Surf almanac with menu above. Click here to consult your free I Ching and Tarot while waiting (opens in a new window).
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*
The article from a prestigious British journal that had everyone (well, some people) talking last August seems to have been widely forgotten.
It's here at The Guardian but because people keep asking me for it, here are parts of it:
Inside story of the hunt for Bin Laden "The al-Qaida leader is said to be hiding in northern Pakistan guarded by a 120-mile ring of tribesmen whose job it is to warn of the approach of any troops. Rory McCarthy reports
Saturday August 23, 2003
"Experts who have been following the attempts of the Pakistanis and the US to find the al-Qaida leader have suggested that:
· The Pakistani president, General Pervez Musharraf, struck a deal with the US not to seize Bin Laden after the Afghan war for fear of inciting trouble in his own country;
· The al-Qaida leader is being protected by a three elaborate security rings which stretch 120 miles in diameter; and
· The Pakistani special forces looking for him are no closer than they were a year ago ... [emphasis mine]
"Some argue that the Pakistani authorities saw the difficulties from the start and, although they publicly stressed their commitment to the hunt for Bin Laden, in private they had a different strategy.
"Mr Ijaz believes an agreement was reached between Gen Musharraf and the American authorities shortly after Bin Laden's flight from Tora Bora.
"The Pakistanis feared that to capture or kill Bin Laden so soon after a deeply unpopular war in Afghanistan would incite civil unrest in Pakistan and would trigger a spate of revenge al-Qaida attacks on western targets across the world.
"'There was a judgment made that it would be more destabilising in the longer term,' he said. 'There would still be the ability to get him at a later date when it was more appropriate.'
"The Americans, according to Mr Ijaz, accepted the argument, not least because of the shift in focus to the impending war in Iraq. So the months that followed were centred on taking down not Bin Laden, but the 'retaliation infrastructure' of al-Qaida.
"It meant that Gen Musharraf frequently put out remarkably conflicting accounts of the status of Bin Laden, while the US administration barely mentioned his name."
This site claims to have a story 'Al-Qaida leader getting dialysis treament at Peshawar hospital' but they want money to read it. Then there's this from The Times of India, another credible journal, of July 24, 2004:
"WASHINGTON: Pakistan's intelligence officials knew in advance about the 9/11 attacks, a well-known American analyst has said, based on a 'stunning document' that he claims was given by a Pakistani source to the 9/11 Commission on the eve of the publication of its report.
"The document, from a high-level, but anonymous Pakistani source, also claims that Osama bin Laden has been receiving periodic dialysis in a military hospital in Peshawar, says Arnaud de Borchgrave, editor-at-large of the news agency UPI." Osama being treated by Pak Army
Three stimulating articles sent by Almaniac Mary Ann from California, with thanks.
"Angry Bush walked away from reporter's questions. Tubb prescribed the anti-depressants after a clearly-upset Bush stormed off stage on July 8, refusing to answer reporters' questions about his relationship with indicted Enron executive Kenneth J. Lay.
"'Too many make the mistake of thinking Dick Cheney is the real power in the Bush administration,' says one senior Homeland Security aide. 'They're wrong. It's Ashcroft and that is reason enough for all of us to be very, very afraid.'
"While Vice President Cheney remains part of Bush's tight, inner circle, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has fallen out of favor and tells his staff that 'no matter what happens in November, I'm outta here.'
"The story the Pentagon put out, and was published by the Washington Post, was that the hole in the Pentagon was five stories high and 200 feet wide. If you look at the photographs taken by Tom Horan of the Associated Press – that's just not the size of the hole.
"But if the hole was only 18 feet wide, it had to have been created by something other than a Boeing. Whatever went into the Pentagon pierced six reinforced walls. This was the west wing, the part of the Pentagon being refurbished and reinforced. These walls were extra strong, and yet whatever it was went through six walls creating a hole about seven feet in diameter in the sixth wall. This had to have been something with a very powerful head on it. A Boeing 757 has a very fragile nose, and would not have pierced through all those walls; it would have been crushed by hitting the Pentagon. And given that it only penetrated these three rings, the rest of the aircraft would have been sitting outside on the yard. And yet the photographs taken just as the fire trucks got there – very shortly after the crash – show no plane whatsoever." Thinking Unthinkable Thoughts: Theologian Charges White House Complicity in 9/11 Attack
Feast day of Loki and Sigyn (Norse tradition) Norse trickster god Loki (Loke) and his consort Sigyn are honoured today.
Loki Laufeyiarson, in Norse mythology, is the ‘god’ of mischief (actually, not a god at all but a Jotun (the Titans and Gigantes of Norse mythology) ...
The trickster god is a complex character, a master of guile and deception. He is also conceived of as a fire spirit, with all the potential for good and ill associated with fire. Loki is also an adept shape-shifter, with the ability to change both form (examples include transmogrification to a salmon, horse, bird, flea, etc.) and sex.
On at least one occasion Loki gave birth to a horse – none other than Odin's eight-legged steed, Sleipnir ... Loki's other offspring are the Fenris wolf, the Jormungander, ie, the Midgard serpent, and Hel, the queen of Nifelheim, the world of the dead.
This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives, with many more links, at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.
"Earlier this month, the website for the Bush-Cheney campaign -- the real one -- featured a 'create your own banner' tool, where you could enter your own slogan and print out your own poster, with the Bush-Cheney logo, and a note at the bottom 'paid for by Bush-Cheney '04, Inc.' Democrats, of course, couldn't get enough of this. The original sloganator accepted everything. Then it started censoring profanity and words like 'Hitler','dictator', and 'evil'.
"Nevertheless, many clever folk exploited the sloganator to their own ends before its sad demise only a couple of weeks after its birth, and its mourners assembled some of the best for the slide show."
*Ø* Beijing Olympics: Never too early to think 'boycott'
It's not too early to start planning to boycott the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
Many will scoff, as competition is a modern mythology with few agnostics or atheists, but it's worth remembering that the USA boycott of Moscow in 1980 had many positive effects, even though it didn't stop the communists killing 1.5 million Afghans in the following decade. (Australian sportsmen and women, to their shame, put narcissism and "gold, gold, gold" before international solidarity, and competition before cooperation and did not follow Jimmy Carter's boycott.)
The Olympic movement is a discredited beast and agency of chauvinism and nationalist propaganda whether it is at Sydney, Beijing, Athens, or Berlin, where Hitler was early to recognise its PsyOps value. It was run from 1980 till 2001 by Juan Antonio Samaranch, national councillor under the fascist dictatorship of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, and the man who presided over the Olympics' descent into the corrupt, drug-riddled spectacle that they are today.
Let's keep our countries out of Beijing in 2008 on behalf of a quarter of the world's population still living under dictatorship.
A New Wave of Repression Justified by the Olympics "While a wide majority of International Olympic Committee (IOC) members were voting, on July 13, 2001, to attribute the 2008 Summer Olympics to Beijing, Chinese police received an order to step up their executions of delinquents and intensify repression against 'subversive Internet users'. IOC members, encouraged by their president, Juan Antonio Samaranch, who personally supported China's bid, paid no attention to the repeated calls against the Beijing bid ...
"The Olympic movement was discredited in 1936, when it allowed the Nazis to make the Games a spectacle to glorify the Third Reich. In 1980, in Moscow, the IOC suffered a terrible defeat when more than 50 countries boycotted the Olympics. The Netherlands, Germany, the United States, Egypt and so many others refused to countenance the Soviet regime. In 2008, the international sporting movement must refuse to tolerate one of the world's bloodiest dictatorships.
New Lords of the Rings "The world of modern Olympic sport is a secretive, elite domain where decisions are taken behind closed doors, where money is spent on creating a fabulous life-style for a tiny circle of officials and funds destined for sport are siphoned away to offshore bank accounts. This investigation of the hidden corruption behind the Olympic ideal reveals: how Princess Anne's attempt to unseat the unpopular athletics supremo Primo Nibiolo was sabotaged by secret deals from within, how bribes were paid to win gold medals for Korean boxers in the Seoul Olympics, that Berlin's bid for the 2000 Olympics was so corrupt that the State parliament set up an enquiry, that millions of dollars are spent by bidding cities to woo those who decide where the games will be held, when in fact often the decision has already been made, and that the Olympic number two, Korea's Dr Kim Un Yung, is a trained killer and a former spy." The New Lords of the Rings: Olympic Corruption and How to Buy Gold Medals (from Cafe Diem, our store)
The following are just a few grabs from 'Homegrown terrorists', a fascinating online documentary. What I found particularly interesting is the assertion that the potential for domestic terrorism in the USA is so great but the administration works hard to keep the focus on foreign Muslims.
I also learned that after right-wing Americans did the Oklahoma bombing, vigilantes started attacking Middle Easterners, whom they apparently blamed.
Steve Rendall: G. Gordon Liddy has a national show in the United States. He’s heard on I believe more than 200 stations across the country, and at this time he was instructing his listeners on how to shoot federal agents. He said, ‘Don’t shoot for the letters across the chest, they’ve got bulletproof vests on, head shots, head shots, kill the sons of bitches’. And he did it not once, but several times. He was instructing his listeners on how to kill federal agents.
* Ø * Ø * Ø *
In April 2003, John Ashcroft’s Justice Department disrupted what appears to have been a horrifying terrorist plot. In the small town of Noonday, Texas, FBI agents discovered a weapons cache containing fully-automatic machine guns, remote controlled explosive devices disguised as briefcases, 60 pipe bombs, and the chemical weapon for a cyanide bomb big enough to kill everyone in a 30,000 square foot building. Strangely though, the Attorney-General didn’t call a press conference to announce the discovery of the weapons cache, or the arrest of William Krar, it’s owner. He didn’t even issue a press release. This was, to say the least, out of character. José Padilla, the accused Dirty Bomber, didn’t have any bomb-making material, or even a plausible way to acquire such material, yet Mr Ashcroft put him on the front pages around the world. Mr Krar was caught with an actual chemical bomb, yet Mr Ashcroft acted as if nothing had happened.
Incidentally, if Mr Ashcroft’s intention was to keep the case low profile, the media have been highly co-operative. To this day, the Noonday conspiracy has received little national coverage. Yet, it’s hard to believe that William Krar wouldn’t have become a household name if he had been a Muslim, or even a Leftist.
* Ø * Ø * Ø *
Chip Berlet: The fact is that domestic terrorism is as American as apple pie. You could argue that the revolution was a form of domestic terrorism which was victorious, and it rewrote history to make us the revolutionaries who threw off the burden of Britain ...
Helen Thomas: Even if that balance isn’t a prime concern for George W. Bush, the Oklahoma City bombing casts a long, awful shadow.
Mark Potok: I was in Oklahoma, I got there about an hour-and-a-half after the building was bombed, and it was still on fire. And I was a reporter for 20 years, and I never covered a story that was so really awful. It did completely change the landscape, because of course it’s worth remembering that the immediate reaction of Americans from so-called ‘experts’ to law enforcement, to radio commentators and news people, was that this had to be Islamic. And I remember very clearly that on the very first day there was a mob in northern Oklahoma that gathered around the home and apartment where an Iranian woman was living, and started stoning the apartment. The woman was I think about 7 and a half months pregnant, and miscarried. Source: Background Briefing Streaming audio
Every morning for 37 years, Sydneysiders, as we who live in Sydney are called, awoke to a word that helped in unknown ways to give a focus on the deep meanings of life, death, and meaning itself.
Arthur Stace died on July 30, 1967, aged 83. He had been ‘born again’ at St Barnabas's Church of England, Broadway, Sydney, in August 1930, and his friends described him as a very colourful character. He had been a methylated spirits-drinking, hopeless alcoholic and derelict in the streets of Sydney, when he was converted to Christianity at about 46 years of age. He had returned from World War One shell-shocked and soon became a scout for brothels, a petty criminal, and a ‘cockatoo’ (lookout) for two-up schools (illegal gambling rooms where the Australian game of two-up is played).
Just after his conversion to Christianity, Stace heard the evangelist John Ridley at the Burton Street Baptist Church preach about a man who was converted in Scotland through ‘Eternity’ being written on a footpath. Ridley cried out ‘Oh for someone to write Eternity on the footpaths of Sydney!’ Arthur Stace said to himself, ‘Here is something I can do for God.’ He did so, writing the word half a million times over nearly four decades ...
This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives, with many more links, at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.
"BERLIN (Reuters) - A German woman became so furious after a fight with her husband she stormed out of the house armed with a hammer and smashed up his car -- before realizing she had vandalized the wrong vehicle, police said Wednesday.
"The 43-year-old from Essen, western Germany, told police she shattered the windshield, broke the headlights and wrenched off the wing mirrors, causing more than $1,200 in damage, because she was filled with rage after a telephone quarrel.
"After going back indoors she realized she had battered the wrong car. Only noticing the color, she had attacked her neighbor's blue Opel Corsa and not the blue Ford Fiesta belonging to her spouse." Source
"Frederick Cheney LaRue, 75, the shadowy Nixon White House aide and 'bagman' who delivered more than $300,000 in payoffs to Watergate conspirators, died of coronary artery disease in a Biloxi, Miss. motel room, where he lived ...
"He was one of many Nixon-era figures rumored over the years to be 'Deep Throat', the undercover source of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Mr. LaRue denied that he was Deep Throat, and Woodward said he will not reveal the source's name until after Deep Throat dies." Source: truthout.org
It survived Soviet occupation, civil war, the Taliban and US-led invasion. But after 24 years of aid work, Médecins sans Frontières has been forced by the American military to flee Afghanistan
"Aid workers who remained in Afghanistan throughout the years of Soviet occupation, tribal anarchy and Taliban rule are preparing to flee the country because US military tactics have made it too dangerous to operate there.
"A grim shadow was cast over the future of all aid missions to Afghanistan when the French organisation Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) said independent humanitarian work could no longer be carried out safely. MSF claimed the American military had endangered the lives of humanitarian volunteers by blurring the distinction between soldiers and aid workers. Five MSF workers were killed last month.
"The announcement came as the Foreign Affairs Select Committee was preparing to put on record its fears about a rise in heroin production since the fall of the Taliban as part of a report to be published today into the war on terrorism. The Foreign Office has admitted that the opium harvest this year will be one of the biggest on record ...
"Kenny Gluck, MSF's operations director, denounced US military programmes in southern Afghanistan, which have sometimes promised aid only to villages which provide intelligence on Taliban fighters."
It was very difficult to tell the story, because I relived the story while I was writing it, but at the same time, I relive it on a daily basis. I mean, it's not something that I forget. It's something that I live with. Norma Khouri, Viewpoint, 2003
Best known among them is probably the Ern Malley affair in which two prominent poets managed to take the mickey out of modern poetry when their invented 'Ern Malley' became, briefly, an accepted, even popular, poet. Poets James McAuley and Harold Stewart threw words together at random to great effect. (Today some say the nonsense 'Malley' wrote is pretty good even though it was exposed as a gag much to the laughter of the Oz public.) Nevertheless, Max Harris, the Angry Penguins journal publisher who was taken in by the joke, went on to become perhaps the country's most successful bookman.
Then there was Helen Demidenko (pictured at left), who won two prestigious awards, the Vogel and the Miles Franklin, for her first novel, The Hand that Signed the Paper. Naturally enough, the book was a best seller ... especially when it turned out that Ms Demidenko was not who she claimed to be. She was "the daughter not, as she claim[ed], of an illiterate Ukrainian taxi driver from Cairns but of a Brisbane couple, Harry and Grace Darville, who arrived on our shores from nowhere more exotic that Scunthorpe [England]". Largely because her book offended some sensibilities of the politically correct, the pretence was turned into a national scandal and talking point of Monica Lewinski proportions.
In 1980, Paul Radley won the Vogel Award (it's for writers aged under 35). Truth was, his middle-aged uncle had written it. In another celebrated case, a white male author had himself published as a black female author, just to prove that the literary establishment wouldn't know the difference.
Khouri's Forbidden Love was published two years ago in at least 15 countries and has sold more than 200,000 copies in Australia alone, pretty amazing when you consider the population of Australia is only 20 million. It was flavour of the month, in fact, of the year, around the time Oz co-pre-emptively invaded Iraq. I confess haven't read it (the title alone is enough to put anyone off, I would have thought), but from all accounts it contains very disturbing anti-Muslim passages, which would have fitted quite nicely the dominant paradigm as purveyed by Australia's government. One thing's certain, if it had attacked some other religions it wouldn't have got past the Australian Literazis.
Ms Khouri did the usual celeb author tours and had them sobbing in the aisles with her tale of her miserable life in Jordan.
Trouble is, before living in Australia, she spent all but the first three years of her life living in the USA. Her publisher has apparently withdrawn the book, while on the way to the bank, and meanwhile booksellers are frantically shifting Forbidden Love off the Non Fic shelves and onto the Fic (I guess (((shudder)))) Mills & Boon) shelves.
Khouri, who lives in an expensive estate in Queensland, has denied her book was a hoax and has said that she is gathering documentation to back up her claims.
The plot thickens:
"An investigation by The Australian has revealed that a US court has been told the 34-year-old besieged author was forced to flee Chicago, where she lived from the age of 3 until four years ago, after being pursued by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which claims she and her husband were being investigated for fraud.
"She was also once accused of beating her mother-in-law and threatening to kill her, but the case was dropped.
"An affidavit in 2001 with the Circuit Court of Cook County filed by a Chicago attorney in one of numerous court cases involving Khouri - known here by either her maiden name, Bagain, or Toliopoulos, her married name - states that an FBI agent had alleged she had, in 1999, 'fled the country in an effort to avoid prosecution'." 'Hoax' author fled US pursued by FBI
Feast day of St Martha (Red chironia, Chironia centaureum, is today’s plant, dedicated to this saint.)
Many cultures have dragonslaying heroes and heroines, and Martha is a European one with a good lineage, as she first appears in the Bible.
Martha was sister to St Lazarus and St Mary Magdalen and is matron saint of good housewives. According to one legend, she left Palestine after Jesus's death, around 48, and went to Provence with her sister Mary (possibly Mary Magdalen) and her brother Lazarus. Martha first settled in Avignon (now in France), then went to Tarascon, France. In art she is depicted in homely costume, often with a bunch of keys on a girdle, and holding a ladle of water. She is accompanied by a bound dragon, as she destroyed Tarasque (pictured), a female dragon, which she did by praising the monster for its goodness.
Tarasque inhabited the area of Tarascon (near Marseilles) in Provence, and devastated the landscape far and wide. The tarasque was a sort of dragon with six short legs like a bear's, an ox-like body covered with a turtle shell, and a scaly tail that ended in a scorpion sting. She had a lion's head, horse's ears, and the face of a bitter old man.
Martha is Matron of Tarascon which was named after the dragon, as was the herb tarragon. After the townsfolk killed Tarasque, Martha wept for the dragon but forgave the people for they had suffered so long. Or, so it is said.
This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives, with many more links, at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.
"BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) - Burning of the Amazon jungle is changing weather patterns by raising temperatures and reducing rainfall, accelerating the rate at which the forest is disappearing and turning into grassland, scientists said on Tuesday.
"Wide-scale burning by loggers and farmers of the Amazon has risen sharply over the past two decades, changing the region's cloud cover and reducing the amount of rain in some deforested areas that are turning into grassland or savanna ...
"Destruction of the Amazon, home to up to 30 percent of the globe's animal and plant species, reached its second-highest level last year. An area of 5.9 million acres, bigger than the state of New Jersey, was destroyed as loggers and farmers hacked and burned the forest in 2003..."
"So what do we do about Sudan? I mean really do, not just pose. Do we scold it? Or do we condemn it, sanction it, threaten it, bomb and invade it? Do we impose 'democracy and prosperity' on Sudan, given that it badly needs both?
"The trouble with interventionists is they can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. A year ago I wrote wondering why we were invading Iraq when Sudan might reasonably claim our prior attention. Everyone, except Tony Blair, knew that Iraq was no immediate threat. It just offered an opportune target for a belligerent desire on his part to topple someone nasty. Since all other reasons have evaporated, Mr Blair has virtually admitted as such.
"Yet nothing was as nasty as the regime in Khartoum. Eighteen months ago my e-mails were already buzzing with chatter about religious massacres, ethnic expulsions, starvation, rape and pillage in Sudan. Refugee camps were growing in neighbouring Chad. So what was urgent about one murderous Muslim desert state, Iraq, that was not urgent about another?
"The answer, of course, was that there were no television cameras in Sudan. There was no oil, the regime in Khartoum was being 'helpful' over al-Qaeda and its dying were, quite frankly, black."
John Kerry's stand on the death penalty – that there shouldn't be one – is now the Democratic Party's platform.
"The Democratic party platform that will be adopted this week includes one particularly significant change from the platforms adopted by the party conventions of 1992, 1996 and 2000. During the platform-writing process, the drafting committee quietly removed the section of the document that endorsed capital punishment. Thus, for the first time since the 1980s, Democrats will not be campaigning on a pro-death penalty program ...
"Polls show a majority of Americans support the death penalty in at least some instances. But since the late 1980s, enthusiasm for capital punishment has been slipping. Many Americans, including some political leaders such as former Illinois Governor George Ryan, have come to question the morality of state-sponsored executions, as the use of DNA analysis has led to the exoneration of dozens of death-row inmates." [my emphasis - N]
"TOKYO (Reuters) - Officials in western Japan were marveling on Sunday at the generosity of a mystery philanthropist who donated a $1.8 million lottery ticket to help victims of recent torrential rainstorms.
"In an extremely rare display of charity, a winning lottery ticket good for a 200 million yen ($1.82 million) grand prize was mailed to the governor of Fukui prefecture on Friday with a note saying it was intended as a donation for rain victims."
"WASHINGTON: As Malaysia's ex-deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim grimaces in pain in prison, his daughter Nurul Izzah is in the US lobbying for support to have him travel to Germany for critical back surgery.
"The determined 23-year-old has met officials at the White House, the State Department and Congress as well as human rights groups, asking them to persuade Kuala Lumpur to allow Anwar to seek treatment abroad.
"Anwar, regarded by the US as a political prisoner and as a 'prisoner of conscience' by rights group Amnesty International, was rushed to hospital from prison this month due to complications from a damaged spinal disc, which he said was caused by a police beating after his arrest in 1998.
"The charismatic Anwar was heir apparent to former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad but fell out of favour and was sacked in 1998 and later jailed on charges he says were trumped up to prevent him from making a challenge.
"Anwar has already spent more than five years in jail, having completed a sentence for corruption and begun serving a nine-year term for sodomy, a criminal offence in predominantly Muslim Malaysia." Source: The Australian
Background
"Anwar has described both charges as fabrications intended to remove him as a political rival to Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, whose administration is alleged by him to be riddled with corruption." Source: BBC News
You gotta hand it to Dubya, he really has got some people scared. It's really quite sad. But this is just too funny:
Bomb Threat Forces United Flight to Return to Australia "A suspected bomb threat forced a United Airlines flight from Sydney to Los Angeles to make an emergency return to Australia. Officials say the written threat appears to have been a hoax." Source: Voice of America
And what was this "written threat" that had the UA crew scared out of their brains and caused Sydney's airport to be closed?
Someone went into the plane's dunny and found a barf bag with 'BOB' written on it.
This, naturally, was interpreted by the crew as "bomb on board".
The idea now is to write BOB on every chunder bag in the world and the bad guys will lose for sure! Write it in DUCT TAPE to be certain.
Me, Dubya and JR 'Bob' Dobbs got this whole e-vil game sewn up, yessirree.
South Australian magistrate Brian Deegan, whose son was killed in the Bali bombings, 'Australia's 9-11' in which 202 people were killed and 209 injured, will run against Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer at the next Australian federal election.
The election is expected to take place within the next four months (the Prime Minister has the prerogative of setting the date).
"Mr Deegan has formally confirmed he plans to contest the seat of Mayo as an Independent.
"He has been an outspoken advocate for the families who lost relatives in the Bali attacks and has today expressed frustration over possible legal problems with the convictions of the Bali bombers ..
"'The Government in my opinion have been quite deliberately, and I don't under-emphasise that word, deliberately running from the truth on that score. I have decided that enough is enough.'" Source: ABC (Oz) news
This bloke's a true hero who proves that idealism, self-sacrifice and generosity are alive and well.
Bill Paine, an IT consultant from Melbourne, Australia, decided that he really was not enjoying his new home and ended up donating it to the Australian Conservation Foundation. It was recently auctioned, realising $610,000. He handed the whole lot over to ACF.
Although he is now in a position in which he will have to rent a home, Bill is sure that he made the right decision. Speaking on Australian radio today, he said that ACF met originally met with him earlier this year and suggested he think it over for a few months, which he did. When he went back to see them, Bill said, they decided that he wasn't "barking mad" and accepted his generous contribution.
"I've always been very passionate about the environment in Australia and I have been getting more and more infuriated by the way the Government is mismanaging the environment here," he said.
"It's got to the point where I've had enough and decided to take some very drastic action by selling my house and giving the proceeds to the ACF because these are the people who are constantly lobbying the politicians."
Bill is shown (at left) with former ACF chief (and one-time Midnight Oil lead singer) Peter Garrett.
"A week ago, John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he was satisfied that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was keeping his promise to leave no stone unturned to investigate the atrocities of Abu Ghraib prison. A newly released report by the Army's inspector general shows that Mr. Rumsfeld's team may be turning over stones, but it's not looking under them.
"The authors of this 300-page whitewash say they found no 'systemic' problem - even though there were 94 documented cases of prisoner abuse, including some 40 deaths, 20 of them homicides; even though only four prisons of the 16 they visited had copies of the Geneva Conventions; even though Abu Ghraib was a cesspool with one shower for every 50 inmates; even though the military police were improperly involved in interrogations ..."
July 25, 1990 American ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie gave Saddam Hussein America's go-ahead to invade Kuwait, and Hussein smiled.
The exchange was reported in the New York Times of September 23, 1990.
US Ambassador Glaspie: I have direct instructions from President Bush to improve our relations with Iraq. We have considerable sympathy for your quest for higher oil prices, the immediate cause of your confrontation with Kuwait. (pause) As you know, I lived here for years and admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. We know you need funds. We understand that, and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. (pause) We can see that you have deployed massive numbers of troops in the south. Normally that would be none of our business, but when this happens in the context of your threat s against Kuwait, then it would be reasonable for us to be concerned. For this reason, I have received an instruction to ask you, in the spirit of friendship – not confrontation – regarding your intentions: Why are your troops massed so very close to Kuwait’s borders?
Saddam Hussein: As you know, for years now I have made every effort to reach a settlement on our dispute with Kuwait. There is to be a meeting in two days; I am prepared to give negotiations only this one more brief chance. (pause) When we (the Iraqis) meet (with the Kuwaitis) and we see there is hope, then nothing will happen. But if we are unable to find a solution, then it will be natural that Iraq will not accept death.
Glaspie: What solutions would be acceptable?
Hussein: If we could keep the whole of the Shatt al Arab – our strategic goal in our war with Iran – we will make concessions (to the Kuwaitis). But, if we are forced to choose between keeping half of the Shatt and the whole of Iraq (i.e., in Saddam s view, including Kuwait ) then we will give up all of the Shatt to defend our claims on Kuwait to keep the whole of Iraq in the shape we wish it to be. (pause) What is the United States’ opinion on this?
Glaspie: We have no opinion on your Arab – Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary (of State James) Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America. (Saddam smiles)
This is just a snippet of today's stories. Read all about today in folklore, historical oddities, inspiration and alternatives, with many more links, at the Wilson's Almanac Book of Days, every day. Click today's date when you're there.
I'm looking for an image from the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984, if anyone can help.
The image I'm after is quite specific: the UFO descending on the big 'XXIII' which signified the 23rd Olympics. This occurred in the main stadium at either the opening or closing ceremony. Do you know of such a picture? Thanks a lot.
Pages
of Days
Almanac
President
The article from a prestigious British journal that had everyone (well, some people) talking last August seems to have been widely forgotten.
"The story the Pentagon put out, and was published by the Washington Post, was that the hole in the Pentagon was five stories high and 200 feet wide. If you look at the photographs taken by Tom Horan of the Associated Press – that's just not the size of the hole.
Feast day of Loki and Sigyn (Norse tradition)
"Earlier this month, the website for the Bush-Cheney campaign -- the real one -- featured a 'create your own banner' tool, where you could enter your own slogan and print out your own poster, with the Bush-Cheney logo, and a note at the bottom 
It's not too early to start planning to boycott the Beijing Olympics in 2008.
Helen Thomas: Even if that balance isn’t a prime concern for George W. Bush, the Oklahoma City bombing casts a long, awful shadow.
July 30, 1967 The death of Mr Eternity
"BERLIN (Reuters) - A German woman became so furious after a fight with her husband she stormed out of the house armed with a hammer and smashed up his car -- before realizing she had vandalized the wrong vehicle, police said Wednesday.
It was very difficult to tell the story, because I relived the story while I was writing it, but at the same time, I relive it on a daily basis. I mean, it's not something that I forget. It's something that I live with.
Then there was 
"BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) - Burning of the Amazon jungle is changing weather patterns by raising temperatures and reducing rainfall, accelerating the rate at which the forest is disappearing and turning into grassland, scientists said on Tuesday.
"So what do we do about Sudan? I mean really do, not just pose. Do we scold it? Or do we condemn it, sanction it, threaten it, bomb and invade it? Do we impose 'democracy and prosperity' on Sudan, given that it badly needs both?
"TOKYO (Reuters) - Officials in western Japan were marveling on Sunday at the generosity of a mystery philanthropist who donated a $1.8 million lottery ticket to help victims of recent torrential rainstorms.
USA support enlisted for struggle
You gotta hand it to Dubya, he really has got some people scared. It's really quite sad. But this is just too funny:
This bloke's a true hero who proves that idealism, self-sacrifice and generosity are alive and well.
"A week ago, John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he was satisfied that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was keeping his promise to leave no stone unturned to investigate the atrocities of Abu Ghraib prison. A newly released report by the Army's inspector general shows that Mr. Rumsfeld's team may be turning over stones, but it's not looking under them.
July 25, 1990 American ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie gave Saddam Hussein America's go-ahead to invade Kuwait, and Hussein smiled. 
I'm looking for an image from the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984, if anyone can help. 