilkinson went to church one Sunday in January.
"What drew Ms Wilkinson back into the fold was a new monthly program the church introduced -- holy communion for pets. As part of the service, the 59-year-old retired portfolio manager carried her 17-year-old tiger cat to the altar, waited in line behind three panting dogs to receive the host and had a special benediction performed for her cat, Purr Box Jr. 'I like that the other parishioners are animal people,' Ms. Wilkinson says."
*Ø* Blogmanac | Guantanamo five freed without charge
"The four British men released from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba were freed by police without charge last night. [The fifth had already been released - N]
"The men had been held under the Terrorism Act at Paddington Green station in west London after they were flown to Britain on Tuesday by the RAF.
"They were freed after anti-terrorist police, working with MI5 and the Crown Prosecution Service, agreed that there were no grounds for their detention...
"Dergoul's brother said M15 had flown out to Cuba three times to interview the British detainees and found nothing. 'They have not got a shred of evidence against them and I know that because I received reports about it.'
"Steven Watt, a British lawyer with the US-based Centre for Constitutional Rights who represented Rasul and Iqbal in taking their case to the US Supreme Court, was scathing about their detention.
"He said: 'I think what happened in terms of them arriving at a military base in the UK and taken into custody was just window dressing for the benefit of the US government.'"
Mark Latham recently became leader of the ALP (Australian Labor Party) and thus Leader of the Opposition. He will soon be fighting it out with the (misnamed) Liberal Party's John Howard, the Prime Minister, for political leadership of Australia.
The following is not news, but I thought his speech to the National Press Club contained some good, progressive ideas for Western nations in general, so I post some excepts here:
* Ø * Ø * Ø *
Work, Family & Community: A Modern Australian Agenda Speech by Mark Latham February 18, 2004
Two weeks ago, as part of my bus trip through northern New South Wales, I held a community forum at Gosford. It was a tremendous gathering – more than 500 people came along to put their concerns to me face-to-face. Of the 31 questions, only two were about economics and one was on foreign policy. The rest were about people:
The quality of our society. The breakdown in community relationships. Loneliness, isolation and stress. Youth homelessness and the drug problem. Disabilities and the aged-care crisis. Male suicide, mental health and the need for mentoring programs. These are the concerns of mainstream Australia. After 30 years of globalisation and economic change, people are asking: what has happened to our society?
How do we relate to each other now? How do we help each other and create stronger communities? How do we rebuild the identities and relationships of a good society?
This is the pressing issue of our time, but unfortunately, it has gone missing in the public debate.
While the political system tends to argue for either more market forces or more government, the people themselves have a different priority. They want more society, more community – a new sense of belonging, a new set of social relationships.
Among the people that I talk to, there is a real interest in localism. During a time of constant change and uncertainty, many people glaze over at the thought of complex macro-politics.
Their primary interests are at a family and neighbourhood level. The things they can touch and influence: reading to their children, improving the local school, fixing up the local park and making the neighbourhood safer.
People haven't lost all interest in politics. They haven't totally disengaged. They just want politics to be relevant to their needs and interests at a local level.
This is a real passion among women in particular. Traditionally they have done much of the community work in society. Now they want more recognition and back-up from government.
This is where we need to rethink the role of public policy. Ultimately, the choice between market forces and state bureaucracy is flawed. It ignores the space in the middle where people come together with a sense of common purpose and community. It ignores the voluntary associations and interests that make up civil society.
A good society requires more than high incomes and government services. It needs strong, healthy relationships within active communities. For too long, government policy has ignored this vital part of our national life.
Labor recognises that there is more to life than money. We understand that our community is awash with social problems that will not be solved by government spending alone. We intend to tackle the challenges presented to our society by loneliness, family breakdown and youth alienation.
But to do so, we need to change our approach. Much of the modern state is based on a top-down system of control. The parliament passes laws and funds programs. And it is assumed that civil society will respond to these laws in a manner consistent with the government mould.
This is the traditional way of encouraging responsibility and creating services. But it doesn't necessarily create stronger communities. Civil society has its own agenda, determined in the complex relationships between people.
Top-down processes have little impact on community life. It's not possible, for instance, to introduce a Social Capital Bill into Parliament and think that this will automatically increase the level of trust and cooperation in society.
The new role for government is to act as a facilitator or enabler: creating the social environment in which people are more likely to have contact with each other, working together in trusting relationships.
Social capital is not like a financial asset or stock of goods that can be banked away. It lies in the relationships between people – if they don't use it, they lose it ...
Each year, governments in Australia invest just a couple of million dollars on mentoring programs – less than the travel bill for most Commonwealth agencies. Surely, we can make better use of our prosperity as a nation.
This is where a Labor Government will assist: linking generations of Australians through the power of mentoring, providing relationship support for our youth.
Mentoring will be our first investment in social capital, mobilising the leadership role of government to create stronger relationships. This is the best way of solving social problems: putting relationships at the centre of government decision-making and working with people locally to rebuild communities ...
*Ø* Blogmanac | As US Detains Iraqis, Families Plead for News
"BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 6 — Sabrea Kudi cannot find her son. He was taken by American soldiers nearly nine months ago, and there has been no trace of him since.
"'I'm afraid he's dead,' Ms. Kudi said.
"Iraq has a new generation of missing men. But instead of ending up in mass graves or at the bottom of the Tigris River, as they often did during the rule of Saddam Hussein, they are detained somewhere in American jails.
Although the insurgency has cooled, with suicide attacks against civilians now eclipsing armed clashes with American troops, American forces are still conducting daily raids, bursting into homes and sweeping up families. More than 10,000 men and boys are in custody. According to a detainee database maintained by the military, the oldest prisoner is 75, the youngest 11 ... [emphasis mine]
"Iraq has turned into one big Guantánamo," Mr. Allami said, referring to the United States military prison in Cuba where hundreds of terrorism suspects are being held, mostly without charges." Source
Our team member Nora sent this one to me by email. She wasn't feeling well so I posted it on her behalf. I hope you're feeling better, today, Nora!
*Ø* Blogmanac | Attacks on "Threshold Rights" in America
From DUG:
Crossing the threshold While we’re all fretting over the Patriot Act, John Ashcroft’s Justice Department is after much bigger game By Harvey A. Silverglate and Carl Takei
Excerpt:
Yet the hue and cry raised over the Patriot Act has distracted most of us from the Bush administration's far more dangerous assault on another class of liberties, which might be called "threshold rights."
After all, the Patriot Act can be rolled back if the people decide that the government has overreached or the emergency has receded, and some provisions of the act have automatic expiration dates.
But threshold rights — fair elections, open and publicly accountable government, judicial review of executive action, the right of the accused to a public jury trial, separation of powers among the three branches of government, and the rights to free expression and free association — are structural, and therefore changes to them are more enduring.
*Ø* Blogmanac March 8, 1906 | The Moro Crater Massacre
They were mere naked savages, and yet there is a sort of pathos about it when that word children falls under your eye, for it always brings before us our perfectest symbol of innocence and helplessness; and by help of its deathless eloquence color, creed and nationality vanish away and we see only that they are children – merely children. And if they are frightened and crying and in trouble, our pity goes out to them by natural impulse. We see a picture. We see small forms. We see the terrified faces. We see the tears. We see the small hands clinging in supplication to the mother; but we do not see those children that we are speaking about. We see in their places the little creatures whom we know and love. Mark Twain
1906 US troops occupying the Philippines attacked the stronghold of an "unruly" band of hill Moros, mowing the stubborn tribespeople down with a combination of artillery fire and infantry assaults.
All these Moros – 600 men, women and children, were killed. Eight years previously, in 1898, philosopher William James and other prominent US intellectuals had formed the Anti-Imperialist League to educate the public on the horrors of US policy in the Philippines. Despite the group's efforts, however, there was no great public outcry, and US destruction and domination of the Philippines continued.
Major Littletown Waller [accused of killing 11 defenceless Filipinos] said that General Smith instructed him to kill and burn, and said that the more he killed and burned the better pleased he would be; that it was no time to take prisoners, and that he was to make Samar a howling wilderness. Major Waller asked General Smith to define the age limit for killing, and he replied “Everything over ten.”
An American military detachment attacked a village of Filipino Muslims (Moros) living in the hollow of a mountain in one of the southern islands. Every one of 600 men, women, and children were killed. This was the Moro Crater Massacre, which drew an angry response from Mark Twain and other anti-imperialist Americans. Twain led the Anti-Imperialist League which opposed the annexation of the Philippines by the United States. He wrote 'Incident in the Philippines' (1924) in response to the Moro Crater Massacre.
This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives, with more links, at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.
The 15th annual Clean Up Australia Day has attracted its largest ever number of volunteers across the nation, with 677,000 people out of 20 million population giving up time today to collect rubbish. I hope I remember next year. Clean slipped my mind. I suppose I could still find some junk by the road as it's full moon.
Anyway, good on Ian Kiernan AO who started it and runs this thing each year.
And full marks to a good bloke, Premier Bob Carr who has used the Clean-Up Australia Day lead-up to announce he is prepared to take the lead in banning plastic shopping bags. An average of half a million shopping bags are collected during Clean Up Australia each year, but that's a drop in the (polluted) ocean when you consider that Ozzies use 7 billion checkout bags a year. Mea culpa on that one too, though I reuse most of them as bin liners.
1973 Comet Kohoutek was discovered; it attained perihelion on December 26, 1973.
Kohoutek was hyped by the media as the ‘comet of the century’, but gave a poor display and was considered a letdown, leading some to nickname it ‘Comet Watergate’.
Many people and some groups, particularly the Children of God aka The Family (a cult within the Jesus Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s), predicted that Kohoutek was an omen of the end of the world, or Apocalypse, or at least the destruction of America.
'Moses' David Berg (d. 1994), the Children of God leader wrote, "But it will be a 40 day warning culminating somewhere in January, most likely between the 11th and 21st of January" (The 3rd Letter of Moses on the Comet!, 12 November 1973, p. 1). Just before this impending destruction, many Children of God members moved to Europe.
Comets as portents Comets have a long history of association with prognostications of doom. In 1066, for example, Halley's Comet was in the sky for two months while the English and Normans planned for a Norman invasion. At the Battle of Hastings on October 14, the Normans were victorious and from that time on the comet was said to have been a sign that favoured William the Conqueror.
In 1665 a comet was held responsible for the Black Plague that killed 90,000 people in London.
In 1997, the Heaven’s Gate cult believed that Comet Hale-Bopp was similarly associated with apocalyptic prophecies. Wacky leader Marshall Applewhite convinced 39 followers to commit suicide on March 26, so that their souls could take a ride on a spaceship that they thought was hiding behind the comet.
Australian doomsday cult leader William Kamm ('The Little Pebble') as recently as July 15, 2000 had Comet Kohoutek in his apocalyptic pronouncements ...
This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives, with more links, at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.
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1962 USA: The Joints Chiefs of Staff (the heads of the US Army, Air Force and Navy) presented a plan to Secretary of Defense, Robert S McNamara, which suggested using terrorism in the USA to turn opinion towards a US invasion of Cuba.
Have you ever heard 
Instead, the poster-child for this new crack-down on corporate crime is Martha Stewart. She is facing up to 20 years in prison after a jury found her guilty on all charges last week for covering up her sale of ImClone stock just before the price plummeted. Quite the opposite of Lay, who is deeply tied to the Republicans, especially the Bushes, Martha Stewart is a major contributor to the Democrats. She has given more than $150,000 in political contributions--all of it to the Democrats. This according to United Press International. 
"For the first time in 10 years, Mary Wilkinson went to church one Sunday in January. 
"BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 6 — Sabrea Kudi cannot find her son. He was taken by American soldiers nearly nine months ago, and there has been no trace of him since.
They were mere naked savages, and yet there is a sort of pathos about it when that word children falls under your eye, for it always brings before us our perfectest symbol of innocence and helplessness; and by help of its deathless eloquence color, creed and nationality vanish away and we see only that they are children – merely children. And if they are frightened and crying and in trouble, our pity goes out to them by natural impulse. We see a picture. We see small forms. We see the terrified faces. We see the tears. We see the small hands clinging in supplication to the mother; but we do not see those children that we are speaking about. We see in their places the little creatures whom we know and love.
The 15th annual 
1973 Comet Kohoutek was discovered; it attained perihelion on December 26, 1973. 