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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*
*Ø* Blogmanac | Red Cross warned of Iraq prison abuses in 2003
"The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) officially confirmed that it had warned not just the US troops in charge of Abu Ghraib Prison, but the British contingent in Basra too about prisoner abuse.
"An ICRC spokesman in Geneva said he wanted to make absolutely clear that the mistreatment of prisoners was not limited to the acts of a few individuals, but was instead a systematic pattern that has been going on for a long time.
"The Red Cross said it first expressed concerns about Abu Ghraib prison in March of 2003." Source
"The ICRC’s findings prompted it to make repeated requests to the coalition authorities that they take corrective action." Source: ICRC (Red Cross)
May 8 – World Red Cross Red Crescent Day It's the birthday of Henry Dunant, born in Geneva in 1828, recipient of the first Nobel Peace Prize. But the anniversary took an unexpected course before being adopted by the Movement ... Source: ICRC
*Ø* Blogmanac May 8 | Furry Day (Flora Day), Helston, Cornwall, UK
The ancient celebration of Flora Day (or Furry Day) with its Furry Dance is held today at Helston, Cornwall for its patron saint, the Archangel St Michael, but St George is equally important in the festivities.
It is held annually on May 8 except when this date falls on a Sunday or Monday, when it is held on the preceding Saturday. The day now attracts many tourists and the media, with lady revellers dressed in full-length gowns, hat and gloves and the men in black morning suits and grey top hat, all participating in the old dances.
The unusual ancient name 'Furry' is probably derived from the Latin Feriae (festivals, holidays), and in the 18th Century was incorrectly amended to 'Flora' after the Roman goddess of that name, whose Spring festival in Rome around this time was the Floralia (April 28 - May 3).
By the 19th Century the 'furry dance' was called the Floral Dance. It is derived from a pre-Christian festivity and is seen in some other towns, such as Padstow's well-known April 30 celebrations. In its present form prominent townsfolk dance through the town ...
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.
*Ø* Blogmanac | Pictures of wounded men being shot censored by TV
Independent.co.uk By Robert Fisk, 6 May
"The pictures are appalling, the words devastating. As a wounded Iraqi crawls from beneath a burning truck, an American helicopter pilot tells his commander that one of three men has survived his night air attack. "Someone wounded,'' the pilot cries. Then he received the reply: "Hit him, hit the truck and him.'' As the helicopter's gun camera captures the scene on video, the pilot fires a 30mm gun at the wounded man, vaporising him in a second.
"British and most European television stations censored the tape off the air last night on the grounds that the pictures were too terrible to show. But deliberately shooting a wounded man is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions and this extraordinary film of US air crews in action over Iraq is likely to create yet another international outcry.
"American and British personnel have been trying for weeks to persuade Western television stations to show the video of the attack. Despite the efforts of reports in Baghdad and New York, most television controllers preferred to hide the evidence from viewers. Only Canal Plus in France, ABC television in the United States and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation have so far had the courage to show the shocking footage. UK military personnel in the Gulf region have confirmed that the tape is genuine ...
"The film, while it shows men acting in an apparently suspicious manner, does not prove they were handling weapons. The occupation authorities in Baghdad chose to keep the incident secret when it occurred in December. Watching the video images, it is easy to understand why."
"We're facing supporters of the outlaw cleric, remnants of Saddam's regime that are still bitter that they don't have the position to run the torture chambers and rape rooms. … They will fail because they do not speak for the vast majority of Iraqis who do not want to replace one tyrant with another. They will fail because the will of our coalition is strong. They will fail because America leads a coalition full of the finest military men and women in the world."—Bush, remarks on the USA Patriot Act, Pennsylvania,April 19, 2004
Powell: Mr President, I'm sorry but I'm starting to think about ethics. Bush: Will everyone please shut the fuck up about England. Powell: Sir? Bush: Ethics. That's some lil ol' county over there in England, ain't it? Karl Rove: Durn right, Mr President.
The press (unanimously, it seems) reports that Private Lynndie England of the 372nd Military Police Company is shown in this picture "pointing" at the genitals of Hayder Sabbar Abd – the poor guy who wasn't even a combatant and after being terrorised was released without charge by the sadistic American prison system in occupied Iraq.
Pointing? Looks more like pointing a gun, does it not? There are obviously elements of sexism in this case that one can only hope the media will take up as much as it is (at long last) covering the torture and abuse of power. Certainly if the genders were reversed there would be plenty said about institutional sexism in the US military, as well it should. Sexism and racism are strong components in this sordid saga.
On another tack, today's paper runs a large photo of Private England in a less familiar pose, that is, when she's not humiliating innocent blokes. This photo, which unfortunately I can't find online yet, is just a normal happy-snap of a young woman, in Army uniform, sort of smiling at the camera. Emblazoned across her right breast is the name, "ENGLAND". I've been considering how unfortunate her surname is for the Coalition of the Killing.
Let's put the boot on the other foot: Imagine if photos emerged of an Iaqi soldier persecuting an American GI. And if that soldier's name was Saddam Palestine, or Abdul Afghanistan. Wouldn't that confirm in the minds of less evolved Westerners how all these evil Ay-rabs are all cut from the same wicked cloth? Let's face it, a remarkable number of Westerners, aided by Bush's culture of xenophobia, seem to have almost no knowledge of what the "Muslim world" is about. I wonder how many are aware of the Crusades, when Europe invaded the Middle East time and again, and ravaged the lives of those who lived there, plundering their resources and imposing cruel governments. It's pretty obvious that our education systems are letting us down badly.
As an example of some people's apparent lack of awareness of important matters, for some years I shared a house – several houses, successively, in fact – with Afghans. One day, when I phoned one of my friends at work, his boss answered the phone and called out to the staff, "Anyone know where the Arab is?" It was amusing yet appalling to think that quite likely this employer did not know that calling an Afghan an Arab is similar to calling a Jew a Palestinian, an American a Russian, or an Australian a Japanese.
Probably even worse, when America invaded Afghanistan, a former friend of mine, an American, wholeheartedly supported that dreadful folly, and stated that "we should poison their waterholes", referring to the citizens of Afghanistan as "dot-heads", by which he presumably meant Hindus. Not only did this pathetic person blame the victims for the dictatorship that ruled them, he had no idea of who they were, confusing them with Indians much as one might confuse a Buddhist Malaysian with a Christian New Zealander. Yet he was happy to see murdered millions of people about which he knew, it seems, absolutely nothing, on the preposterous premise, shored up by the regime in his own land, that Afghanistan had invaded his country. At the time, I strongly suspected that my erstwhile friend could not have located Afghanistan on a world map. I sincerely doubt whether George W Bush could do that either, even today.
This is what three cups of coffee did to me this morning:
What's the difference between the Marquis de Sade and an American soldier? The Marquis de Sade was noble, treated badly by the prison system, and could write.
What's the difference between Great Britain and Lynndie England? Britannia might rule the waves, but England waives the rules.
What's the difference between a Christian and a prisoner of the US Army? One has a soul full of hope, and the other has a hole full of soap.
George W Bush: Dammit, Rumsfeld, you didn't tell me what our soldiers were doing in I-raq! Rumsfeld: Sorry, Mr President. We'll scapegoat Private England. Bush: Well, I don't know about goats, or scraping no Brits, just you make sure someone takes the blame.
"Dublin (Reuters) -- A new stamp issued by Ireland, current president of the European Union, appears to confuse new EU-member Cyprus with the Greek holiday island of Crete, it is reported May 6, 2004. The stamp shows a map of the enlarged EU with the old member states colored blue and the new states in yellow. The Irish Post Office insisted there had been no mistake but conceded the designers had to move Cyprus from its position in the eastern Mediterranean to fit it on the stamp."
[Crikey. I wonder how many tugboats it took to do that? - N]
*Ø* Blogmanac | Battered Prisoner Body In New Shock Photographs
From Information Clearing House:
“... They stressed him out so badly that the man passed away. They put his body in a bag and packed him in ice for approximately twenty four hours in the shower. The next day the medics came and put his body on a stretcher, placed a fake IV in his arm and took him away.”
As President George Bush appeared on Arabic television ... in a bid to limit the damage caused by photographs of American soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners, a new image emerged which would shock the world.
"The [new] pictures obtained by the [Washington] Post are part of a collection of around 1,000 digital photographs which also feature a soldier standing over a corpse and giving the 'thumbs up' sign, soldiers simulating sexually explicit acts and images of a cat's severed head.
"The images of abuse are similar to those broadcast by an American network last week. Those images led Mr Bush to appear on Arab television yesterday to express his outrage over the abuse of prisoners. He did not, however, formally apologise." Source: The Guardian, Thursday May 6, 2004
I don't know how it's done in the USA, but in governments of the Westminster tradition, such as Australia and, of course, Britain, when people in a government department stuff up badly, the convention is that the minister should resign.
Surely Rumsfeld has to go now that the world has seen a glimpse of the culture of his military forces. Even if the recently exposed torture of prisoners was just an aberration, and that seems unlikely given the xenophobic hysteria promoted by the Bush administration, it is a grave enough indictment of the military to require that the biggest head should roll and not just those of the drongos who work for him.
An Iraqi man asked a Western reporter, "how would Americans feel if these things had happened to American soldiers?" That says it all. Go, Mr Rumsfeld.
In 1258 (February 10, to be precise), 800,000 citizens of Baghdad were massacred in a day or so by Hulagu Khan and his men. Such incidents burn into the soul of a people and shape their world view. Who can be surprised that such opposition to the US-led illegal invasion of their country now emanates from so many Iraqi people? Rumsfeld's Army just keeps fanning the fires of resentment and revenge, and it's high time that it stopped.
Withdraw all forces from Iraq now? I think not. The Coalition has killed maybe 50,000 Iraqis and destroyed acres of real estate. You don't invade your neighbour's house, trash it and walk away with impunity. We must not forget atrocities like the US soldiers guarding the Ministry of Oil buildings and watching while hospitals and the Baghdad Museum were looted. It's a matter of responsibility on the part of the guys who always tell us they're the ones wearing the white hats. No, they must not cut and run. They must negotiate, compensate and walk.
The US administration should find a way to negotiate with the people of Iraq a moderated but speedy withdrawal and establish significant reparations. Those who approved of the invasion might call this a naive solution, but I'm afraid that there is no alternative. Not now. A former US ambassador to Iraq has just said that the US should get out now and cut its losses.
My humble view: the Coalition must get out, and soon, but in complete openness with the victims of their aggression. A good start would be for the US to immediately commence "town hall meetings" across the country and make clear that withdrawal is imminent. Ask for the Iraqis' understanding and their help. Apologise. Mean it. Encourage United Nations involvement, and bankroll it.
It's not too late to call for goodwill, and I believe that on the whole it would be accepted. Because I'm a Pollyanna? I trust not; because Iraqis are human beings and respond to sincerity, reason and humility.
1782 James Price, a Guildford, England chemist, began an experiment (concluded May 25) to turn mercury (another source says sulphur, and another, half a grain of 'a certain powder of deep red colour' with some heated mercury; yet another refers to a white powder with mercury, borax and nitre, as well as silver) into gold. He presented some of his supposed gold to King George III, and was awarded the degree of MD by Oxford University.
Sir Joseph Banks (the botanist famed for his work in Australia with Capt. James Cook) and suspicious members of the Royal Society asked him to repeat his experiments publicly. For this purpose he left London, in January 1783, for his laboratory at Guildford, faithfully promising to return in a month, and confound and convince all his opponents.
Eight months passed, and on August 3, 1783, he called a group of three very dubious RS members together – and drank prussic acid in front of them, falling dead. It may be seen to mark the death of traditional alchemy in England ...
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.
"Abuse, Donald Rumsfeld insisted yesterday, is 'technically different from torture'.The Times lists some of the abuses reportedly perpertrated by officers from the 800th Military Police Brigade in Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.
"Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; threatening detainees with a charged 9mm pistol; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape ... sodomising a detainee with a chemical light ... forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them [word omitted] for several days at a time ..."
"One US soldier killed a prisoner by hitting him with a rock and was discharged from the army, according to the paper. A private contractor working for the CIA murdered another detainee. The Times's copy of an internal army report into the abuses, marked 'Secret, no foreign dissemination', accuses soldiers of committing 'egregious acts and grave breaches of international law'.
"The Independent goes further. It says the US military is now investigating the deaths of an additional 23 Iraqis in custody.
"Lawyers acting for the families of 14 Iraqis will go to the high court today to challenge the [British] MoD's refusal to accept any legal responsibility for their deaths, the Guardian reports."
"LONDON (Reuters) - A woman with an apparently insatiable sweet tooth stunned staff at a British shop when she bought more than 10,000 chocolate bars and had them loaded into her chauffeur-driven limousine.
"The woman asked staff at a north London Woolworths branch for every single Mars bar in stock -- 10,656 of them packed in 220 boxes -- and paid for them in cash with 50 pound notes, a Woolworths spokesman said on Wednesday.
*Ø* Blogmanac | Diplomats tell Bush: Middle East policy 'dangerous'
The Independent, 5 May
"More than 60 former US diplomats yesterday lambasted George Bush for running a one-sided Middle East policy, claiming that the President's open-ended support for Israel was costing the US 'credibility, prestige and friends'.
"In a public letter to the President, inspired by a similar protest delivered to Tony Blair last week by 52 former British ambassadors, the diplomats call on the administration to return to being a 'truly honest broker' in negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, and to 'reassert American principles of justice and fairness'.
"'Your unqualified support for Israel's extra-judicial assassinations, its Berlin Wall-like barrier, and its harsh military measures in occupied territories' was costing the country its credibility, the letter said. It warned that current US policies were placing US diplomats, civilians and military overseas 'in an untenable, even dangerous position.'
"As with their British counterparts, the last straw for the letter's signatories -- many of them veterans of Middle East postings -- was the 14 April meeting in Washington when Mr Bush endorsed the plan of Ariel Sharon, Israel's Prime Minister, to hang on to five substantial settlement areas in the West Bank, and flatly rejected the right of return for Palestinian refugees."
*Ø* Blogmanac | Disney 'blocks' new Michael Moore doc
"Oscar-winning film-maker Michael Moore's latest documentary may be in cold storage following a reported row between its distributor, Miramax, and parent company Disney.
"According to the industry newspaper Variety, the Walt Disney Company has moved to prevent the company run by the Weinstein brothers from releasing Fahrenheit 911, which links US president George Bush to Osama bin Laden and members of other powerful Saudi business families.
"The follow-up to the anti-gun film Bowling for Columbine is still set to premiere at the Cannes film festival later this month, but does not currently appear on Miramax's summer schedule. There had been suggestions of a July release.
"If true, Disney's move to block the new film's release would not be the first time Moore has been censored. In 2001, the release of the comedian and satirist's book Stupid White Men was blocked by publisher HarperCollins, who threatened to pulp printed copies, arguing that the book's attack on the US government was inappropriate in the months after September 11. Following a campaign by Moore, the book was eventually published and went on to top the New York Times bestseller list ..." Source: The Guardian More at BBC
*Ø* Blogmanac May 5, 1865 | Nellie Bly, a remarkable young woman
1865 Nellie Bly (d. January 27, 1922), pseudonym of Elizabeth Jane Cochran/Cochrane, a pioneering female investigative journalist.
On January 25, 1890, Bly bettered Phileas Fogg's fictional Around the World in Eighty Days feat by doing it in just 72 days, six hours, eleven minutes and fourteen seconds after her departure from Hoboken, New York on November 14, 1889.
Born 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 precisely 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.
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.
In the days when Cain with Abel played, a resolution on the Left was made: Oppose the war, support the troops. And thus, with many twists and loops, the dialectic insurmountable, the working man unaccountable, the Left has pimped through many a war the working man as Capital's whore, protected from the critic's eye by mighty ideology. "No jobs but war exist", they say, these Marxists of a former day. And yet, and yet, I smell a rat parading in a soldier's hat. Soldier: even if it's just desk clerk, please find yourself some honest work.
How many soldiers does it take to change a lightbulb? Five. One to stick the enemy's testicles in the socket, three to cheer and one to take photos.
1886 The Haymarket Square Bombing. A bomb killed seven Chicago, Illinois, USA, police officers as they attacked demonstrators at a labor rally protesting police brutality the previous day at McCormick Reaper Works.
Policeman Mathias J Degan was killed almost instantly and seven other policemen later succumbed to injuries; four others besides were killed.
Earlier in the day there had been anarchists addressing the crowd, so the crime was slated home to proponents of the political ideology of anarchy, despite the fact that no evidence for such a link could be demonstrated. A frame-up ensued and all the men targeted by the police were found guilty: August Spies, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fisher, Louis Lingg and George Engel were given the death penalty; Oscar Neebe, Samuel Fielden and Michael Schwab were sentenced to life imprisonment. On November 10, 1887, Lingg committed suicide by exploding a dynamite cap in his mouth. The following day Parsons, Spies, Fisher and Engel were executed.
Eventually those convicted of the crimes were pardoned by the State of Illinois after a worldwide protest at a frame-up. Unfortunately, this did not occur in the lifetime of all the victims of the police revenge. On June 26, 1893, Neebe, Fielden, and Schwab, Haymarket anarchists not already hanged by the State of Illinois the previous day, were pardoned by Illinois governor, John Peter Altgeld. The show trial and convictions were a travesty, but conservative reaction to Altgeld’s action effectively ended his political career.
The Haymarket case gained worldwide attention for the labor movement, and sparked off the tradition of May Day labor rallies in many cities around the world.
In 1889, a 9-foot tall bronze statue of a Chicago policeman was erected near the site of the riot, becoming a subject of debate and derision. After being moved from its original location, it was blown up at least twice by the Weather Underground before being moved to the lobby of police headquarters.
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.
You're probably already aware, but just in case you're not, the Sasser worm is causing havoc with computers worldwide and it's important if you run Windows to make sure you have the latest updates installed.
Sasser doesn't spread through email attachments; you only need to connect to the Net to be vulnerable.
"BAGHDAD, May 2 - Day and night lost meaning shortly after Muwafaq Sami Abbas, a lawyer by training, arrived at Baghdad International Airport for an unexpected stay. In March, he was seized from his bed by U.S. troops in the middle of the night, he said, along with the rest of the men in his house, and taken to a prison on the airport grounds.
"The black sack the troops placed over his head was removed only briefly during the next nine days of interrogation, conducted by U.S. officials in civilian and military clothes, he said. He was forced to do knee bends until he collapsed, he recalled, and black marks still ring his wrists from the pinch of plastic handcuffs. Rest was made impossible by loudspeakers blaring, over and over, the Beastie Boys' rap anthem, 'No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn' ..." Source: Washington Post via MSNBC
[The photo is of another torture victim.]
Meanwhile, a slap on the wrist for US soldiers (the ones who got caught) who tortured and sexually abused their Iraqi victims. The root cause of the descent of the American military into barbarism of this kind is, of course, a culture of xenophobia and racism fostered by the Bush administration in its transparent quest for oil. The world is horrified, Mr Bush, and unfortunately grows angrier by the day.
I wrote this verse soon after 9-11 as Dubya commenced this ridiculous invasion campaign, and I now feel quite sure the dandelion seeds that Shrub's Amerika has released are beginning to take root:
Desultory talkin' World War III philippic, or how I was William F Buckley'd into agreement
When I was walkin up the stair I met a man named Tony Blair. He wasn't there agin today and he won't be there in the morning.
Along come a man, George W Bush, Beady eyes and smarmy moosh; he's bombin from the Hindu Kush in the cold and snowy mornin.
I looks agin and what'd I see, a dandelion as big as a tree, bigger'n Bush and bigger'n me, it jist grew up in the mornin.
George rode up with his 10-gallon hat and carryin a baseball bat. "My friend George what you want with that, an' yer big ol' hat in the mornin?"
He says, "See this big ol' baseball bat? I's gonna whup its ass with that. Gonna knock it down an' lay it flat, An' it won't git up in the mornin.
"That dandelion, he's a E-Vil weed, he's full a li'l old E-Vil seeds." I said, "My friend, best you succeed, we don't want sin in the mornin."
He took that bat and whupped the ass of the dandelion, and well you ask what other things did come to pass that cold 'n' snowy mornin.
Well all them seeds did fly around like parachutes, without a sound, an' some of them they come to ground, an' they all took root next mornin.
I walked on up them stairs again and passed by old Afghanistan. An' I heard them souls all cry in pain, an' they woke me up this mornin.
And meanwhile, as Veralynne reports at A-Changin' Times, Bliar is sending another 4,000 young men and women to Iraq to fight in a war that 'finished' on May 1 last year. :: sigh ::
(Poetic narcissus, Narcissus poeticus, was today’s plant, dedicated to this feast)
Helena (Flavia Iulia Helena, also known as Saint Helena and Helena of Constantinople, c. 248 - c. 329 CE) was empress and mother of the Roman emperor Constantine. England’s Geoffrey of Monmouth, claimed that she was a daughter of British King Coel Godhebog, meaning "King Cole the Magnificent". Other versions of the legend mention Coel not as King but as dux (chief) of Camelodunum (Colchester). (Her legendary father is not the same as King Coel Hen, meaning 'Coel the Old' – 'Old King Cole' of the nursery rhyme.)
She travelled to Jerusalem and demanded all the alleged crosses of Jesus Christ be brought to her. (She also got the four nails, the spear which pierced the side of Jesus, and other relics. Of the four nails, two were placed in Rome’s imperial crown, and one at a later date was taken by Charlemagne to France; a fourth was thrown in the Adriatic to calm the waters of that stormy sea.)
The body of a dead man was placed on each cross; when it was on the true cross, the body came to life. Thus was the True Cross of Christ 'invented', an archaic expression that means 'discovered'. May 3rd for centuries commemorated that event, until the abolition of this feast day by Pope John XXIII in 1960.
The cross was entrusted to the Bishop of Jerusalem and small pieces were cut off and sold to pilgrims, but it was found the cross had the power of self-regeneration. This legend was, no doubt, created to explain all the pieces of the cross that ended up in Medieval European churches.
In 614, Jerusalem was captured and the cross carried into Persia. There it remained a few years, but was recovered by the conquests of Heraclitus, who carried it back to Jerusalem on his back. This event is commemorated by Roman Catholic Church on September 14, the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, or Holyrood Day, the word 'rood' meaning 'cross'.
In 1561 John Calvin wrote a tract that said that if all the pieces of the True Cross were gathered together, they would load a large ship, and would take 300 men, not one, to carry it.
A piece of the True Cross was the most important relic venerated by the Crusaders. It was kept in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre under the protection of the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, who raised it as a standard of the army before every battle. It was captured from the Europeans by the Arab freedom fighter Saladin (1137 - March 4, 1193) during the Battle of Hattin in 1187 ...
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.
*Ø* Blogmanac May 2, 1602 | Kircher and the Voynich Manuscript
1602 Athanasius Kircher (d. 1680), Italian Renaissance intellectual.
Kircher was a probable one-time owner of the Voynich Manuscript, the mysterious and so far untranslatable 240-page medieval manuscript owned in more recent years by Wilfrid Voynich (Wilfryd Micha? Habdank-Woynicz) ...
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.
*Ø* Blogmanac | 'Some dare call it Bush's treason: Wake up, America!'
BATTLE LINES BEIN' DRAWN (Domestically, too) -- War and Peace
From Raff:
'Some dare call it Bush's treason: Wake up, America!' By Dr. Robert Bowman, Col. USAF Ret. Baltimore Chronicle
I am a member of Veterans For Peace, an organization of thousands of combat veterans. All of us have put our life on the line for this country. Most of us opposed the recent invasion of Iraq. We also opposed the first Gulf War, and the sanctions that followed. We opposed the slaughter of fleeing Iraqis on the Road to Basra. We opposed the use of Depleted Uranium munitions. And we opposed the lies upon which the first Gulf War was based. But there was one good thing about that first Gulf War. It ended. And without a wholesale invasion of Iraq. Why?
Here's what the first President Bush wrote about that in his memoirs:
"Trying to eliminate Saddam would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. 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.
My brothers and sisters, it is just too darn bad his son can't read!
I've been severely criticized for speaking out in opposition to this war. So have you, probably. We're told that we're aiding and abetting the enemy. We're told that we should support the president no matter what. We're told that patriotism demands that we support the war. They say that we're abusing the freedoms that our troops are in the Middle East defending. They say we should be ashamed to be protesting while the troops are in the desert protecting our right to do so.
FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH -- Actions to Take to Make a Difference
Greetings all,
Very exciting things afoot! Here’s a new article I wrote that sets the context for what I think is coming, a movement to converge in a way that leads to much more fundamental changes than simply removing Bush (which I think is an important component but not enough). I especially encourage you to register on WeConverge to prepare for an exciting campaign to be launched on Monday. More to be revealed soon...
The radical right learned the lesson that solidarity translates into real political power. This election season, progressives are faced with a similar challenge. If we remain splintered, we will have little impact. Unified, we become a powerful force.
Right now, many progressives feel disappointed. The candidates who carried the progressive torch have fallen away, except Dennis Kucinich, who soldiers on, and Ralph Nader, who inspires fierce critiques as a spoiler. Most progressives are a bit unsure where to situate themselves on this terrain since current enthusiasm for John Kerry is lukewarm at best. One option is to turn to outrage at George Bush and bond around that. However, anger has limited value in the long haul of an election. Those already outraged will bond with our anger. People on the fence tend to be turned off. Those who actually like Bush turn away altogether. While the anger might keep us motivated for a time, it tends to fester.
So I believe that the central task for progressives this year is to figure out a positive way to come together into a powerful enough block to exert pressure in a way that delivers maximum progressive change while sending Bush back to the ranch.
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"The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) officially confirmed that it had warned not just the US troops in charge of Abu Ghraib Prison, but the British contingent in Basra too about prisoner abuse.
The ancient celebration of Flora Day (or Furry Day) with its Furry Dance is held today at Helston, Cornwall for its patron saint, the Archangel St Michael, but St George is equally important in the festivities. 
"Dublin (Reuters) -- A new stamp issued by Ireland, current president of the European Union, appears to confuse new EU-member Cyprus with the Greek holiday island of Crete, it is reported May 6, 2004. The stamp shows a map of the enlarged EU with the old member states colored blue and the new states in yellow. The Irish Post Office insisted there had been no mistake but conceded the designers had to move Cyprus from its position in the eastern Mediterranean to fit it on the stamp."
"The [new] pictures obtained by the [Washington] Post are part of a collection of around 1,000 digital photographs which also feature a soldier standing over a corpse and giving the 'thumbs up' sign, soldiers simulating sexually explicit acts and images of a cat's severed head.
"Abuse, Donald Rumsfeld insisted yesterday, is 'technically different from torture'. 
"LONDON (Reuters) - A woman with an apparently insatiable sweet tooth stunned staff at a British shop when she bought more than 10,000 chocolate bars and had them loaded into her chauffeur-driven limousine.
"Oscar-winning film-maker Michael Moore's latest documentary may be in cold storage following a reported row between its distributor, Miramax, and parent company Disney.
1865 Nellie Bly (d. January 27, 1922), pseudonym of Elizabeth Jane Cochran/Cochrane, a pioneering female investigative journalist. 
1886 The Haymarket Square Bombing. A bomb killed seven Chicago, Illinois, USA, police officers as they attacked demonstrators at a labor rally protesting police brutality the previous day at McCormick Reaper Works. 
"BAGHDAD, May 2 - Day and night lost meaning shortly after Muwafaq Sami Abbas, a lawyer by training, arrived at Baghdad International Airport for an unexpected stay. In March, he was seized from his bed by U.S. troops in the middle of the night, he said, along with the rest of the men in his house, and taken to a prison on the airport grounds.
aka The Invention (Discovery) of the Holy Cross
Greetings all,