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Blogmanac team
Jeannine Wilson (USA)
Veralynne Pepper (USA)
Pip Wilson (Australia)
Carpe diem!
Seize the day with more than 150 articles at Wilson's articles department
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and casualties of poverty and authority all around the planet
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Saturday, November 20, 2004
Protests Target Bush at Summit in Chile
 "SANTIAGO, Chile - Riot police used water cannons and tear gas Friday to break up a demonstration by hundreds of rock-throwing protesters before more than 20,000 people marched to vent their anger at Pacific Rim leaders, particularly President Bush.
"While some protesters said they oppose the APEC summit, which they likened to a rich man's club that does nothing for the poor, much of the rage was aimed at Bush and the U.S.-led war in Iraq ...
"Organizers said 40,000 protesters participated in the government-authorized march downtown, far from the conference center hosting the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. Police put the number at 25,000.
"Marchers held up posters saying: 'Bush, you stink,' and 'Terrorist Bush.' Some chanted: 'Bush, listen: Chile is not for sale!' and 'Bush, fascist, thief, murderer!'
"Some also expressed sympathy with the Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah. One banner read: 'Sorry Fallujah! Stupid Americans, Your Turn Will Come.'
"The earlier street clashes marked the fourth straight day of confrontations between police and activists opposed to the APEC summit."
Source: Washington Post
What is APEC and why should we be alarmed?
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum is a grouping of the countries bordering the Pacific Ocean who have pledged to facilitate "free trade" – for which read "free trade for the shareholders of the 15 or so corporations that want to rule the world".
It was initiated in 1989 by a clique of economic rationalists in Australia but now its 21 members range from China and Russia to the United States, Japan and Australia, and account for 45% of world trade. Like the EU, NAFTA,, WTO etc, APEC is an active promoter of a socially and environmentally destructive globalization. It is a club for the rich with their snouts in the trough and the rest of us are its fodder.
Greetings from Australia (and apologies for APEC) to the people in Chile for your inspirational actions this week. The world is watching.
A great list of links
Stay informed with Multinational Monitor, Human Rights Watch on APEC, and some of the links in our left-hand column.
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Blogroll Us Friday, November 19, 2004
 Habib's lawyer worried by Egypt move
[Readers of the Blogmanac might already have seen some of our reports on the two Aussie citizens, David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib, who have endured torture, solitary confinement in tiny 6' by 8' cells and other forms of cruel and unusual punishment for some years in the American prison at Guantanamo. Both men, who were long held without charge and with no access to lawyers, Red Cross, family contact, phone calls etc, are believed to be almost broken and suicidal. The US government is using them as scapegoats for 9/11, which they had nothing to do with. (Thanks, Republican voters.) The Australian government, unlike the British in the case of its own citizens, has refused to demand their return.]
"The Australian lawyer for terrorism suspect Mamdouh Habib says he is certain his client is among five Guantanamo Bay detainees who Egypt is trying to gain custody of.
"Reports out of Egypt say the country's Foreign Minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, wants the United States to hand over five of its citizens, including 'Ahmed Habib', amid claims they have been moved to the category of "least dangerous" detainees at Camp Delta.
"Mamdouh Habib's Australian lawyer, Stephen Hopper, says his client's middle name is Ahmed and the latest turn of events is disturbing.
"'We're extremely concerned about this attempt,' he said.
"'We would like to know what are the circumstances behind it and we'd also like to know what the Australian Government is doing about it.
"'Mamdouh Habib is an Australian citizen only. Egypt has tried to claim him as one of theirs but Mamdouh has resisted that.'
"Mr Hopper says Mr Habib was tortured while he was in Egyptian custody before being sent to Guantanamo Bay and if he is sent back to Egypt, he will be tortured again.
"'I believe they would've done a deal with the Americans to get him out of their way and they'll probably put him in one of their security prisons where he'll never be heard of again and will be tortured to death,' he said."
Source: ABC Oz
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I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night ...
November 15, 1915 USA: IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) labor organizer, folk-poet and songwriter, Joe Hill (Joseph Hillstrom), was murdered by state firing squad in Utah. Hill has become the subject of numerous songs, plays, and books, and some of his songs have been available continuously in the IWW’s Little Red Song Book, now in its 36th edition.
Utah authorities and copper bosses executed Hill for his organizing with the IWW – despite an international movement to save him.
Hill was convicted of killing a grocer and his son, even though the bullets were not from Hill’s revolver and no one identified him as the murderer. His last words:
“Don’t mourn, organize!”
Poet Alfred Hays wrote a ballad in Hill’s memory:
I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
Alive as you and me.
Says I, “But Joe you’re ten years dead,”
“I never died,” says he.
Longtime labor organizer for the radical IWW (known collectively as 'the Wobblies') and writer of union songs, Hill became a martyr upon his execution. Efforts by President Woodrow Wilson, the government of Sweden, and many prominent Americans (such as Helen Keller) to get him a new trial had failed.
Joe Hill's body was rushed from the prison yard in Utah to Chicago, where Wobblies staged a funeral (pictured above) attended by more than 30,000 mourners.
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.
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Afghan Opium Cultivation Reaches Record High – UN
 USA management team reaches target with only tens of thousands of Afghan casualties!
"BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Afghanistan's opium cultivation jumped 64 percent to a record 324,000 acres this year and drug exports now account for more than 60 percent of the economy, the United Nations drugs office said Thursday.
"'This year Afghanistan has established a double record – the highest drug cultivation in the country's history, and the largest in the world,' Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, told a news briefing."
Source: Yahoo News
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Blogroll Us Thursday, November 18, 2004
Dylan wins 'best song ever' poll
 So, Zimmy tops the poll, according to Rolling Stone mag, with the 1965 classic, Like a Rolling Stone.
I find it hard to argue with the public's decision. I'd probably put two more of his songs in at number 2 and 3: Idiot Wind and Brownsville Girl. But that would nudge out Clothes Line Saga, wouldn't it. And Floater and Po' Boy ... and Changing of the Guards ...
Hmmmm ... Let's think now ... can we have equal first for Like a Rolling Stone and Clothes Line Saga?
But then where would we put All Along the Watchtower and Subterranean Homesick Blues? And Tangled Up in Blue and Black Diamond Bay, and Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts? And what about Hurricane?
Bobby sure makes it hard to decide.
John Lennon gets a good score with Imagine, and the Beatles are in for Hey Jude, but I'd probably vote for I Am the Walrus if I had to pick one by the mop tops.
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Blogroll Us Wednesday, November 17, 2004
At the scriptorium:
Wilson says fuckit and goes fishing
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First global warming refugees
 Inuit start to feel the heat in a world warming up
"THEY build their homes on stilts, commute to work on quad bikes down sand-covered streets and look nervously out to sea when a storm nears.
"But the fate of the 562 residents of Shishmaref, on a small barrier island off the north-western coast of Alaska, looks decided: they are about to become the world’s first 'global warming refugees'. If they do not abandon their homes, climatologists say, they will die."
Source: The Times
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Leonids meteor showers (Nov 12 - 23 annually)
 The peak of Leonids visibility is around November 17.
"The Leonids are a prolific meteor shower associated with the comet Tempel-Tuttle. The meteor stream is viewable every year around November 17 and is thought to be comprised of particles ejected by the comet as it passes by the Sun. When the Earth moves through the meteor stream, the meteor shower is visible. The Leonids get their name from usually making their appearance in or near the constellation Leo ..."
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.
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Iraq - Liberation?
From Bushflash, watch this presentation of the "liberation" and weep.
Source: Pagans4Peace
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Blogroll Us Tuesday, November 16, 2004
"This one's faking he's dead" - "He's dead now"
Fallujah: Video shows US soldier killing wounded insurgent in cold blood
"The US Marine Corps launched an investigation into possible war crimes last night after video footage taken inside a mosque in Fallujah apparently showed a Marine shooting dead an unarmed Iraqi insurgent who had been taken prisoner.
"The footage showed several Marines with a group of prisoners who were either lying on the floor or propped against a wall of the bombed-out building. One Marine can be heard declaring that one of the prisoners was faking his injuries.
"'He's fucking faking he's dead. He faking he's fucking dead', says the Marine. At that point a clatter of gunfire can be heard as one of the Marines shoots the prisoner. Another voice can then be heard saying: 'He's dead now'.
"The footage was obtained by a team from the American NBC network that was embedded with the Marine Corps during last week's seven-day battle to capture the city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, which military commanders say has been a focus of Iraqi resistance. The film was then pooled and made available to other media.
"On the footage that was broadcast last night, NBC correspondent Kevin Sites said that the five wounded Iraqi fighters had been left in the mosque after Marines had fought their way into that part of the city on Friday and Saturday. Ten other Iraqis had been killed in the battle for the mosque. Instead of being passed to the rear lines for treatment the wounded Iraqis were left in the mosque until a second group of Marines entered the building on Saturday, following reports that the building may have been reoccupied. Sites said that at this point one of the five Iraqis was dead and that three of the others appeared to be close to death.
"In his report accompanying the images, Sites said that one of the Marines noticed that one of the wounded men was still breathing before shouting that he was 'faking it'.
"'The Marine then raises his rifle and fires into the man's head. The pictures are too graphic for us to broadcast', said Sites. He added: 'The prisoner did not appear to be armed or threatening in any way'. Major Doug Powell, a spokesman for the Marine Corps in Washington, told The Independent: 'It's being investigated -- I can't say much more than that. It's being investigated for possible law of war violations. A naval criminal investigation team is looking into it'.
"The footage -- some of the first to show the situation inside Fallujah and the bloody nature of the street-by-street battle that has taken place there -- is the latest to emerge from Iraq to contain possible evidence of war crimes perpetrated by the US military.
"Other footage has shown troops shooting wounded fighters lying in open ground as well as attacks on Iraqis -- some said to be civilians -- by US aircraft and helicopters. This latest footage is among the most shocking given that it apparently shows without obstruction the Marine shooting the prisoner in the head at close range.
"Kathy Kelly, a spokeswoman for the peace group Voices in the Wilderness, said last night that such images would 'recruit more terrorists faster than they are being killed'.
"'I don't think the US is paying much attention to the Geneva Conventions any more -- that is the problem. This must be investigated', she said.
Full text at The Independent
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History's most incredible battle?
November 16, 1532 The Battle of Cajamarca
 A satisfactory afternoon's work for Spanish imperialism
New World: Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro seized Incan emperor Atahualpa after victory at Cajamarca, Peru.
Pizarro had just 168 men and Atahualpa had 80,000 battle-hardened soldiers who had recently defeated an indigenous enemy. However, the Spaniards had iron swords, guns, horses and armour, which the Incas did not. The result: one of history's most incredible battles, and it was all over in one afternoon ... By evening, Pizarro and his men had killed 7,000 Indians yet lost not one of their own merry men ...
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.
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American Fascism? A must-read.
From Bruce:
Living Under Fascism
By Davidson Loehr
You may wonder why anyone would try to use the word "fascism" in a serious discussion of where America is today. It sounds like cheap name-calling, or melodramatic allusion to a slew of old war movies. But I am serious. I don’t mean it as name-calling at all. I mean to persuade you that the style of governing into which America has slid is most accurately described as fascism, and that the necessary implications of this fact are rightly regarded as terrifying. That’s what I am about here. And even if I don’t persuade you, I hope to raise the level of your thinking about who and where we are now, to add some nuance and perhaps some useful insights.
The word comes from the Latin word "Fasces," denoting a bundle of sticks tied together. The individual sticks represented citizens, and the bundle represented the state. The message of this metaphor was that it was the bundle that was significant, not the individual sticks. If it sounds un-American, it’s worth knowing that the Roman Fasces appear on the wall behind the Speaker’s podium in the chamber of the US House of Representatives.
Still, it’s an unlikely word. When most people hear the word "fascism" they may think of the racism and anti-Semitism of Mussolini and Hitler. It is true that the use of force and the scapegoating of fringe groups are part of every fascism. But there was also an economic dimension of fascism, known in Europe during the 1920s and '30s as "corporatism," which was an essential ingredient of Mussolini’s and Hitler’s tyrannies. So-called corporatism was adopted in Italy and Germany during the 1930s and was held up as a model by quite a few intellectuals and policy makers in the United States and Europe.
As I mentioned a few weeks ago (in "The Corporation Will Eat Your Soul"), Fortune magazine ran a cover story on Mussolini in 1934, praising his fascism for its ability to break worker unions, disempower workers and transfer huge sums of money to those who controlled the money rather than those who earned it.
Few Americans are aware of or can recall how so many Americans and Europeans viewed economic fascism as the wave of the future during the 1930s. Yet reviewing our past may help shed light on our present, and point the way to a better future. So I want to begin by looking back to the last time fascism posed a serious threat to America.
In Sinclair Lewis's 1935 novel "It Can't Happen Here," a conservative southern politician is helped to the presidency by a nationally syndicated radio talk show host. The politician - Buzz Windrip - runs his campaign on family values, the flag, and patriotism. Windrip and the talk show host portray advocates of traditional American democracy — those concerned with individual rights and freedoms — as anti-American. That was 69 years ago.
One of the most outspoken American fascists from the 1930s was economist Lawrence Dennis. In his 1936 book, The Coming American Fascism — a coming which he anticipated and cheered — Dennis declared that defenders of "18th-century Americanism" were sure to become "the laughing stock of their own countrymen." The big stumbling block to the development of economic fascism, Dennis bemoaned, was "liberal norms of law or constitutional guarantees of private rights."
So it is important for us to recognize that, as an economic system, fascism was widely accepted in the 1920s and '30s, and nearly worshiped by some powerful American industrialists. And fascism has always, and explicitly, been opposed to liberalism of all kinds.
CONTINUE
[Emphasis added. -v]
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Blogroll Us Monday, November 15, 2004
Six years ago today: Sharon says "grab territory"
Everyone there should move, should run, should grab more hills, expand the territory. Everything that’s grabbed, will be in our hands. Everything we don’t grab will be in their hands.
Ariel Sharon, as Israeli Foreign Minister; comments broadcast on Israeli radio, November 15, 1998 Source: CNN
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.
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Band Aid II on the way, and Live Aid finally on DVD
 "Today [Sunday] at Air studios in Hampstead, north London, pop and rock acts will raise their voices -- and millions of pounds -- to alleviate disaster in Africa, just as Band Aid did 20 years ago.
"Then it was famine in Ethiopia, now it is Darfur in Sudan. Then it was Boy George, Sting and George Michael. Today it is Robbie Williams, Dido, Justin Hawkins, Ms Dynamite, Jamelia and Chris Martin. Once again the cover will show a black child against a westernised Christmas scene after an alternative by the artist Damien Hirst showing the grim reaper was rejected as "too scary".
"You might think nothing has changed. But since Band Aid there has been a quiet revolution in the way the glitterati of pop have come to understand how fame can effect change.
 "It was Band Aid -- and its successor concert Live Aid -- that proved the catalyst. The concert, in July 1985, powered by the righteous indignation of Bob Geldof, raised £110m for emergency famine relief. But although the money was spent wisely in Ethiopia, Chad and other countries, a decade later a simple statistic led to an epiphany about Africa’s poverty.
"That figure of £110m turned out to be the equivalent of what the world’s poorest continent returned to the West in debt repayments -- every week. It was instrumental in U2’s Bono signing up to the Jubilee 2000 campaign aimed at cancelling those debts. It was, he said, 'a chance to revisit that situation -- but this time to look at the structure of poverty'.
"It was also an early signal that the argument was shifting from feeding the world to fixing the world. So when Geldof showed up to launch the Live Aid DVD last weekend, he had just flown in from the Congo, undertaking research for Tony Blair’s Commission for Africa ..."
Full text at The Sunday Times
The 4-disc Live Aid DVD contains over 10 hours of footage from the live concerts held simultaneously in London and Philadelphia in 1985. This is the first time it has been released. The DVD will be available from Amazon from 16 November. Get it at the Cafe Diem Store. You can go now and order it, if you wish!
[Note: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada) only, according to Amazon.com. Me, I'll have to get it through Amazon.co.uk. - Nora]
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Blogroll Us Sunday, November 14, 2004
 UNSCOM WMD inspectors were not expelled from Iraq
November 14, 1998 President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, after having ceased to comply with UN weapons inspectors on October 31, sent a letter to the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan offering to facilitate the inspections. On December 16, Australian Richard Butler, head of the UN weapons inspection team (UNSCOM), withdrew the team from Iraq, to protect his staff from the air strikes that the US and UK governments were threatening.
From that day on, it became de rigeur for media and politicians to falsely assert that Iraq "expelled the weapons inspectors", an important falsehood as it is still used as a main pretext for the illegally invasion of the country – the other main one, of course, being the similarly egregious WMDs argument.
Within hours, Operation Desert Fox began: the US and UK began pre-emptively bombing Iraq – hundreds of cruise missiles raining down on the country, marking the start of strikes to punish the Baghdad government. An avalanche of US and British propaganda was published by a mostly unsuspecting world media, justifying the aggression and ignoring the destruction of Baghdad’s utilities and the deaths of many innocent civilians and service people.
On ABC’s This Week (September 27, 2003), Colin Powell publicly lied that the Clinton administration "conducted a four-day bombing campaign in late 1998 based on the intelligence that he [Butler] had. That resulted in the weapons inspectors being thrown out." Funeral services were held for 68 people who Iraqi officials say were killed in the raids.
But Iraq’s Ambassador to the UN, Nizar Hamdoon, said: "I’m told that the casualties are in the thousands in terms of numbers of people who were killed or wounded."
US bombs food storage, schools, college, maternity centres
Several weeks after the strikes, the UN children’s fund, UNICEF, made a first preliminary assessment of damage to civilian facilities. They reported the destruction of a rice warehouse in Tikrit in northern Iraq, damage to ten schools in the southern port city of Basra, and an agricultural college in Kirkuk in northern Iraq received a direct hit. They said that in Baghdad medical and maternity centres, a water supply system and parts of the health and social affairs ministries were damaged.
Since Butler’s forced withdrawal in the face of US-UK threats, many Western media and politicians have usually pretended to the public that Iraq "expelled" the team.
The events surrounding the withdrawal are recounted in Butler’s book, Saddam Defiant (2000): "I received a telephone call from US Ambassador Peter Burleigh inviting me for a private conversation at the US mission ... Burleigh informed me that on instructions from Washington it would be ‘prudent to take measures to ensure the safety and security of UNSCOM staff presently in Iraq.’ I told him that I would act on his advice and remove my staff from Iraq."
Oft-repeated error of fact
The 'mistake' (that UNSCOM was ejected by Hussein in 1998) has been made not only by pro-war people such as George W Bush in his 2002 State of the Union address ('the axis of evil' speech), Dick Cheney, Alexander Rose, the Canadian right-wing Washington correspondent of the National Post, and the editorial writers of the Sunday Times.
It has also been made by those who have shown concern for the humanitarian situation in Iraq, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, UK Liberal Democrats foreign affairs spokesperson Menzies Campbell, and the usually trustworthy Guardian Middle East editor Brian Whitaker. The BBC often makes the same incorrect assertion, although it usually acknowledges its error when it is pointed out to them.
Richard Butler became a fierce critic of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, strongly criticising Australian Prime Minister Howard and marching with more than a quarter of a million others in the Sydney pro-peace march on February 16, 2003 ...
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.
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News website with a difference
Almaniac Kayla from California sent in 10 X 10, which is hard to describe but worth a peek. It's certainly a nifty bit of scripting, in Perl, MySQL, PHP, and Macromedia Flash.
In its own words:
"10x10 ('ten by ten') is an interactive exploration of the words and pictures that define the time. The result is an often moving, sometimes shocking, occasionally frivolous, but always fitting snapshot of our world. Every hour, 10x10 collects the 100 words and pictures that matter most on a global scale, and presents them as a single image, taken to encapsulate that moment in time. Over the course of days, months, and years, 10x10 leaves a trail of these hourly statements which, stitched together side by side, form a continuous patchwork tapestry of human life."
10 X 10 is the brainchild of Jonathan Harris who is cleverer than anyone I've ever heard of and made Word Count and the very cute ThreatMeter (check out the products).
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Aust ministers risk defamation action, Terry Hicks says
 "The father of Australian Guantanamo Bay inmate David Hicks says government ministers could be sued for defaming his son before he was charged with any offence.
"The threat by Terry Hicks comes after a US federal court this week halted the military trial of another detainee.
"News that the military tribunal is now being questioned in the US courts has apparently buoyed Mr Hicks, whose son has been accused of fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
"Speaking at a human rights forum in Brisbane, he described the Australian Government's treatment of his son as disgusting ...
"Australian Council of Civil Liberties president Terry O'Gorman says David Hicks would have a good defamation case against the Federal Government, if he is acquitted ...
"If it goes ahead, Hicks's military trial is scheduled for January.
"Earlier, Mr Hicks said Attorney General Philip Ruddock is 'strange' for not accepting the US court decision halting the trial of another Guantanamo Bay detainee.
"Mr Ruddock said he does not believe the decision will impact upon Hicks, but Terry Hicks says Mr Ruddock needs to listen to the judge's ruling.
"'All along he's been saying these tribunals and hearings are quite just and fair but now all of a sudden the American court system is saying, "no, it's not fair",' Mr Hicks said.
"'Philip Ruddock seems to stick to his guns and says "yes, it is fair". So why is he going against an American court?'"
Source: the World Today
Correspondents Report has the story on how the US courts are challenging Bush's concentration camp mentality.
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