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*
I've just posted Verses 52 and 53 to 'Kill the President', and President Irving Lumwedder is about to mount the podium for what will the most important speech so far in his presidency.
I add on average about one verse per day to the poem-in-progress. And there's now a free subscription service for those who want assassination-by-email with their daily Froot Loops. I look forward to meeting you in the fishpond.
“Men are more likely to be sexually harassed in the workplace than women, according to academic research.
“Behavioural scientists Dr Don Hine and Roberta Martin from the University of New England also found that men had greater difficulty coping with sexual harassment and were more likely to quit their job because of it than women …
“‘We found 88.7 per cent of males had experienced a form of sexual harassment in the past year compared to 82.5 per cent of females,’ Dr Hine said.” Source
I live in Dublin, but my "roots" are in Donegal. Gotta love it!
"(Reuters) - A randy ram-raider smashed into a car showroom after letting his animal instincts get the better of him, Irish police said Friday.
"The intruder -- a stray ram belonging to a local farmer -- broke windows, soiled the garage and dented three doors of a new Mitsubishi Colt before he was apprehended by police officers.
"'The notion is that he saw his own reflection in the glass and, as I understand it, this was the natural reaction of a ram, particularly at this time of year,' said Inspector Greg Sullivan.
"Sullivan and an employee at the garage in the town of Moville, County Donegal, said newspaper reports of 10,000 euros ($12,400) worth of damage were probably exaggerated." [as are the reports of my ... how much is a Mitsubishi Colt, anyway?]
I'm posting the whole of Fintan O'Toole's article from the Irish Times, as it's "subscription only" and I can't give you a viable link. The activities described below hardly need comment from me. And Bush was sooooo emphatic last night, during his TV debate with Kerry, when he insisted he wouldn't 'sign up' the US to the International Criminal Court ...
Are we now party to kidnap? 28 September
"On the night of December 18th, 2001, a small private Gulfstream 5 jet landed at Bromma airport near the Swedish capital Stockholm, carrying a number of men in plain clothes with their faces hooded.
"They went to a private room where they were joined shortly afterwards by Swedish police officers and two prisoners, who were bound hand and foot. The prisoners were both Egyptian men in their 30s who had entered Sweden as asylum-seekers. Their clothes were cut off with scissors and suppositories containing an unknown drug were inserted into their bodies. Their hands and feet were chained to a harness, and they were carried on to the Gulfstream jet. On the plane, both men were blindfolded and hooded. The jet took off and the men were taken to Egypt.
"This was one small incident in the so-called War on Terror. American intelligence agencies believed that the two men, Ahmed Agiza and Muhammed al-Zery, were connected to Islamist terrorism. These suspicions, in the prevailing climate after the September 11th atrocities in the US, were used to justify flagrant breaches of international law.
"Agiza and Zery were effectively kidnapped. Their abduction was part of a widespread, if undeclared, American policy of seizing suspected terrorists and taking them to friendly countries where they could be tortured. Back in Egypt, the two men were, according to their families, subjected to torture by electric shocks. Agiza, who had past ties to the senior al-Qaeda figure Ayman al-Zawahiri, was subsequently sentenced to 25 years in jail after a dubious legal process. Zery, however, was eventually released because even the most extreme methods failed to produce any evidence against him.
"The appalling abuses of human rights in this case are by no means unique, but they should be of particular concern to Irish people because there is disturbing evidence of complicity in them by our Government. From Seymour Hersh's new book Chain of Command, from an investigative documentary broadcast last May by the Swedish TV programme Kalla Fakta and from the logs of planes using Shannon Airport compiled by anti-war protesters, a fuzzy but sickening picture begins to emerge.
"Hersh reveals that, sometime in late 2001, President Bush signed a top-secret order authorising the US Defence Department to set up a clandestine team of special forces operatives who would evade diplomatic niceties and international law and kidnap or, if necessary assassinate, so-called 'high-value' targets. Secret interrogation centres would be set up in allied countries where torture and ill-treatment, unconstrained by legal limitations or public disclosure, could be employed. The programme was concealed as an 'unacknowledged' special-access programme (SAP), whose operational details were known only to a few in the Pentagon, the CIA and the White House.
"The unmarked Gulfstream jet, registered as N379P, which took the two Egyptians from Sweden, has also been used in other similar incidents. It is owned by an unlisted American company. When the Kalla Fakta TV programme contacted this company, posing as potential customers interested in hiring the jet, its reporter Fredrik Laurin (whose help I would like to acknowledge) was told: 'We only lease through the US government - we are on a long-term lease with them.'
"N379P's pattern of landings show it moving back and forth between the US and a variety of destinations including Egypt, Pakistan, Kuwait and Guantanamo Bay. Both Hersh and Laurin believe that there is overwhelming evidence that the plane is a tool of the SAP operation.
"N379P was spotted at Shannon Airport long before its role in the abduction of Agiza and Zery became a matter of international controversy. In the period for which protesters have a fairly detailed log of planes landing and taking off, January 2003, it certainly features on the list. Given that the plane seems to have been used exclusively for covert operations by a secret US squad established explicitly to evade both international law and democratic scrutiny within the US, the presence of the plane at Shannon raises two possibilities.
"One is that the Irish authorities were not informed that Shannon was being used to facilitate what Hersh calls the US 'entering the business of 'disappearing' people'. The other is that the Government was told, or, what amounts to the same thing, that it thought there might be something funny going on and decided not to ask questions. Either possibility raises the most basic questions. If the Government was not told, then its trust has been abused by a friendly state in the most egregious way. If it knew, or even suspected, what was going on, then it has colluded in serious crimes under national and international law.
"It is now more obvious than ever that the invasion of Iraq has been a disaster and that the so-called War on Terror, with its systematic subversion of human rights, is, at best, counter-productive. Last year, over 125,000 US troops passed through Shannon. The longer we allow ourselves to be part of this unholy mess, the deeper we will be sucked into the moral swamp." [All emphasis mine]
Long Trip for Psychedelic Drugs By Kristen Philipkoski Wired News Psychedelic drugs are inching their way slowly but surely toward prescription status in the United States, thanks to a group of persistent scientists who believe drugs like ecstasy and psilocybin can help people with terminal cancer, obsessive-compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, to name just a few.
The Heffter Research Institute, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies and others have managed to persuade the Food and Drug Administration to approve a handful of clinical trials using psychedelics. The movement seems to be gaining ground in recent years. Since 2001, the FDA and the Drug Enforcement Administration have given the go-ahead to three clinical trials testing psychedelics on symptomatic patients, and several more are on deck.
Doctors who saw their patients benefit from psychedelic drugs back when they were legal are dedicated to jumping through bureaucratic hoops and diminishing the drugs' party stigma to get psychedelics in patients' hands, and brains.
"I'm interested in the treatment being available to people who need it, and doing it aboveboard and publishing good results," said George Greer, founder of the Heffter Research Institute, a scientific organization that organizes and funds trials involving psychedelics.
At first blush, it seems like an uphill battle more challenging than the one medical-marijuana advocates have been facing. MDMA has been vilified by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and in news stories, making it seem unlikely that federal agencies will ever allow the legal use of psychedelics.
But it might actually be easier to get psychedelics through the approval process than marijuana, according to Rick Doblin, founder and president of MAPS. The roadblock with marijuana has centered on supply. A government-controlled crop in Mississippi is the only marijuana the government will allow in clinical trials. But the supply of psychedelics is decentralized, and the researchers have control of much of it.
"BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The release of two Italian aid workers in Iraq has raised hopes other hostages may soon be freed, but reports that a large ransom was paid may only feed the burgeoning hostage crisis...
"Gustavo Selva, an Italian lawmaker, told French radio a ransom of around $1 million -- a sum already mentioned in Arabic media reports in recent days -- had been handed over." Full text
How do you feel about the paying of ransoms? Or giving in to the demands of hostage-takers? Please, feel free to comment below!
"BUFFALO, N.Y. -- John Lennon's killer will go before the parole board for a third time next week to seek release after 24 years in prison" ...
"In advance of next week's hearing, a letter was sent to the parole board on behalf of Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, requesting that Chapman be denied parole, according to a source close to Ono, who spoke only on condition of anonymity ...
"'If he is set free, something will surely happen to him,' wrote a New Yorker. 'This is New York, 'accidents' happen.'" Full text
"The fast-food giant McDonald's is used to serving up super- size profits for its shareholders as well as bulging cartons of burgers and fries to a hungry public. But yesterday it was explaining away a significant decline in reported profits as it revealed its restaurants had been hit by a big drop in turnover last year.
"The UK arm of the global chain, which owns two thirds of the 1,235 McDonald's restaurants across Britain, reported operating profits were down £61m on the previous year ...
"Chief among its tormentors is Morgan Spurlock, a film director, whose attempt to exist on a pure diet of McDonald's for a month in the hit documentary Super Size Me saw him pile on 30lbs and suffer a falling sex drive. Meanwhile, the so-called McLibel Two have reopened the scars left by the longest trial in English legal history by taking their case to the European Court of Human Rights. The company is also braced for compensation claims from obese former customers who claim their health suffered by eating too many burgers ...
"Ian Tokelove of the Food Commission said consumers had woken up to the choices available. 'McDonald's have tried to convince us that they are making their food more healthy but their salads have been shown to have more fat than a burger when you take into account the dressing,' he said." [emphasis mine!]
A guy on his way home from work in Canberra traffic came to a dead halt and thought to himself, "This is unusual." He noticed a cop walking between the lines of stopped cars, so rolled down his window and asked, "Officer, what's the hold-up?"
The cop replied, "Prime Minister Howard is depressed, so he stopped his motorcade and is threatening to douse himself with petrol and set himself on fire. He says no one believes his stories about why we went to war in Iraq and the children overboard and Peter Costello taking over the helm in 12 months, so we're taking up a collection for him."
The guy asks, "How much have you got so far?"
The cop replies, "About 200 litres, but a lot of people are still siphoning."
Just some gleanings from the Web. Paul Berman's slate.com article on Che Guevara, entitled The Cult of Che, has a rational approach to the adulation of the Stalinist mass murderer, something not easily found in reading anywhere.
Can anything good come out of New Zealand apart from a jet plane? Well, it seems so (not forgetting that Karl Popper taught philosophy there). Arts & Letters Daily is something I wish I had discovered long ago. It gets 100,000 hits a month, so others have already found it. The brains behind it is Dennis Dutton, North Hollywood-raised philosophy professor from Christchurch [NZ] University. Dutton's article, Mythologies of Tribal Art, inter alia, rips to shreds a postmodern analysis of the picture shown here, of a Melanesian girl with a necklace of 1950s flash-camera bulbs. Dutton writes well and wittily, and anyone with a bead lined up on pomos is tops in my book.
Dutton's LA Times review of Lord of the Rings says what I said about the movie, only Dutton says it much better. If I recall correctly, all I said was it's a piece of boring shite that put both my 12-year-old son and me to sleep in the cinema. Wish I could write reviews.
Another Slate article, this time on the late/not late Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. It's called 'Dead like her: How Elisabeth Kubler-Ross went around the bend'. Kubler-Ross's theories have been long discredited, or at least glanced at askance, but Ron Rosenbaum adds some piquant observations and information, such a curious titbit about a shonky 'healer' who hung around the Great Woman's institution, shtooping some of the devotees in darkened rooms while assuring them he was channelling dead relatives. Funny!
What I'm reading offline is Stephen Jay Gould's 1996 book, Life's Grandeur (published as Full House in Gould's native USA). Gould is the only palaeontologist I've read, and he's a very engaging writer. Engaging? Did I say that? Where's my gun? I smell a pomo. Next I'll be saying he 'unpacks' common fallacies about evolution ('the ladder of evolution' is no ladder at all). If I say 'unpack', shoot me now. I think my aporia is showing.
September 28, 1887 In one of the worst floods in history, ‘China’s Sorrow’, the Huang Ho River (Huang He; Yellow River) in China flooded, killing about 1 million people. The flooding covered about 130,000 square kilometres (50,000 sq. miles) and completely buried many villages under silt. More than two million people probably died from drowning, starvation, or the epidemics that ensued. Ten years before, in 1877, another million had died in the flooded Huang Ho, and two years later, another flood destroyed 1,500 villages.
China’s Huang Ho and Yangtze rivers drowned more than 40 million people from 1851 to 1856. A major course change that took place in 1194 took over the Huai River drainage system throughout the next 700 years. The Huang Ho River has the highest recorded silt load of any major river in the world, with each cubic foot of water carrying more than 0.9 kilograms (two pounds) of silt.
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 (or your birthday) when you're there.
The centenarian stopped smoking at the age of 99 because he couldn't afford the cigars.
"GREAT FALLS, Montana (AP) After receiving gifts of cigars from as far away as London, a 108-year-old man started smoking again.
"Retired railroad worker Walter Breuning spoke at his birthday party Tuesday of how he reluctantly quit smoking cigars at the age of 99 because he couldn't afford them.
"The Great Falls man heard from people like the English cigar fan who sent two Havanas after his story was widely distributed.
"'They were $12 cigars and they were good,' Breuning said. 'You can't get good Havana cigars like that out here.'" Source: CNN
[Thanx Baz le Tuff, who knows a stogie man when he sees one.]
It is well said in the old proverb, 'a lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on'. CH Spurgeon, English nonconformist preacher (1834 - 92), Gems from Spurgeon, 1859
September 27, 2003 Colin Powell publicly lied that the Clinton administration "conducted a four-day bombing campaign in late 1998 based on the intelligence that he [UNSCOM director, Richard Butler] had. That resulted in the weapons inspectors being thrown out."
In fact, President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, after having ceased to comply with UN weapons inspectors on October 31, had sent a letter to the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan offering to facilitate the inspections. On December 16, Richard Butler, head of UNSCOM, the UN weapons inspection team withdrew the team from Iraq, to protect his staff from the air strikes that the US and UK governments were threatening. Within hours, Operation Desert Fox began: the US and UK began pre-emptively bombing Iraq – hundreds of cruise missiles raining down on the country, marking the start of strikes to punish the Baghdad government.
An avalanche of US and British propaganda was published by a mostly unsuspecting world media, justifying the aggression and ignoring the destruction of Baghdad’s utilities and the deaths of many innocent civilians and service people.
Since Butler’s forced withdrawal in the face of US-UK threats, many Western media and politicians have usually pretended to the public that Iraq "expelled" the team. The events surrounding the withdrawal are recounted in Butler’s book, Saddam Defiant: (2000):
"I received a telephone call from US Ambassador Peter Burleigh inviting me for a private conversation at the US mission ... Burleigh informed me that on instructions from Washington it would be 'prudent to take measures to ensure the safety and security of UNSCOM staff presently in Iraq.' I told him that I would act on his advice and remove my staff from Iraq."
The lie gets round the world The 'mistake' has been made not only by pro-war people such as George W Bush in his State of the Union address (‘the axis of evil’ speech), Dick Cheney, Alexander Rose, the Canadian right-wing Washington correspondent of the National Post, and the editorial writers of the Sunday Times. It has also been made by those who have shown concern for the humanitarian situation in Iraq, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, UK Liberal Democrats foreign affairs spokesperson Menzies Campbell, and the usually trustworthy Guardian Middle East editor Brian Whitaker. The BBC often makes the same incorrect assertion, although it usually acknowledges its error when it is pointed out to them.
Richard Butler became a fierce critic of the invasion of Iraq, strongly criticising Australian Prime Minister Howard and marching with more than a quarter of a million others in the Sydney pro-peace march on February 16, 2003 (held almost simultaneously with the worldwide February 15 marches due to time differences).
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 (or your birthday) when you're there.
*Ø* Why Judaized Christians Are Re-electing George W Bush
By Charles E Carlson
"Serial wars’ never-ending blood purges are now the dominant factor in our American culture. Each successive war is paid for by the dilution of our money, which is no more or less than a hidden tax on the consumer. The twin effects are unprecedented price inflation and a dismal decline in morality that has always accompanied militarism everywhere. The sad Soviet Union is the most recent example of this. History warns us that political wars and monetary dilution are the twin scissor blades of tyranny, and that the middle class and the fixed income consumer are always caught between its razor sharp blades.
"We Americans are now embroiled in the so-called 'war on terrorism' which, ignoring the causes and excuses of it for the moment, is in practice a war on Islam." Source: We Hold These Truths
* Ø * Ø * Ø *
Who are the War Enablers? "They are your oldest friend, maybe your wife or child, the very respectable church down the street. The war Enablers are made up of people you love, or could love if they would only wake up.
"The force of world Zionism invented a religious philosophy, Judaized Christianity we call it, to support Israel’s statehood at the American grass roots. This author knows. He is a recovering survivor of Judaized Christianity. Many of your neighbors and some of your best friends are Enablers. Maybe you are one, and are wondering if you should not be." Source: We Hold These Truths
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Dwight D Eisenhower, 1961
We've all read it before, but it never hurts to be reminded of the warning with which US President Eisenhower cautioned the American people in his parting speech. We've seen his prophecy come true in our times.
And a relatively new industry has joined the military-industrial complex: private soldiers and militray consultants, of whom there are now 20,000 in Iraq.
"This is a trend that is growing and Iraq is the high point of the trend," said Singer, a security analyst at Washington's Brookings Institution, in another article. "This is a sea change in the way we prosecute warfare. There are historical parallels, but we haven't seen them for 250 years."
One notes a radio discussion about the hurricanes in and around the Caribbean: concern that Australia's export of oranges to the USA will be affected one way or the other. Little or no attention paid to the fact that 1,650 people have died in Haiti, with about 800 missing.
Fortunately, people of colour, especially those who live in the tropics, feel the effects of tragedy less than others, and, of course, place less value on human life. It's incredible how they adjust to adverse circumstances.
*Ø* How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power
The Guardian:
"Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today's president
"George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.
"The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.
"His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.
"The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy" ... Continue here [all emphasis mine - N]
I drank half a litre of vodka as if it were only a glass and slept for 28 hours. In principle, a nuclear war could have broken out. The whole world could have been destroyed. Stanislav Petrov describes his actions after averting nuclear war on September 26, 1983
1983 On this day, it is likely that more lives were saved than on any other occasion in history, and it was by a man most of us haven’t heard of, and because he refused to obey orders.
Soviet military officer Stanislav Petrov averted a worldwide nuclear war (because of time-zone differences, the date was September 26 in the Soviet Union, and September 25 in the West). Petrov refused to accept that missiles had been launched against the USSR by the United States despite the indication given by his computerised early warning systems.
For three terrifying minutes, Petrov held firm while alarms around him in his bunker were telling him his country was under attack, with five US missiles launched and headed towards Soviet territory.
The experience nearly ruined his health, and his incredible tale was hushed up. Petrov was even investigated for his conduct during the incident, and he believes that the investigators tried to make him a scapegoat for the false alarm. It was not until 1998 that the story leaked out.
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 (or your birthday) when you're there.
Big-voiced Canadian singer/songwriter Serena Ryder, who has just finished an Aussie tour, not only is extremely talented, her website is the funnest I've seen for months. She's only 21 and I bet she has a great carer ahead of her. Her new album will be released in Australia on March 10.
Pages
of Days
Almanac
President
“Men are more likely to be sexually harassed in the workplace than women, according to academic research.
"(Reuters) - A randy ram-raider smashed into a car showroom after letting his animal instincts get the better of him, Irish police said Friday.
"'The notion is that he saw his own reflection in the glass and, as I understand it, this was the natural reaction of a ram, particularly at this time of year,' said Inspector Greg Sullivan. 
"N379P was spotted at Shannon Airport long before its role in the abduction of Agiza and Zery became a matter of international controversy. In the period for which protesters have a fairly detailed log of planes landing and taking off, January 2003, it certainly features on the list. Given that the plane seems to have been used exclusively for covert operations by a secret US squad established explicitly to evade both international law and democratic scrutiny within the US, the presence of the plane at Shannon raises two possibilities.
Psychedelic drugs are inching their way slowly but surely toward prescription status in the United States, thanks to a group of persistent scientists who believe drugs like ecstasy and psilocybin can help people with terminal cancer, obsessive-compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder, to name just a few. 
"BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The release of two Italian aid workers in Iraq has raised hopes other hostages may soon be freed, but reports that a large ransom was paid may only feed the burgeoning hostage crisis...
"In advance of next week's hearing, a letter was sent to the parole board on behalf of Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, requesting that Chapman be denied parole, according to a source close to Ono, who spoke only on condition of anonymity ... 
"The fast-food giant McDonald's is used to serving up super- size profits for its shareholders as well as bulging cartons of burgers and fries to a hungry public. But yesterday it was explaining away a significant decline in reported profits as it revealed its restaurants had been hit by a big drop in turnover last year.
"Chief among its tormentors is Morgan Spurlock, a film director, whose attempt to exist on a pure diet of McDonald's for a month in the hit documentary Super Size Me saw him pile on 30lbs and suffer a falling sex drive. Meanwhile, the so-called McLibel Two have reopened the scars left by the longest trial in English legal history by taking their case to the European Court of Human Rights. The company is also braced for compensation claims from obese former customers who claim their health suffered by eating too many burgers ...
Just some gleanings from the Web. Paul Berman's slate.com article on 
September 28, 1887 In one of the worst floods in history, ‘China’s Sorrow’, the Huang Ho River (Huang He; Yellow River) in China flooded, killing about 1 million people. The flooding covered about 130,000 square kilometres (50,000 sq. miles) and completely buried many villages under silt. More than two million people probably died from drowning, starvation, or the epidemics that ensued. Ten years before, in 1877, another million had died in the flooded Huang Ho, and two years later, another flood destroyed 1,500 villages.
The centenarian stopped smoking at the age of 99 because he couldn't afford the cigars. 
September 27, 2003 Colin Powell publicly lied that the Clinton administration "conducted a four-day bombing campaign in late 1998 based on the intelligence that he [UNSCOM director, Richard Butler] had. That resulted in the weapons inspectors being thrown out."
We've all read it before, but it never hurts to be reminded of the warning with which US President Eisenhower cautioned the American people in his parting speech. We've seen his prophecy come true in our times. 
"Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today's president
1983 On this day, it is likely that more lives were saved than on any other occasion in history, and it was by a man most of us haven’t heard of, and because he refused to obey orders. 
