How do we know this was Juliet's birthday?

1578 Birth of Juliet Capulet, ill-fated lover of Romeo Montague in Shakespeare’s play, Romeo and Juliet.

“Come Lammas eve at night shall she be fourteen. That shall she, marry; I remember it well. ’Tis since the earthquake now eleven years, an’ she was weaned.”

Shakespeare’s characters spoke as if they were English people living in his own times; London had an earthquake in 1580. She would have been two when weaned. Tomorrow, August 1, is the ancient Celtic pagan festival of Lammas, and today is Lammas Eve. These clues can make us confident that we may wish Juliet a happy birthday today.

Oops! Microsoft's Earth falls flat

Apparently Microsoft's much-touted Virtual Earth has Twin Towers in living grainy black and white.

"This week, poor Microsoft delivered a seminar in how not to launch a website. The release of their Virtual Earth site got the kind of word-of-mouth buzz that nobody wants: First, word went around that they were spiteful, but then they turned out to be merely incompetent.

"It's a funny story. Virtual Earth is Microsoft's attempt to answer Google Maps; both are giant on-line maps of the planet that you can pan about in detail, zooming in to see side streets and then out to inspect whole continents.

"(They are at virtualearth.microsoft.com and maps.google.com, respectively.)...

"Virtual Earth arrived on the Net this week with much ballyhoo -- but none of it was from Microsoft. The first many heard of it were headlines like 'Did Microsoft wipe Apple off the map?' Apparently, someone noticed that when you zoom the Microsoft Virtual Earth map to the location of rival Apple's headquarters in California, nothing but an industrial lot appears.

"... jarringly enough, there were the Twin Towers, standing tall in the face of reality. Virtual Earth, indeed ...

"Not only are the close-up images ancient, but they're a grainy black-and-white, and only of the United States. Google, by comparison, offers beautiful colour images of urban areas worldwide, all taken since 2002."
Source: Globe and Mail

Freecycle: Changing the world one gift at a time

What a great idea. From the Freecycle homepage:

"When you want to find a new home for something -- whether it's a chair, a fax machine, piano, or an old door -- you simply send an e-mail offering it to members of your Freecycle group.

"Or, maybe you're looking to acquire something yourself. Simply respond to a member's offer, and you just might get it. After that, it's up to the giver to decide who receives the gift and to set up a pickup time for passing on the treasure.

"One main rule: Everything posted must be free, legal, and appropriate for all ages.

Non-profit organizations also benefit from The Freecycle Network. Post the item or items you want to give away and a local organization can help you get it to someone in need."

Number of Freecycle™ Communities: 2,970
Number of Freecycle™ Members: 1,541,202

This is the Coffs Harbour group (my local), a Yahoo! Group, which I've joined. I don't have anything and I don't need anything, but just in case.

'American Conservative': "Iran is being planned"

"In Washington it is hardly a secret that the same people in and around the administration who brought you Iraq are preparing to do the same for Iran. The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing—that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack—but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections."
Source: American Conservative -- thanks J-9

Tenth planet discovered

"'It's definitely bigger than Pluto.' So says Dr. Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology who announced today the discovery of a new planet in the outer solar system.

"The planet, which hasn't been officially named yet, was found by Brown and colleagues using the Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory near San Diego. It is currently about 97 times farther from the sun than Earth, or 97 Astronomical Units (AU). For comparison, Pluto is 40 AU from the sun."
Source: NASA

The Universe Today, in the Scriptorium

FeedDigest

Peter Cooper has changed RSS Digest to FeedDigest with some great features for those wanting to put RSS feeds on their sites. Peter's always been very helpful -- goodonya mate, and good luck with it.

Does Bush support family planning?

"Supporters of reproductive rights, including 19 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, are urging President Bush to spell out his position on family planning in the wake of ambiguous statements by his official spokesman and reports that some pharmacists have refused to fill prescriptions for contraceptives.

"Responding at a regular news briefing May 26 to repeated questions on the president’s position, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said Bush had already “made his views known,” and refused to go further. 'I think the president’s views are very clear when it comes to building a culture of life,' he said, adding, 'and if you want to ask those questions, that’s fine. I’m just not going to dignify them with a response.'"
Source: PlanetWire

Mr Eternity's one-word message for eternity

1967 The death of Mr Eternity

Every morning for 37 years, Sydneysiders, as those 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 on footpaths half a million times over nearly four decades ...

It's that special season again

Good to seee that the IRA has agreed to end terrorism and the British Prime Minister has announced a new era. I'm just an old sentimental fool, but I get misty when things like this and Christmas come around each year. I never get sick of them, do you?

Freelance journalists wanted

Freelance journalists are required for an international online magazine to be launched in October, 2005.

Writers interested in doing short pieces on progressive topics such as environment, relationships, spirituality, activism, eco-travel, alternatives (technology and so on) and similar are invited to send an expression of interest and a bit about yourself to yes [at] acay.com.au and put Alerts in the subject header. Your experience is not as important as ability. Thank you.

Õlavsøka Eve, Faroe Islands

Õlavsøka Eve, St Olav or Olaf’s holiday, Tórshavn, Faroe Islands, the smallest capital in the world

Ólavsøka, or Olsok, on July 29 is the national holiday of the Faroe Islands, and today is its eve, featuring a cavalcade and boat races. Tomorrow is the day that the Faroese Parliament (Løgting) opens its session ...

From the Baz le Tuff record collection

That Baz! His generosity knows no bounds. Thank you!

Bombings: Dandelion seeds blow in

We published this poem in Wilson's Almanac ezine before the invasion of Afghanistan (we lost a lot of readers over this and our warning on August 2, 2002 that Bush was planning to illegally invade Iraq). Sadly, the seeds we wrote of then are blowing further afield.

Desultory talkin' World War III philippic, or how I was William F Buckley'd into agreement

When I was walkin up the stair
I met a man named Tony Blair.
He wasn't there agin today
and he won't be there in the morning.

Along come a man, George W Bush,
Beady eyes and smarmy moosh;
he's bombin from the Hindu Kush
in the cold and snowy mornin.

I looks agin and what'd I see,
a dandelion as big as a tree,
bigger'n Bush and bigger'n me,
it jist grew up in the mornin.

George rode up with his 10-gallon hat
and carryin a baseball bat.
"My friend George what you want with that,
an' yer big ol' hat in the mornin?"

He says, "See this big ol' baseball bat?
I's gonna whup its ass with that.
Gonna knock it down an' lay it flat,
An' it won't git up in the mornin.

"That dandelion, he's a E-Vil weed,
he's full a li'l old E-Vil seeds."
I said, "My friend, best you succeed,
we don't want sin in the mornin."

He took that bat and whupped the ass
of the dandelion, and well you ask
what other things did come to pass
that cold 'n' snowy mornin.

Well all them seeds did fly around
like parachutes, without a sound,
an' some of them they come to ground,
an' they all took root next mornin.

I walked on up them stairs again
and passed by old Afghanistan.
An' I heard them souls all cry in pain,
an' they woke me up this mornin.

Footnote: Britain's Liberal Democratic party leader Charles Kennedy said: "Those, like President Bush and Tony Blair, who have sought to link Iraq with the so-called 'war on terror' can hardly be surprised when members of the public draw the same link when acts of terrorism occur here in the United Kingdom."

JR ‘Bob’ Dobbs quote

You know how dumb the average guy is, right? Well, mathematically, by definition, half of them are even dumber than that.
JR ‘Bob’ Dobbs

Larry Petrie bombs the SS Aramac

1893 Australia: Next door to William McNamara's first bookshop at 238 Castlereagh St, Sydney, Larry Petrie (Larry De Petrie; Laurence Petrie) ran a Labour Bureau to help unemployed men find work. After telling Ernie Lane he was off to blow up a non-union ship, the American anarchist booked a passage on the SS Aramac.

On board at midnight on Thursday, July 27 near the entrance to Moreton Bay, about seven nautical miles south of Point Lookout, there was a tremendous explosion in the forecabin.

“The funny thing was” said Petrie some years later, “that the moment the bomb went off my first and only thought was to save people’s lives.” ...

Scottish-born Petrie was a good-looking man with a big moustache who worked as a casual labourer. A co-founder of the Melbourne Anarchist Club in 1886 and the Social Democratic League in 1889, he also tried to get a Six-Hours Movement going to demand a six-hour working day, and formed a small branch of the American organisation, Knights of Labor, a Freemason-like radical sect which Henry Lawson joined, as did William Lane, George Black, WHT McNamara and others. An anarchist by temperament and persuasion, although he didn't use the term of himself, Petrie became Australian Workers Union (AWU) Secretary-Organiser in Sydney ...

One day in March, 1901, while he was working as a general watchman at the railway station at Villa Rica, Paraguay following his extreme disillusionment with William Lane and his New Australia disaster, Petrie jumped onto the line to push a child out of the path of an oncoming train and was himself killed. His body was claimed by another refugee from New Australia, Rose Cadogan (Rose Summerfield) ...

According to Roderick (1991, p 106), in Personal History: Henry Lawson and I, Gilmore says that Petrie told her while in Paraguay on the New Australia communal venture, that Petrie told her that he had placed the bomb in the Aramac ...

Spooky cart

I'm doing some research on the old streets of Sydney and have been delighted to find Picman at the State Library of NSW. Use the search box and choose 'Online material only' from the drop-down menu if you'd also like to see pictures from Sydney's past (not just Sydney, either). Pick a street, any street, or any person, etc.

I hope the library will forgive me for showing you two images of Phillip St, Sydney, from two different decades. My reason: the spooky presence of a cart.

You can see by the buildings on either side of the road that the buildings have changed a bit in ten years or so. In the 1870s there was a portico that had gone by the 1880s.

But one thing strikes me as curious, outside the grocer's: is it the same cart in both pictures? It has been suggested the owner might have a Residents' Parking Permit.

Daily Planet News: the one-stop news agency

Keep it minimized to maximize info gathering

There's a new feature of Daily Planet News that I think you'll find very useful and time saving. The page auto-refreshes every ten minutes.

Now, if you want to have a handy source of 37 newsfeeds -- everything from AlterNet and BBC to Wired and ZNet -- you might like to do what I do and keep the page open but minimized. You'll know that whenever you want to see what's happening worldwide, you won't have to go searching for it.

Downing Street: A dead-end in American media

"'What is surprising, is how little attention [the memo] has received in some of the most important news media in the United States despite its being an official document that contradicts the North American version of the beginning of the war.' Jorge Ramos Avalos, Washington correspondent for Univision.

"The Downing Street Memos have provided an unexpected fright for the minority of Americans who are aware of them.

"It's not that presidents lie about the wars they send other people's kids off to fight. And it's not even that the media in this country has grown lazy, intimidated and sycophantic. It's the degree to which this is true, and the deterioration of American democracy to which it testifies. At the same moment we were revisiting the Watergate story and celebrating the dogged persistence that unmasked the crimes of Richard Nixon, the media largely ignored what is one of the biggest stories since the end of the Cold War."
Source: In These Times

Quong Tart, the Aussie Chinese Scot

1871 Australia: Mei Quong Tart (Mei Guangda; 1850 - July, 1903) became a naturalised British citizen at Braidwood, New South Wales.

At this time he was employed by the government as an official interpreter amongst the Chinese gold miners of Braidwood, Araluen and Majors Creek, and as a sometime gold miner. Born in China (Longtengli near Duanfen in southern Taishan, Guangdong province), Tart was to become a prominent and popular Sydney merchant, importer and philanthropist.

Like many Chinese people of his day, his uncle was lured to Australia by the chance of finding gold (the Gold Rush began in 1851 and continued for some decades in various forms), and nine-year-old Quong came with him. However, he made his fortune in businesses such as tea shops, and became a prominent member of Sydney society. He was well loved by his staff as he was well ahead of his times for worker benefits, giving holiday and sick leave with pay, as well as time off for shopping and family commitments.

Some of his tea rooms were used as meeting places for the suffragette activities of Louisa Lawson's Dawn Club -- tea rooms at 137 King St and 777 George St, one at the Queen Victoria Markets (called the Queen Victoria Building, or QVB, from 1898), and possibly in the George St markets (aka Paddy's Markets, near Chinatown). One of Louisa's meeting places was 43 Royal Arcade (possibly another Quong Tart establishment).

When Quong Tart came aboard a steamer from China to Australia, he learned English from Scottish crew members in the boiler room of the ship. After arrival in Australia, young Quong worked for his guardians, the well-to-do Scottish Alice Simpson family in country NSW, so he became known for his Scottish accent, the wearing of kilts and his fondness for singing songs of Robbie Burns at public functions ...

Abu Ghraib child abuse/Pentagon won't disclose

"Data is emerging, no matter how the administration attempts to hide it, that the new photos and video of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison include the torture of children.
Norway's Prime Minister's office says it plans to address the situation with the U.S. 'in a very severe and direct way.'

"Could this mean losing yet another ally in the Iraq occupation? Amnesty International in Norway has said that Norway can no longer continue their occupation of Iraq, or their support of US policy in this matter.

"And some countries, as Tom Tomorrow notes, actually listen to their activists.

"While there isn't even an inkling of this in the US Mainstream media, all over the world people are beginning to read about the US abusing children at Abu Ghraib."
Source: Uruknet: information from occupied Iraq

Defense Dep't refuses to release Abu Ghraib abuse photos
"Facing a court-imposed deadline to release photographs and video documenting numerous instances of torture and abuse at the now infamous US-run Abu Ghraib detention facility in Iraq, lawyers for the Department of Defense Thursday sent the court a letter stating their intention to file papers explaining why it will not adhere to the judge’s orders, civil liberties groups announced Friday.

"The legal brief explaining the reasoning behind the decision will be sealed, meaning most of the information will not be made public, the letter said.

"People who have seen the videos, including members of Congress and reporter Seymour Hersh, have reported they include scenes involving far worse abuses than have so far reached the public, including rape and lewd acts committed against and in front of prisoners. "
Source: News Standard

How US marked 3rd anniversary of Downing St Memo

" Hundreds of people were turned away today as capacity crowds packed public forums in U.S. cities to discuss the Downing Street Memo and related evidence that President Bush lied about the reasons for war.

"Halls were filled to capacity and beyond in LA, Oakland, Seattle, Detroit, Northampton, New York, and elsewhere, for events led by Congress Members, including Maxine Waters, Barbara Lee, Jim McDermott, John Conyers, and Maurice Hinchey.

"For the second time in the two months since we launched the http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/ campaign, I've been overwhelmed by what we've tapped into. The first time was when we put up a website about the Downing Street minutes and a demand for an investigation into grounds for impeachment. I'd never seen a coalition grow so quickly or a website receive so much traffic. Today we saw crowds of people in red and blue states chant "Impeach Bush!" at events with leaders not yet ready to use the I word. The much maligned American Public is way out ahead of us - I'm telling you ..."
Source: Truthout

Downing Street Memo in the Book of Days

McKinney reopens 9/11 conspiracy theories

"Washington -- Revisiting the issue that helped spur her ouster from Congress three years ago, Rep. Cynthia McKinney led a Capitol Hill hearing Friday on whether the Bush administration was involved in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"The eight-hour hearing, timed to mark the first anniversary of the release of the Sept. 11 commission's report on the attacks, drew dozens of contrarians and conspiracy theorists who suggest President Bush purposely ignored warnings or may even have had a hand in the attack -- claims participants said the commission ignored.

"'The commission's report was not a rush to judgment, it was a rush to exoneration,' said John Judge, a member of Mc­Kinney's staff and a representative of a Web site dedicated to raising questions about the Sept. 11 commission's report ...

"'Congresswoman McKinney is viewed as a contrarian,' panelist Melvin Goodman, a former CIA official, said. 'And I hope someday her views will be considered conventional wisdom.'"
Source: ajc.com

The Screwing of Cynthia McKinney
9/11CitizensWatch, the John Judge website referred to above

How US told Hussein he may invade Kuwait

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.)

White House aims to block legislation on detainees

"The Bush administration in recent days has been lobbying to block legislation supported by Republican senators that would bar the U.S. military from engaging in 'cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment' of detainees, from hiding prisoners from the Red Cross, and from using interrogation methods not authorized by a new Army field manual."
Source: Washington Post

Feast day of St Christina of Bolsena

Any reader who has incurred the wrath of a father will relate to this saint, as will anyone who has been thrown into a furnace for five days, had their tongue cut out and been rescued by angels.

Christina lived in the 3rd century, probably at Rome and was martyred c.250. Her father, Urban (Urbanus), a devout pagan, had a number of golden idols. Oddly defying the Fifth Commandment, eleven-year-old Christina broke them, then distributed the pieces among the poor. Infuriated by this pre-adolescent petulance, father became the persecutor of his own daughter, having her beaten with sticks and thrown into a dungeon – reasonable enough so far, I hear you say ....

London cops using Israeli methods

"The man shot dead in south London on Friday is not connected to attempted terror attacks on the capital, said police. The statement came as it emerged that police have been given secret new shoot-to-kill guidelines in recent weeks ...

"The guidelines were secretly developed in consultation with police forces including Israel, Russia and the US."
FT.com

Blair's bombs
John Pilger: "In all the coverage of the bombing of London, a truth has struggled to be heard. With honourable exceptions, it has been said guardedly, apologetically. Occasionally, a member of the public has broken the silence, as an east Londoner did when he walked in front of a CNN camera crew and reporter in mid-platitude. 'Iraq!' he said. 'We invaded Iraq and what did we expect? Go on, say it.'

"Alex Salmond tried to say it on Today on Radio 4. He was told he was speaking 'in poor taste . . . before the bodies are even buried'. George Galloway was lectured on Newsnight (BBC2) that he was being 'crass'. The inimitable Ken Livingstone contradicted his previous statement, which was that the invasion of Iraq would come home to London. With the exception of Galloway, not one so-called anti-war MP spoke out in clear, unequivocal English. The warmongers were allowed to fix the boundaries of public debate; one of the more idiotic, in the Guardian, called Blair 'the world's leading statesman'.

"And yet, like the man who interrupted CNN, people understand and know why, just as the majority of Britons oppose the war and believe Blair is a liar. This frightens the political elite. At a large media party I attended, many of the important guests uttered 'Iraq' and 'Blair' as a kind of catharsis for that which they dared not say professionally and publicly. "The bombs of 7 July were Blair's bombs ... "
Source: New Statesman

(Noth items: thanks Nora, from Extra-Extra)

.www.dontclick.it

www.dontclick.it is food for thought about our Internet habits. I'm unconvinced because of the problem of things occurring on mouseover when you don't want them to, which clicking obviates.

The Downing Street Memo, 2002

2002 The Downing Street memo: sometimes described by critics of the 2003 Iraq War as the "smoking gun memo", it contains the minutes of a secret meeting, on July 23, 2002, among United Kingdom government, defence and intelligence figures, discussing the build-up to the war.

A typed replica of the memo was printed in The Sunday Times on May 1, 2005, and is available in full on Wikisource. There have been repeated requests for President George Bush to respond to allegations based on the document from the media and from a contingent of 122 United States Congressmen, led by John Conyers ...

Vale Long John Baldry, 1941 - 2005

Sad to hear of the death of Long John Baldry, English blues/rock musician and singer, formerly with the band Bluesology. Nicknamed ‘Long John’ because of his 6'7” height, he's credited with having been one of the main forces in British Blues, Rock and Pop music in the 1960s.

Performers such as Rod Stewart, Ginger Baker (drummer with Cream), Jeff Beck (Yardbirds), Brian Jones (Rolling Stones founder), Jack Bruce, Alex Korner, Nicky Hopkins, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones all worked with Baldry – some of them got their first big break playing with him. Eric Clapton has said that he was inspired to pick up a guitar after seeing Baldry perform in the early sixties. Reginald Dwight took his stage name Elton John (middle name 'Hercules') from the first names of Bluesology's vocalist Elton Dean and Long John Baldry.

"Long John Baldry passed away at the Vancouver General Hospital, July 21 at
10:30 pm after fighting a severe chest infection for the past 4 months. He was
surrounded by friends and loved ones and is now at peace. John Baldry will be
remembered by his music and the love he generously gave to all those who came in
contact with him. Our world is a lesser place without him, for John was a person
that enhanced this world with his enormous presence and talent."
Baldry Homepage

London underground overkill

Crikey, according to radio reports based on eye-witness accounts, the cops in London held down a suspect at Stockwell Tube station and pumped five bullets into him because he posed a "potential threat". He only got off lightly because he didn't pose an "actual threat".

If we'd try to bring about a global religious war to wreck the lives of coming generations, could we have cast three better buffoons to organise it than Bush, Blair and Howard?

If there were 100 people in the world

From World Citizen Guide, one of the 2005 Webbies winners.

2advanced.com/

Here's a Flash site to feast upon: www.2advanced.com/

Corby lawyer threatens to quit

"Schapelle Corby's Indonesian lawyer has threatened to quit her case saying Australian prosecutors are refusing to offer an immunity deal for witnesses that may help her ...

"Hutapea has said a mystery witness in Australia is willing to admit to putting the drugs in Corby's bag, but only if the government grants immunity from prosecution."
Source: smh.com.au

Iraq Constitution: 1000s of kids dying for this?

Justin Raimondo has read the new draft Iraqi constitution. I haven't, but if he's right, it's chilling (thanks, J-9):

"Why are we in Iraq? According to George W. Bush and the 101st Fighting Keyboarders, we're battling for 'freedom,' we're fighting for the love of liberty that supposedly burns in every heart – right?

"A look at the Iraqi constitution, which is now in its draft form, makes it very clear that the only proper answer to that contention is an emphatic – no way, José!

"Let's start with Article 1, which defines who is eligible to become a citizen of Iraq:

"'Any individual with another nationality (except for Israel) may obtain Iraqi nationality after a period of residency inside the borders of Iraq of not less than ten years for an Arab or twenty years for any other nationality.

"'An Iraqi may have more than one nationality as long as the nationality is not Israeli.'

"Ah yes, Iraq the 'model' – but what is it a model of? Nazism? Speaking of which, here's an ominous phrase from Article 5:

"'The Iraqi people are one people, unified by belief and the unity of the homeland and culture. Anything that exposes this unity to danger is forbidden.'

"Uh oh. Does any of that sound familiar? Here's a hint for all you history buffs out there: 'Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer!' ..."
Source: Ether Zone

Fuzzy thinking on pass cards

Tony Bliar and John Howard want British and Australian citizens to have to carry a pass card, or ID card as it's known.

This will stop terrorist bombings. You know, like the Spanish one stopped the Madrid bombing, and the German one stopped the Baader-Meinhof gang.

You think you've got problems

Mr and Mrs Martini ... read the short history.

China fights Falun Gong in US - ex-diplomat

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China's diplomats and agents in the United States help Beijing to carry out a crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual sect, a former Chinese diplomat who is seeking asylum in Australia said on Thursday."
Source: Reuters

Blogger templates

Blogger templates. Some good, some lame.

Weblog ethics survey results

Email received yesterday:

"Dear Blogger,

"We have received more than 1,000 participants from across the world in our survey on ethics and blogging conducted between 6 Feb and 1 Mar 2005. We sincerely thank all of you who have done the survey, and apologise for the long delay in releasing the results.

"The results are now available at www.weblogethics.blogspot.com. We choose to post the results on blogspot so as to share this information firsthand with the blogging community. At the same time, this is an effort to contribute to the ongoing debate on weblog ethics and ethical codes ..

The Blog Boyz"

The Pied Piper

1376 (dates vary) The Pied Piper came to Hamelin (Hameln), a town in Lower Saxony, Germany, and led the children out of town.

The story of the Pied Piper (Rattenfänger) of Hamelin was popularised in German by the Brothers Grimm and in English by the poet Robert Browning (1812 - 1889) in his narrative poem of that name.

It comes from an old German legend translated into English in 1605 by Richard Verstegan, English publisher and antiquarian, who gave this as the date in A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence. (A 14th-century account gives the date as June 26, 1284.) The oldest remaining source is a note in Latin prose, made one and a half centuries later (1430 - 1450) as an addition to a 14th-century manuscript from Lüneburg.

The stranger, dressed in pied, or multicoloured, clothing, offered to rid the town of Hamelin of its plague of rats, for an agreed price. He played his pipe and the rats followed his beguiling tune down to the Weser River, all drowning. The burghers of Hamelin refused to pay the piper, so in revenge he began piping his charming song and the town’s children, entranced, followed him to a mountain cave, which as if by magic sealed itself shut.

The historical record
There are historical records of a stained glass window in the church of Hamelin that dates from before 1300, depicting the children’s exodus. Unfortunately, the picture has been missing since the window was replaced around 1660. A rhyme appeared with this window, reporting that a piper dressed in many colours led 130 children away from Hamelin ...

Addies for change agents

This blog has a list of email addies for activists.

Making dissent a crime

In recent days I have heard two commentators on radio refer to pushes in Britain and Australia to make written attacks "on Western civilisation" illegal.

Keep your eyes on this one, as it's likely that Patriot Act-style legislation will make it not only illegal to promote terrorism, but to criticise the governments or cultures of the West. It hasn't happened yet, but some influential people are talking that way, and there can be little doubt that there are many politicians who are happy that some more vocal people are flying the kite. Bush, Blair and Howard have already shown their colours.

No one has talked this way since King George III, except perhaps Joseph McCarthy, but now it's being placed on the public agenda. A concerted effort of opposition, and close scrutiny of draft legislation, are esential to impede today's juggernaut of social control.

Exposed: mad mastermind of 9/11 & London

In all the melee, it hasn't been noticed (Ah, the fools, the fools!) that Australian Prime Minister John Howard was in Washington on 9/11 and now in London when more bombings occurred.

Cleverly disguised as a bald, boring accountant with a smirk, irritating voice and charisma bypass, John Winston Howard is in fact the mastermind of the outrages. Yes, hard to believe, but true.

What is this e-vil criminal's deadly plan? We reveal it today for the first time in the Blogmanac. Not content with the havoc of urban terrorism, Howard has carefully drafted a plan for world domination. Psychologists Wilson's Blogmanac has engaged to analyse the fetid mind of this monster have concluded that in compensation for his lack of original thought and in revenge against being branded at school the "Least Imaginative Student of 1863", Howard cunningly plotted the deaths of 100,000 people in the Middle East for which his putative friends and bottoms-to-lick, George W Bush and Tony Blair, are calculated to take the blame.

Now that this wicked goal has already been achieved, documents have come to light that prove that this monster is set to invade Poland ... and then the world. These documents, some of them scrawled on the back of a Hurstville Methodist Church hymn sheet in 1876, are frighteningly plain and disclose a monomania of abominable scale: "Today the mid-week prayer meeting, tomorrow the world."

Judge calls loggers' SLAPP suit "embarrassing"

"Australian forestry giant Gunns has suffered a major setback in its $A6.3 million SLAPP suit against 20 environmentalists and environmental groups. Last December Gunns filed a 216-page statement of claim against the environmentalists and then, earlier this month, submitted a redrafted 360-page version. Supreme Court Justice Bernard Bongiorno told the company that unless it submitted a 'radically altered' version of its claim within 28 days the case would be struck out. He described aspects of Gunns revised claim as 'embarrassing' ..."
Source: Center for Media and Democracy

New feeds at Daily Planet News

We are proud to now have pagans4peace and AlterNet newsfeeds at Daily Planet News, a good page to bookmark, with 34 newsfeeds from around the world all on one page.

Tag mania sweeps the Web

Jon Udell writes: "When I first wrote about social tagging services last year, Flickr (for shared photos) and del.icio.us (for shared bookmarks) were among a handful of tag-enriched applications. Nowadays you can't turn around without tripping over a new one. Three newcomers are My Web 2.0, Rojo 2.0, and Swik.

"Like del.icio.us and Furl, Yahoo's My Web 2.0 invites users to save bookmarks to the Web and then apply tags that flexibly categorize them. Rojo, a Web-based RSS reader like Bloglines, does the same with RSS items. Swik, a new Wiki site launched by SourceLabs, invites the open source community to bookmark and tag resources related to open source projects.

"Is this a fad or a real breakthrough in information management? I say both ..."
Source: InfoWorld

Google Moon

Google Moon. Zoom in. Google still has a sense of humour.

The Myth of Marriage

"A radical new book debunks the concept of marriage as a time-honored institution, and argues that we need to loosen up about it.

"The institution of traditional marriage is in a state of crisis.

"There's a misstatement in that sentence. But it's not that marriage is in crisis. It's that the institution of marriage is, or was at any time, traditional."
Source: AlterNet

Parrot proves it's no birdbrain

"At the ripe age of 29, Alex has mastered important tasks like counting to six, understanding that corn is yellow, and knowing the differences among a variety of shapes.

"Call him a birdbrain if you must; he'll probably take it as a compliment. This is because Alex, an African gray parrot, is a prime example of birds' abilities to exhibit higher brain functions than humans usually give them credit for. "
Wired News

Oh le Tuff, you've done it again

Baz le Tuff lives in a notorious cyber-cave perched on a cliff overlooking the fens of Coffs Harbour, and I try not to visit there because the screams of victims can be quite unnerving for my sensitive temperament.

But this morning I needed a cup of human entrails so I popped over. His faithful manservant Roderick, who said that Master had been expecting me, showed me to the upper cavern where le Tuff showed me his latest toy, quite the most amazing web program going. I'm told it's superb for aiding with night flights and escape routes.

You need broadband and a 3D video card to use Google Earth, but you won't be disappointed. Sorry, Apple Mac won't work (hee hee!).

What did Armstrong really say?

1969 Apollo Program: Apollo 11 landed on the Moon and Neil Armstrong and Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin became the first humans to walk on its surface.

[From the vantage point of Australia, where this almanac is produced, Apollo 11 landed on this day, although it was still July 20 in some other parts of the world. In fact, in UT (Universal Time), it was July 21 (see below). This raises the conundrum: If we in Oz saw it on the 21st, did we see it before the Americans, Africans and Europeans, who saw it on the 20th, or after them? I’ll leave you to figure that one out, as it’s way too hard for your almanackist.]

What did Armstrong really say?

“That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”

These are some of the most famous, and most eloquent, words ever uttered, indelibly engraved on the global consciousness by Neil Armstrong on that day in July 1969. And yet, if he said “… one small step for man”, leaving out the indefinite article, the sentence doesn’t make much sense. What did he really say, and were his words scripted for him by PR suits at NASA?

In an article in the December 1983 Esquire, author George Plimpton revealed all. The words were all of Armstrong’s own composition, according to the publicity-shy astronaut himself, as well as his colleagues and NASA officials. Armstrong didn’t even consider what he might say until after he and Buzz Aldrin landed on the lunar surface, because, he wasn’t sure he would get a chance to speak on the moon at all.

“I thought the chances of a successful touchdown on the moon’s surface were about even money - fifty-fifty,” Armstrong told Plimpton, “An awful lot of the puzzle had not been filled in; so much had not even been tried. Most people don’t realise how difficult the mission was. So it didn’t seem to me there was much point in thinking up something to say if we’d have to abort the landing.”

As for the words: it sounded like he said “That’s one small step for man”, rather than “for a man”, which would have made more sense. In fact, Armstrong claims that he did say “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind” (the way it appears in every book of quotable quotes issued since 1969). He told Esquire that the ‘a’ went missing in the transmission, which was through a voice-activated system called VOX. “Vox can lose you a syllable every so often,” Armstrong explained – thus ending another of life’s little mysteries.

Do you think Armstrong’s version is true? Listen closely to the 133kb .wav file, today in the Book of Days ...

John G Roberts: Sign petition against dinosaur

When US citizens are thinking about John G Roberts's nomination for the Supreme Court, perhaps they might like to consider him from an Australian persepctive.

Roberts was one of the three judges who gave Shrub a wet dream last week by overturning a lower-court decision to allow military commissions to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay. One of those prisoners is Aussie David Hicks.

Is that what our American friends want? Someone who endorses a brutal system that sees a man picked up at a bus stop in an invaded country (Afghanistan), flies him to a Caribbean hell hole, locks him away for years (with not even a charge) and incarcerates him in a 6' X 8' concrete cell? This Australian citizen has then been exposed to 24-hour fluorescent light, only two 20-minute exercise breaks from his tiny cage each week, beatings and, perhaps worst of all, no access to family, lawyer, Red Cross or Amnesty International.

This is Judge John G Roberts, a cog in the New World of Bush and his fanatical fundo barbarians. How long before the US Supreme Court starts doing this to Americans? They do it to hundreds of the rest of us and Roberts thinks that's just fine and dandy. Throw the bastard out on his ear.

David Hicks can't sign the petition, and neither can I. I hope you can.

"Shrimp on barbie" myth rears head in UK

An Independent article today, 'What's so great about Australia', repeats the old furphy that Australians invented the barbecue. Not so. Australians got it from the Americans, and not so long ago, but the word is much older, having been introduced into the English language by the British pirate-genius William Dampier (pictured), who explored part of Australia long before the nation was even thought of. (The word has Caribbean roots in Taino, one of the Arawak family of languages.)

According to Diana Preston and Michael Preston, A Pirate of Exquisite Mind: Explorer, Naturalist, and Buccaneer: The Life of William Dampier, other words and expressions William Dampier introduced into the English language include: avocado; breadfruit; caress (verb); cashew; chopsticks; excursion (trip); kumquat; posse (iguana); rambling; sea-breeze; serrated; settlement; soysauce; subsistence (farming); swampy; thunder-cloud; tortilla (more)

The practice of barbecuing was known in Australia before WWII but generally referred to as a ‘picnic’, and sometimes other terms were employed. The barbecue of Australia is actually an import from the USA, probably following the presence in the war of thousands of American service people.

And the thing about Paul Hogan and "throw another shrimp on the barbie", as I have mentioned here before, is the biggest furphy of all, but we're not used to seeing it in British publications, just American. Australians don't have the word 'shrimp' in their vocabulary at all, unlike the Madison Avenue ad-men who made up the expression for a series of TV commercials. We do have prawns, however, but there is no tradition of cooking them on barbecues. Steaks, chops, sometimes fish maybe. We do, however, use the term 'barbie', so at least there's something true in the urban myth.

Mao: The Unknown Story (now in Almanac store)

Biography strips away myths of Mao

Chinese leader shown as monster who took pleasure in torture

"Within a year, the book will be translated into Chinese. It will be banned in China, of course, but it will find its way in nevertheless, mostly on CDs, and it will find fascinated but appalled readers in every corner of the country. Nothing will change right away, but over time it will probably have the same impact on how Chinese see their own history and the party that rules over them that Alexander Solzhenitsyn's 'Gulag Archipelago' had on Russians.

"The book is Mao: The Unknown Story, a massively researched biography of the Great Helmsman that strips all the flattering myths away and reveals the founder of China's Communist regime as a monster with no redeeming qualities whatever. The authors, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, spent 10 years trawling through previously untapped archives and interviewing literally hundreds of people who were close to Mao Tse-tung at some point in his life, and the picture they draw of the man is as definitive as it is repellent.

"He was a mass murderer on an even bigger scale than Hitler or Stalin -- and unlike them, he took a sadistic pleasure in watching films of his victims being tortured and killed. The one heroic episode of his career that has never before been challenged, the 6,000-mile Long March that began in 1934, turns out to have been a fraud. His Nationalist enemies never tried to stop his army, but rather shepherded it through various areas where they wanted to frighten the local warlords into submission. And he didn't actually march; most of the way he was carried in a bamboo litter ... "
Source: Charlotte Observer

Mao: The Unknown Story, by Jung Chang (author of Wild Swans) is now available by pre-order in our store, Cafe Diem! Reduced from $35.00 to $23.10. Have it delivered to your home on publication.

Jung Chang is currently in Australia. Listen to July 19 interview.

Rant: PRINT THE BLOODY THING, NOW

Tech people are often the worst advisers on technical matters and almost always the worst listeners to technical complaints. The sly grin comes with the pocket protectors.

When I asked my ISP a few years ago why they couldn't instal spam filters like all PC owners have, only bigger, they told me it was technically impossible. Sly grin. Six months later they did it.

Ever asked a geek why the dusty back side of a computer -- you know, the jumble of wires and all the cockroaches -- is such a nightmare? Why the plugs are so damn hard to insert in the dark? Why there are jagged bits to cut your skin, why plugs are not colour-coded or designed to fit by feel and shape alone? Why plugs and sockets can't, in fact, be like those on chunky plastic kids' toys -- really easy?

Why do plastic cords have to have "shape memory", making them twist out of your fumbling fingers? Why is a USB plug almost the same on both sides? Why is there no design co-ordination of plugs and sockets at all? All these problems are eminently solvable, but the geeks pretend they are the questions of peasants, and the peasants agree with them. And that, dear reader, is why things never change.

Ever asked a geek why car radios now have tiny push buttons so you have to take your eyes off the road? Has there ever been a study to determine how many people this obvious design flaw has killed or maimed? Only 20 years ago you could drive and feel your radio station by turning a large knob. Car radios, like bedside radios, which you simply cannot operate well at night time, are prime examples of retrograde design, yet almost nobody acknowledges it. In fact, after many years of being a real pain in the arse about it, I'm still the only one that I know of who expects these things to make sense.

No one, not just geeks, has ever agreed with me about the radio thing, but, interestingly, no one has ever put up a counter argument. They just disagree and withdraw. I think they just think designers must be right and that's all there is to it. It's the way we used to bow to priests and dukes. But the fact remains, radios are harder to operate today than at any time in the past 80 years, and they're obviously dangerous in cars.

Now, printing off a computer. Why can't this be made easy? We can put men on the Moon, but can't click PRINT and have the content of the screen, or of the whole webpage or other document, print out immediately without (a) a tangle of wires, (b) dried ink problems, (c) the need to negotiate two separate machines and their various On/Off status, (d) page setup problems, and (e) all the myriad of things that go wrong with printers. Why should a printer be a dust catcher external to the computer? Because it always has been? (Please don't tell me it's possible to buy a computer with all these functions if you know where to shop and have enough money. I'm talking all computers for all users.)

We should be able to click PRINT THE BLOODY THING, NOW and it should come out the side of the computer in a few seconds, not minutes. WYSIWYG. End of story.

Maybe NASA should make PCs, because nobody else has got a complete handle on 'user friendly'.

Ket’s Rebellion, 1549

1549 The Norfolk Rising (or Commotion), aka Ket’s Rebellion

At Mousehold, England, a herald of child King Edward VI was turned away, his message of conciliation from the monarch to some 16-20,000 rural insurrectionists rejected. The herald had promised the king's pardon to all who would depart quietly to their homes.

The rebellion of farmers and farm workers was aimed at bringing attention to the economic problems faced by agricultural workers in East Anglia. Like the Diggers (founded exactly one century later, in 1649 by Gerrard Winstanley) and even the rather more conservative Levellers, the rebels demanded the abolition of land enclosures, the end of private ownership of land, and the dismissal of counsellors. A commonwealth was established on Mousehold Heath.

The ‘commotion’ was led by Robert Ket (or Kett), a fairly prosperous landowner (he held the manor of Wymondham – pron. ‘Windum’ – in Norfolk) and tanner, and he and his followers occupied the city of Norwich, but were defeated on August 25 by the overwhelming military power of John Dudley, the Earl of Warwick. Thousands of men were killed, Warwick’s men cutting them to pieces in the slaughter of Dussin’s Dale.

They had met daily under ‘the Oak of Reformation’, upon which many of them were later hanged. Robert Ket was executed at Norwich, and his body was hanged on the top of the castle on December 7, 1549.

Violence escalates in Israel

"Israel has massed tanks and troops on the border with the Gaza Strip and threatened to invade if Palestinian militants continue their attacks. There was more rocket and mortar fire from the militants today, salvos that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has vowed to do his utmost to stop."
Source: NPR

"Why Can't Foreign Lefties Learn to Be Objective Like Us?"

"Why Can't Foreign Lefties Learn to Be Objective Like Us?" by Christian Christensen has some excellent insights into the state of journalism in the Western world today and is highly recommended. Here's a snippet:

"Let's couple this with a quick look at some of the objective news people who sit on the board of Tribune Company:

• Enrique (Rick) Hernandez, Jr: Chairman and chief executive officer of Inter-Con Security Systems Inc.; on the board of McDonald's Corporation, Nordstrom Inc. and Wells Fargo & Company.
  
• Betsy D. Holden: President of global marketing and category development at Kraft Foods, Inc. from January 2004 through June 2005; co-CEO at Kraft from 2001 to 2003; president and CEO of Kraft Foods North America from 2000 to 2003; on the board of directors for Kraft Foods and Tupperware Corporation; on the Advisory Board of Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and serves on the boards of the Grocery Manufacturers of America and Evanston Northwestern Healthcare.
  
• Robert S. Morrison: Retired vice chairman of PepsiCo, Inc.; retired chairman, president and chief executive officer of The Quaker Oats Company; from 1994 to 1997 served as chief executive officer of Kraft, Inc.; serves as a director of Aon Corporation, 3M Company, Illinois Tool Works, Inc., the Economic Club of Chicago and the Grocery Manufacturers of America.
  
• William A. Osborn: Chairman and chief executive officer and a director of Northern Trust Corporation and its principal subsidiary, The Northern Trust Company; a director of Caterpillar, Inc., Nicor, Inc. and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
  

"In sum, while owning 26 major-market television stations that reach 80 percent of U.S. television households, and newspapers that are read by 9.3 million people on weekdays and 12.5 million on Sundays, the Tribune Company also has board members who work (in various capacities) for McDonald's, PepsiCo, Kraft, 3M, Nordstrom, Wells Fargo, Quaker Oats, and the Grocery Manufacturers of America (GMA). The GMA, by the way, is the lobbying arm of the retail food industry ..."

British trio charged with war crimes

British trio charged with war crimes

Another four soldiers face manslaughter charges

"Three British soldiers face war crimes charges in connection with the 2003 death of an Iraqi prisoner, while their former battalion commander and two intelligence officers have been charged with negligence, the UK government announced Tuesday.

"Another four soldiers face manslaughter charges in the drowning of a second Iraqi, Attorney General Peter Goldsmith told Parliament."
CNN.com

Aussie author faces Mormon excommunication

Australian author and former bishop of the Mormon Church (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or LDS), Simon G Southerton, wrote a book that refutes the Mormon line that Native Americans are descended from Israelites.

The Australian branch of the church will try him on July 31, but, apparently not wanting to bring the conclusive results of DNA testing before its own leaders and members, has hung a charge on Southerton of adultery. Some years ago, during a separation from his wife, to whom he is now reconciled, apparently something happened giving rise to this oblique ecclesiastical charge.

Southerton said on ABC Radio national, Australia, that he would prefer to be charged with apostasy, but hopes that by facing this charge (although he claims not to have darkened the door of the Mormon Church for seven years) he will help the church change.

Southerton's book is Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA and the Mormon Church, pub. Signature Books, a Salt Lake City-based publishing house.
More at Salt Lake Tribune

BBC: Iraq's descent into bombing quagmire

"Here in Baghdad, it's beginning to feel like a critical moment.

"In the last week this city has seen 22 car bombs, with 10 on a single day - last Friday. Not far from Baghdad, at Musayyib, between Hilla and Karbala, nearly 100 Shia Muslims were killed.

"The shadowy resistance movements seem to be operating on a new and much more ambitious level.

"Last summer, and in the summer of 2003, there were similar peaks, though much lower ones: The ferocious heat seems to produce new reserves of anger and violence here. "
Source: BBC News

Conflict 'kills 25,000 Iraqis'
"Nearly 25,000 civilians have died violently in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003, a report says.

"Based on more than 10,000 media reports, the dossier is the first detailed account of such deaths.

"'The ever-mounting Iraqi death toll is the forgotten cost of the decision to go to war in Iraq,' said John Sloboda, one of the report authors."
BBC News

Child of Wonder, free e-book

Dear Pip

We thought you might like to share with your viewers an opportunity to read a poignant religious narrative set in picturesque Calabria and Sicily. Child of Wonder is about an abused child whose unfortunate circumstances of birth and odd appearance mark him as an object of ridicule and scorn. The action of this moving story focuses on the extraordinary adventures and the mystical experiences of this sensitive young Italian mystic whose prayers and trust in the Blessed Mother both sustain him and transform him on his unique spiritual journey through Southern Italy. Blended into the narrative are the fascinating folkways and beliefs of the region. Written in English by Italian American author and educator Raphael Ferraro, this free e-Novel is available through www.italianamericanpress.com. Currently Child of Wonder is receiving approximately 400-800 downloads monthly.

Best wishes,
Ralph Ferraro, Director
The Italian American Press

The Oz Trial, 1971

1971 British comedian Marty Feldman appeared for the defence in the Oz Trial at the sombre London criminal court, the Old Bailey, calling the judge “a boring old fart”.

The Oz case was the longest obscenity trial in British legal history. The original sentences of up to 15 months for Richard Neville and the other defendants sparked a wave of protest from many, including John Lennon. With Yoko Ono, Lennon joined the protest march against the prosecution and organised the recording of 'God Save Oz' by the Elastic Oz Band, released on Apple Records.

At the time in Britain, conspiracy to pervert the course of public morals carried a life sentence and the defence of the Oz magazine defendants was an important libertarian cause. The fuss and hilarious court case were all about Edition 28, 'The Schoolkids Issue', which was worked on by school students as well as the staff. More specifically, a sexualised cartoon of the popular children's book character Rupert Bear was the culprit.

Oz magazine was an underground magazine launched on April 1, 1963, in Sydney, Australia, where its editors – Richard Neville, Richard Walsh, and Martin Sharp – were charged under obscenity laws. In 1971, after the magazine shifted to England in 1966, Neville, Felix Dennis, and Jim Anderson were put on trial for corrupting public morals. Oz finally ceased publication in 1973.

Where did they go from there?
Felix Dennis, who was given a lesser sentence because the court viewed him as “very much less intelligent” than Neville and Anderson, went on to become one of Britain's wealthiest and most prominent publishers. Oz co-founder Richard Walsh became one of Australia’s most prominent conservative publishers. Richard Neville is one of Australia’s best selling authors and a prominent media figure. Martin Sharp is one of Australia’s best-known visual artists ...

Simple English Wikipedia

Wikipedia now has a Simple English version. I admit to having a slight reservation about that. It might not be something I would want my children or grandchildren to use, but their schoolteachers maybe.

Mathew Flinders: Glory and tragedy

1801 Matthew Flinders (1774 - 1814) left England to circumnavigate and map Australia. It was he who gave the continent its name.

In 1789 Flinders had entered the Royal Navy and in 1791 joined HMS Providence as a midshipman, serving under William Bligh on his second ‘breadfruit voyage’ to Tahiti.

In 1798 he circumnavigated Van Diemen’s Land (later renamed Tasmania, Australia's southernmost state) aboard The Norfolk, therefore proving it to be an island.

The Flinders story has a tragic turn to it. In 1803, while attempting to return to England aboard The Cumberland, he was forced to put in at Mauritius for repairs on December 17. Unbeknown to Flinders, England was at war with France, and the French governor, General De Caen, had Flinders detained as a spy. He would be imprisoned on Mauritius for almost seven years ...

Bleeding obvious news item of the day

Iraq war support "put UK at risk"

"Supporting the US-led invasion of Iraq put the UK more at risk from terrorist attack, a report has said.

"The Royal Institute of International Affairs and the Economic and Social Research Council report also said the invasion had boosted al-Qaeda.

"UK involvement in operations against Osama Bin Laden's network had also raised the attack risk, it added."
Source: BBC

AAAARGH

AAAARGH, from Metafilter

If George Bush were a saboteur ...

"If George Bush were [a] saboteur -- the stone-cold, paid agent of a foreign power -- charged with destroying the military, demoralizing the public with polarization and lies, politically bankrolling the most extreme and hateful fringe groups to destroy our democracy from within, bankrupting our Treasury, ruining our international reputation and creating a militant, oil-rich China-friendly, Islamic Superstate that will burn with hatred for us like the heat of a thousand suns for the next ten generations ... he could not have been more treasonously efficient in his work than he has been so far."
Source: Driftnet via Chris Keeley

Orpheus Myron McAdoo & tale of the 'Wimoweh' song

1900 Death in Sydney, Australia of Orpheus Myron McAdoo (Bill McAdoo; b. 1858), African-American 'black minstrel' singer who toured Europe, South Africa and Australia with McAdoo's American Minstrels and McAdoo's Alabama Cakewalkers.

In 1876 McAdoo graduated from Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (founded in 1868 at Hampton, Virginia by Northern philanthropists, notably General Samuel Chapman Armstrong) and taught in Virginia schools before returning to teach at his alma mater. In 1881 he took the place of his fellow student, African American educator and author Booker T Washington (1856 - 1915), in charge of the Native American boy students' dormitory.

Before commencing his own theatrical company in 1890 (mostly composed of fellow Hampton graduates ), he had been one of the troupe of the eminent bass singer Frederick J Loudin and the Fisk Jubilee Singers, who first arrived in Australia at Melbourne on May 14, 1886. The Fisk style of music included cakewalks and spirituals.

McAdoo took ill of unknown causes about 16 months before his death. He returned to the US, and came back to Sydney, apparently in good health, but on April 28 the Sydney Morning Herald reported that "During the week Mr. McAdoo has suffered from a somewhat serious attack of illness" ...


McAdoo, Solomon Linda and 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight'
Before McAdoo's death the McAdoo Jubilee Singers had extensive tours in South Africa until hostilities began in the Boer War ...

McAdoo's syncopations and American styles reached deep into South Africa, in mining towns and bush villages. It reached as far as Gordon Memorial School, above a valley called Msinga, in Zulu country about 300 miles southeast of Johannesburg. A generation later, the sounds influenced a pupil of that school, Solomon Linda, who formed a group called Solomon Linda and the Evening Birds.

Solomon Linda wrote a song called 'Mbube', Zulu for 'the lion', and recorded it in the Evening Birds' second session, in Johannesburg in 1939 after they had been 'discovered' by a talent scout. Pete Seeger, the American folk musician, heard the song and cut it himself with his band, The Weavers, calling it 'Wimoweh', which has been recorded by Jimmy Dorsey, Yma Sumac, Glen Campbell, They Might Be Giants, The Tokens and The Kingston Trio, with everyone making money off it – except Solomon Linda ...

Black and white minstrels in Oz
The McAdoo Jubilee Singers, who had become almost naturalised Australians, continued Down Under up until World War One, by which time they had toured all the states (including distant Western Australia), and New Zealand. By 1905 the minstrels included several white Australians, and Miss Claire Solly, a Western Australian Aboriginal contralto ...

Much more in the Book of Days.

Human eco-impact on prehistoric Australia

"A shifting diet of two flightless birds inhabiting Australia tens of thousands of years ago is the best evidence yet that early humans may have altered the continent's interior with fire, changing it from a mosaic of trees, shrubs and grasses to the desert scrub evident today, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder-led team ...

"The earliest human colonizers in Australia are believed to have arrived by sea from Indonesia about 50,000 years ago, using fire as a tool to hunt, clear paths, signal each other and promote the growth of certain plants ...

"More than 85 percent of Australia's large mammals, birds and reptiles weighing more than 100 pounds went extinct shortly after humans arrived, including 19 species of marsupials, a 25-foot-long lizard and a Volkswagen-sized tortoise ..."
Source: Science Daily

Timeline of Shrub's military 'career'

This chart sets it all out clear and simple. For example,

January 17, 1968: Took the Air Force officer and pilot qualification tests.
Scored 25%, the lowest possible passing grade on the pilot aptitude portion.
Speaker of the House in Texas at the time, Ben Barnes, admitted he had received a request from a longtime Bush family friend, Sidney Adger of Houston, to help Bush get into the Air National Guard.
Barnes further testified that he contacted the head of the Texas Air National Guard, Brig. Gen. James Rose.

May 27, 1968: After 6 weeks of basic airman training, received a commission as a second lieutenant. By means of a 'special appointment' by the commanding officer of his squadron, with the approval of a panel of three senior officers.
Normally required eight full semesters of college ROTC courses or eighteen months of military service or completion of Air Force officer training school.
Texas National Guard historian said that he "never heard of that" except for flight surgeons.

ID cards will "help fraudsters"

"Leading fraud experts have rejected Tony Blair’s claims that identity cards will help to stem the soaring costs of identity theft.

"Dr James Backhouse, a director of the London School of Economics Information Systems Integrity Group, said that identity cards would instead become the new master key for identity fraudsters, who would be able to acquire the cards using stolen documents."
Source: The Times

Mission accomplished: Iraq is broken

"It's hard to believe that supposedly intelligent people like Senators Joseph Biden (DE), Hillary Clinton (NY) and John Kerry (MA) call for 'staying the course' in Iraq and acting responsibly by sending more US troops with more fire power over there.

"Don't they understand that American soldiers break, not fix? The more US soldiers in Iraq, the more damage they will do and the more enemies they will make. To limit damage, to act morally and responsibly, remove the cause of violence and chaos in Iraq: the US military presence ...

"In March 2003, George W. Bush ordered the US military to break Iraq. The US arsenal destroyed the electricity and water supply, damaged sewage treatment and other vital sanitary facilities and pulverized bridges, other public places and thousands of homes. On May 1, 2003, dressed in a jump suit, Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln and announced: 'Mission Accomplished.'

"His critics, myself included, laughed at such braggadocio. We misunderstood him. He had accomplished the standard post-WWII US military mission: He broke another country.

"The US-led Coalition has not restored what it demolished in Iraq, nor reestablished services to the level of Saddam Hussein’s regime. They imprisoned tens of thousands of Iraqis, subjecting many of those to systematic torture.

"Former prisoner Ali Abbas told journalist Dahr Jamail that to break the will of Iraqi prisoners, US guards at Abu Ghraib 'used electricity on us' while millions of homes lacked electricity for hours each day. 'They also shit on us, used dogs against us…and starved us' ...

"In June 2005, Dr. Thomas Fasy of the Mr. Sinai School of Medicine concluded that data from Iraqi hospitals indicated that depleted uranium’s effect had shown up dramatically in a more than 400% rise in children’s cancer in just over a decade ...

"On June 28, addressing the Special Forces at Fort Bragg, Bush asked implying that 'our' people had given up a lot to wage his war : 'Is the sacrifice worth it?' He quickly answered his own question. 'It is worth it…'

"The Iraq war has cost him nothing -- perhaps a few hours of missed video golf.

"'We have more work to do,' he stated. Yes, Bush stands as a national model of sacrifice and hard work! And Iraqis must think that those Democrats who ask for more troops are either crazy or stark opportunists. It will take them that much longer to restore some integrity to their broken society."
Source: informationclearinghouse.info

The World Speaks on Iraq
"The World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) held its culminating session in Istanbul June 24-27 ... Never before has a war aroused this level of protest on a global scale -- first to prevent it (the huge February 15, 2003, demonstrations in eighty countries) and then to condemn its inception and conduct ... The WTI generated intense interest in Turkey, Europe, the Arab world and on the Internet but was ignored by the American mainstream media. Here in Istanbul, the WTI was treated for days as the number-one news story."
Source: Common Dreams

China's other Great Wall

While the new superpower opens its doors to the world, its government cracks down on voices of dissent

"Last December,. a seemingly ambiguous story in the People's Daily, a state-run English-language newspaper in China, exhorted the country's youth to clean up their text messaging habits. After being told that this relatively new form of communication had 'degenerated into a haven for invective, pornography, and insidious superstitious information aimed at fouling our social ideology,' adolescents interested in cleansing themselves were invited to enter a Decent Short Message Competition cosponsored by the prestigious Peking and Renmin Universities. The article concluded that 'in addition to such soft measures . . . necessary legal provisions should also be implemented.' "
Source: Utne

Rove-gate: Who leaked to the leakers?

This isn't about Karl Rove

"For George Bush to fire Karl Rove would be like Charlie McCarthy firing Edgar Bergen."
Al Franken

"What if Karl Rove isn't guilty of knowingly leaking Valerie Plame's name as a covert CIA agent involved in nuclear proliferation issues? What if Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, is correct when he says that he's been assured by prosecutors that his client is not a target of the ongoing investigation into Plame-gate? I'm going to swim against the tide, here, and against the expectations of my readers, by suggesting that this investigation isn't about Rove – and, furthermore, that Rove is a victim, in an important sense, someone who was used and abused by the real culprits. And who are these mysterious culprits? We'll get to that in a moment, but first some background ..."
Source: AntiWar.com

"There are stories circulating that Rove may have been told of Valerie Plame's CIA activity by a journalist, such as Judith Miller, as recently suggested in Editor & Publisher. If so, that doesn't exonerate Rove. Rather, it could make for some interesting pairing under the federal conspiracy statute (which was the statute most commonly employed during Watergate)."
Source: CNN

CIA agent's husband attacks Rove

Lawyers Secured Rove's Waiver

Reporter, not Rove, outed CIA operative, sources say

Pressure mounts on Karl Rove

Rove and the Right

Spectacular Mammatus Clouds over Nebraska

Wondrous: "Spectacular Mammatus Clouds over Hastings, Nebraska, USA".

Voudon pilgrimage of Saut D’Eau, Haiti

Today, thousands of Voudon (Voodoo) believers from Haiti and abroad will make a pilgrimage to the sacred waters of Saut D’Eau, a waterfall where Erzulie Freda -- the Voudon spirit of love, art, romance and sex -- appeared twice in the 19th century.

Freda is a beautiful, wealthy white woman, a promiscuous love goddess-seductress, difficult and demanding, who loves luxurious items such as perfume, champagne and gold. She wears three wedding bands, one for each husband: Damballa, Agwe and Ogoun.

Her sister, the dark-skinned Erzulie Dantor, is the spirit of motherly love, cognate of Saint Barbara Africana in the Roman Catholic Church. Dantor is heterosexual in the sense that she has a child, but she is also the patron loa, or saint, of lesbians ...

Australia: ID card on the table again

"Back in the mid-1980s, when the idea of an Australia Card was first raised by the Hawke Government, it was John Howard who campaigned vigorously against it ... But times have changed. "
Source: ABC Oz

PM puts ID card back on agenda

Blair faces rebellion over ID card 'disaster'

No national ID card: Ruddock Daily Telegraph, Australia - Jun 28, 2005

God Under Howard

Extremism no answer, say Muslims

"Osama bin Laden's standing has dropped significantly in some key Muslim countries, while support for suicide bombings and other acts of violence has 'declined dramatically', a survey has found.

"Predominantly Muslim populations in six North African, Middle East and Asian countries are also as alarmed as Western nations about Islamic extremism, which is now seen as a threat in their own nations, the poll found."
Sydney Morning Herald

Slippery escape for invisible villains

Australia's detention centres scandal, and the Westminster parliamentary tradition of ministerial responsibility:

Q: "Prime Minister, did you give any consideration, in light of this report, to replacing [Vanstone]?"
Howard: "No."
Q: "Why not?"
Howard: "Because I don't think the circumstances supported such a decision. I indicated last weekend that ministers should go if they are directly responsible for significant failings or mistakes, or if their continued presence is damaging to the Government.
Source: SMH

Emphasis mine. Amanda 'Amandatory Detention' Vanstone must go, and immediately.

Alvarez lawyer slams Ruddock

In a corner of Kenya, women rule

Neglected rights create a village

"UMOJA, Kenya -- Seated on tan sisal mats in the shade, Rebecca Lolosoli, matriarch of a village for women only, took the hand of a frightened 13-year-old girl. The child was to wed a man nearly three times her age; Lolosoli told her she didn't have to.

"The man was Lolosoli's brother, but that didn't matter. This is an area where women rule.
''You are a small girl. He is an old man,' said Lolosoli, who gives haven to girls running from forced marriages. ''Women don't have to put up with this nonsense anymore.'

"Ten years ago, a group of women established the village of Umoja, which means unity in Swahili, on a field of dry grasslands. The women said they had been raped, and, as a result, abandoned by their husbands, who saidthey had shamed their community.

"Stung by the treatment, Lolosoli, a charismatic woman with a crown of dark hair, decided no men would live in their village of mud-and-dung huts.

"The men of her tribe started their own village across the way, often monitoring activities in Umoja and spying on the women.

"What started as a group of homeless women looking for a place of their own became a successful and happy village. About three dozen women live in Umoja, and run a cultural center and camping site for tourists visiting the adjacent Samburu National Reserve. Umoja has flourished, eventually attracting so many women seeking help that they hired men to haul firewood, traditionally women's work."
The Boston Globe

Turning our sacred children into consumers

My beloved 13-yar-old son Remy has just gone home on the train to Sydney after spending part of his school holidays with Dad at Sandy Beach.

As always, he has kept me on my toes with a welcome and endless procession of questions about things he never hears in Sydney. He hears why Iraqis aren't our enemies, why it is that television only shows us competitive sports instead of co-operative sports, and why children are taught in schools to honour politicians, nations and flags.

Wide-eyed as a traveller seeing an exotic country for the first time, my son listens to why it is that governments and local councils plant millions of ornamental trees instead of ornamental fruit and nut trees. Why it is that families and neighbours used to play music together in each other's homes but now buy CDs and DVDs. Why small blocks of land cost hundreds of thousands of dollars while millions of hectares owned by banks and corporations sit idle.

I show him how offices are designed for surveillance of staff and customers, and I share with him why on this block the home owners and renters have had to buy 100 washing machines instead of one or two large ones at a fraction of the cost. He listens as I explain that if the authorities could find a way to charge us for sunshine we would have had solar power 30 years ago and no climate change today.

As any parent does, I ask what he's been studying at school since I last saw him. I ask about what he's doing in English ("mainly just videos" -- it is not his fault he's never heard of Charles Dickens, Ralph Waldo Emerson or Gore Vidal) and Maths and Science. I ask what he's doing in Geography.

"We've been doing Africa."

"What countries?"

"The Congo, Kenya ... Zimbabwe."

Aha! Then my son will be learning about how the diamond trade fuels armed conflict in Africa, the millions recently killed in the Congo Wars, the Kenyan starvation crisis and the massacres, the incredible and mysterious ancient civilisation of Great Zimbabwe, and of course the devastating slum clearances in Zimbabwe and dozens of other poor countries.

No, his teacher hasn't mentioned any of these. He has never heard of imperialism, colonialism or neo-colonialism.

"What, then?"

"Tourism."

I am reminded of the words of no less a radical authority than Jesus Christ: "And whoever offends against one of these little ones … it would be better for him to have a millstone hung around his neck and for him to be cast into the sea."

P Sainath on farmer suicides in India

One of the best interviews I've heard in weeks or months. It's the second part of the one-hour program, Late Night Live, with Phillip Adams, who regularly scoops the best interviews in Australia.

"Farmers all around the world are committing suicide, and it is not uncommon in Australia. However, the suicide rate of farmers in India, both men and woman, who are so crushed by circumstances beyond their control, is increasing.

"P. Sainath [Rural Editor at The Hindu] has spent years covnering the Indian countryside and he's been described as one of the world's greatest experts on famine and hunger.

"He discusses the ongoing situation for farmers, and the huge disparity between poverty and prosperity in India."

Farmer Suicides in India

Listen Real Media ~ Windows Media ~ Download MP3 ~ Podcast

St Swithin's Day: Watch the skies

Feast day of St Swithin (Swithun), England, confessor, patron of Winchester
(Small Cape marigold, Calendula pluvialis, is today’s plant, dedicated to this saint. The esoteric meaning of this plant is ‘omen; sign’.)

Watch the weather today
Our story today takes us back more than a millennium, to the days when the British Isles were beset by Viking raids and Charlemagne’s empire ruled supreme in Europe. St Swithin (or Swithun) was Bishop of Winchester, England, and adviser to King Egbert of Wessex (d. 839) and probably tutor to his son Ethelwulf. He was called the ‘drunken saint’, but no such behaviour is recorded of him ...

An old English legend says that the good bishop wished to be buried in the churchyard of the cathedral, in a humble grave outside the north wall, so that the ‘sweet rain of heaven might fall upon his grave’. Nine years later his monks tried to move his remains inside the cathedral but there was a violent thunderstorm and rain for the following 40 days and 40 nights. Believing their beloved late bishop to be weeping in distress, they abandoned the venture. Miraculously, two rings of iron, fastened on his gravestone, came out as soon as they were touched, and left no mark of their place in the stone. When the stone was taken up, and touched by the rings, by themselves they fastened to it again ...

Emmys disrespect writers

"So the Emmy Award nominations were announced this morning and there are 16 awards for actors, and five for writers, which are listed after all the technical awards, which includes seven awards for sound mixing.

"Only in Hollywood are the people who mix the sound more important the people who created the sound in the first place.

"Writers should be the absolutely most celebrated part of the Emmy Awards. Their awards should come right at the climax of the program after all the little talking heads have their gold men, just before the best shows are announced.

"Without writers there is nothing, and they get almost no credit. Name one television writer. Most people can’t but they can rattle of the cast of Friends quickly enough.

"Writers create the concept, the characters and the settings but the actors get tons more money, job security and public attention. It makes no sense to pay the people who memorize a line someone else has written more money then the person who wrote in the first place.

"Why are writers at the bottom of the creative totem pole, below even craft services? Because we don’t respect intelligence in this society. The eye candy of a television series is seemingly more important then talent behind it.

"Actors don’t create characters. Directors don’t create stories. Makeup artists, who have two awards listed way higher than any writing award, don’t give a show meaning. Writers do all of these things and then are treated like hired help.

"All the shows that were good, that lasted, M*A*S*H, The Simpsons, E.R., every show that has become a cultural touchstone became that because of the writers ..."
Source: Blogcritics.org

Massacre in Colombia: US aid must stop

"On February 21, 2005, Luis Eduardo Guerra-Guerra, one of the founders and leaders of the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado, was murdered in an area near the Mulatos River. Three children and four other adults were also murdered in this massacre Paramilitary checkpoints present in prior years on the road between San Jose and Apartado have been removed, but there are now checkpoints of the Colombian Police and Army. A police station (link to photo) was put within the village of San Jose, against the wishes of the peace community, which observes a non-violent resistance to the armed conflict. In response to the placing of the Police station in the village of San Jose, the Peace Community has abandoned their village, moving to a new site a few km away, where they are living in a new settlement, for which construction has begun.

"The background of events in this region of Colombia is comprehensively summarized in a Background section of this report. A list (spreadsheet from the community) of 500 violations of human rights, including other massacres that the people of San Jose de Apartado have suffered, is also presented. San Jose’s website (in Spanish) offers more recent information. San Jose represents the experience (website with comprehensive listing of human rights violations in Colombia, in Spanish) of many rural communities in Colombia: the aggression toward them is systematic.

"The culpability of the armed forces in the most serious of human rights violations has been acknowledged by the Colombian Procuraduria, which in May 2005 issued a decision (document in Spanish) that disciplinary action will be taken against units of the Army and Police that were in command of the region in which San Jose de Apartado is located in the years 2000 to 2002, for their responsibility in the same types of violations of human rights then in San Jose, including massacres. Please see the Background document and list of violations from the community for details on those violations.

"US aid must not support the Colombian Police and Army in such behavior."
Source: ZNet

Here's a surprise: Prayer "won't help sick" -- Lancet

"Praying for people who are facing heart surgery does not raise their chances of a cure or of avoiding death, according to an unusual study published in the British medical weekly The Lancet.

"US doctors enrolled 748 patients with coronary artery disease who were about to undergo cardiac or arterial treatment using a catheter, a technique that can be done under local anaesthetic and is less invasive than open surgery but still carries a risk.

"The patients were assigned to two groups of roughly equal numbers.

"The first group had prayers said for them at a distance by Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and others; the second one had no prayers said for them.

"In addition to this, half of each group received bedside training in music, imagery and touch -- practising relaxed breathing and listening to laid-back music to prepare for their operation -- and half did not.

"At a six-month follow-up check, there was no significant difference in the outcome between the prayer and no prayer groups, in terms of mortality, the number of heart attacks or readmissions to hospital.

"But in both groups, the patients who received the "music, imagery and touch" treatment did get a perceptible benefit."
Source: Sydney Morning Herald

Well spotted, Baz 'Lazarus with a Triple Bypass' le Tuff.

David Bellamy asked to stand down

Statement from Paul Allen, CAT Development Director:

"Over the past three decades, the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) has consistently worked to educate the public, on the need for urgent action to combat the consequences of human activity upon our planet. One of the most serious of these effects is climate change. Informed scientific opinion is now firmly of the view that climate change presents a real and serious problem.

"Some of Prof Bellamy's recent published statements seem to be flying in the face of the considered opinion of the majority of the scientific community. Such statements are clearly inconsistent with the standpoint of CAT.

"Whilst the Centre is most appreciative of Bellamy's support for CAT's work, in view of his current position and recent public statements on climate change, we now have no option but to remove his name from our list of patrons as we no longer feel able for Bellamy's name to be associated with the work of the Centre for Alternative Technology."
Centre for Alternative Technology

What are the top sites?

What are the best sites on the Internet? I'm collecting them for the Planet Directory and another project I'll be sharing with readers at a later date.

If there is a site that you really like and should be in the Planet Directory, I invite you to leave a comment here. No limit to the number of sites you can mention.

If you get a moment to check that it's not already in the Planet Directory, and leave the correct URL, that would save me many moments. Thanks a lot.

[A reader wants to know how to know if a site is already in the Planet Directory without searching for days. Good point. Try Search, using the Scriptorium search engine, not the Book of Days one.]

US Senators Hear of "Degrading" Interrogations

WASHINGTON -- During weeks of steady interrogation, soldiers at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, forced a suspected terrorist to wear a leash, perform dog tricks, wear women's underwear on his head and dance with a male interrogator ? treatment that U.S. military investigators said was degrading and abusive.

The investigators recommended that the prison commander, Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, be reprimanded for not monitoring those interrogations, the investigators told a Senate committee Wednesday.

But the top U.S. commander in charge of the prison, defending his rejection of that advice, told senators that the interrogation techniques violated no U.S. law or policy.
LA Times

Iraqi civilian casualties "128,000"

07/12/05 'UPI' - - BAGHDAD -- An Iraqi humanitarian organization is reporting that 128,000 Iraqis have been killed since the U.S. invasion began in March 2003.

Mafkarat al-Islam reported that chairman of the 'Iraqiyun humanitarian organization in Baghdad, Dr. Hatim al-'Alwani, said that the toll includes everyone who has been killed since that time, adding that 55 percent of those killed have been women and children aged 12 and under.

'Iraqiyun obtained data from relatives and families of the deceased, as well as from Iraqi hospitals in all the country's provinces. The 128,000 figure only includes those whose relatives have been informed of their deaths and does not include those were abducted, assassinated or simply disappeared.

The number includes those who died during the U.S. assaults on al-Fallujah and al-Qa'im. 'Iraqiyun's figures conflict with the Iraqi Body Count public database compiled by Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies. According to the Graduate Institute of International Studies' database, 39,000 Iraqis have been killed as a direct result of combat or armed violence since March 2003. No official estimates of Iraqi casualties from the war have been issued by the Pentagon, which insists that it does not do 'body counts.' The Washington Post on July 12 reported that U.S. military deaths in Iraq now total 1,755.
UPI

Fall of the Bastille

1789 French Revolution: Parisians stormed the Bastille Prison in Paris and freed seven political prisoners.

When the revolutionary mob stormed the French prison they were surprised to find most of the cells empty but for the miserable scratchings of prisoners on the walls.

Only seven prisoners were resident, under the relatively (for his time) lenient penal policies of King Louis XVI (1754 - 1793). Among those inmates, Marquis de Sade (1740 - 1814) is believed to have triggered the assault by crying that people were being executed inside.

Three of the prisoners were old men, legitimately incarcerated; two of these had become insane, no doubt because of the horrible conditions in the cells. The other four prisoners had been in the Bastille for only four years each, for various crimes such as forgery. The seven were paraded through the streets as heroes, though the revolutionaries must have been disappointed that they did not have more to show off.

The Man in the Iron Mask
It was widely believed at the time and for years afterwards, that the wasted body of the celebrated Man in the Iron Mask had been found there, with the dreadful mask still on his skull.

Held for over forty years in prison [the 19th Century folklorist Robert Chambers says only the last five years of his imprisonment were actually in Bastille] during the reign of King Louis XVI, the Man in the Iron Mask was an unknown prisoner. When travelling from prison to prison, he always wore a mask of velvet, not iron. He was buried as ‘M. de Marchiel’, but his true identity has never been revealed. One suggestion was that he was the Duc de Vermandois, an illegitimate son of Louis XVI.

Alexandre Dumas in his romantic novel suggested that he was an illegitimate elder brother of the king, with Cardinal Mazarin his father – a suggestion originally made by Voltaire.

Lord Acton, the British historian, suggested a minister of the Duke of Mantua, who, in his negotiations with the king, was found to be treacherous and imprisoned at Pignerol.

Whenever he was moved, he was disguised with a velvet and whalebone mask, though it entered the popular imagination that this mysterious, unknown character, was masked with iron. Whoever this mystery man was, he apparently died on November 19, 1703; his dungeon was scraped to the stone, and his doors and windows burned, lest any inscribed message get out to the world and thus reveal his identity, and Louis’s great cruelty to the representative of another state.

My Year With Nike

"With school budget squeezes across the country, it can be hard to look a corporate gift horse in the mouth. But a fourth-grade teacher in Beaverton, Oregon, Nike's headquarters, does just that. After a year of exercise-oriented field trips to the Nike Campus, Rachel Cloues looks at the implications behind opening school doors to big business. Sure, the kids got cool gift bags and learned hip-hop dancing. But Nike learned the better lesson: How to establish early brand loyalty and get great PR. -- Hannah Lobel" http://adbusters.org/the_magazine/content/view/127/125/

Source: Utne

Cuba's Tugboat Massacre

1994 ‘13 de Marzo’ Tugboat Massacre: Forty-one refugees were killed by agents of the Cuba government.

Although the passengers attempted to surrender, and many of them held their children up in the air, Fidel Castro’s Coast Guard was relentless in its savage attack and blasted the helpless passengers with water cannons ...

New York Draft Riots, 1863

1863 New York City, USA: First day of the New York Draft Riots in response to President Abraham Lincoln's Enrolment Act of Conscription to draft men to fight in the ongoing Civil War. The first draft lottery was held on July 11, 1863.

The riots, which lasted five days, ending on July 17, are probably the worst in United States history, with possibly 1,000 people or more dying over four days; 18 blacks were hanged, and five drowned ...

Grandpa meets Miabella

Miabella Sunshine Wilson

New baby Miabella Sunshine Wilson and a few more of the clan. Julia is my daughter and Remy is my 2nd son, and the others are all Julia's children.
(Click thumbnail to enlarge)

Royal Society: "conspicuous failure of the G8 ..."

It doesn't get any more authoritative than the Royal Society:

"In reaction to the publication ... of the G8 communique on climate change, Lord May of Oxford, President of the Royal Society, said:

"'At the heart of this communique is a disappointing failure by the leaders of the G8 unequivocally to recognise the urgency with which we must be addressing the global threat of climate change. Make no mistake, the science already justifies reversing, not merely slowing the global growth of greenhouse gas emissions. It is the responsibility of the leaders of the G8 nations to respond to this. And further delays will make the G8s avowed commitment in this communique to avoid dangerous impacts of climate change extremely difficult.

"'The conspicuous failure of the G8 explicitly to mention even the need for targets to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases underlines our concern.'"
Royal Society | News

It made me laugh, anyway

Why can't my life be as good as my dreams? In my dreams I seem to get the girl and the laughs. I'm not kidding; this is true: I had the weirdest dream last night.

In my dream I visited my friend, the lawyer, at his home. A pretty young woman led into his large living room a ridiculously large elephant that I had apparently given Mark as a gift quite some time earlier, and I was a bit peeved that either she or my mate had removed its roller skates. Evidently the roller skates were supposed to have been an integral part of the gift.

At this point, I noticed that my friend the lawyer, who was seated at a kitchen bench, was hanging his head and weeping, for a reason or reasons unknown to me. I was deeply, sincerely moved in my dream, and it still moves me in my waking hours.

I asked Mark what the matter was and he sobbed that because he'd been allowing some friends, who were in poor health, to stay in his house as boarders, the government was prosecuting him for running a hospital without a licence. Then I said that was a real shame.

"But," I added after a pause that would do credit to Jack Benny, "you have to admit you do have seven wards in your house, and the best cardio-thoracic facility in the State."

I don't know what my mate thought, or what you think, but I woke up laughing like a loon. Which is a real pity, because if I'd stayed asleep I might have got the girl.

Feast day of St Veronica

Saint Veronica derives from a late-medieval legend. She was supposedly a woman of Jerusalem; when Christ passed carrying the cross on his way to Golgotha, she wiped his face of sweat and blood with her veil (or a towel). His image stayed on the cloth, which became Vera-Icon (Latin: true image) and is still a relic at St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. She thus became ‘St Veronica’, although her name may come from the Latin for veil, vernicula, suggesting that the story preceded the naming of her.

A variant of the name ‘Veronica’ is Berenice, who, by tradition, was the (Biblically unnamed) woman with a 12-year-long “issue of blood”, cured by Jesus at Capernaum (Mark 5:26). This traditional connection with Veronica no doubt came from the ill woman’s faith that by merely touching the hem of Jesus’ garment, she would be cured. In medieval times it was noticed that the bright blue flowers of the plant speedwell supposedly resemble the face of Christ and thus are named Veronica spp. after her.

In bullfighting the most classic movement with the cape is called Veronica, as the cape is swung slowly before the face of the beast, like Veronica’s wiping of Christ’s face ...

A hawk questions himself as his son goes to war

Sometimes it takes the imminent possibility of personal disadvantage for pro-war people to pause to consider war's realties. Regrettably, it rarely seems to take the form of conspicuous compassion for the victims, but as with the previous post, I suppose one must be thankful for even tiny mercies.

"Eliot Cohen is a neoconservative, and a member of the Project for a New American Century; he's the author of Supreme Command; and he has a son going to Iraq as an infantry officer." -- Metafilter

"I could not imagine, for example, that the civilian and military high command would treat 'Phase IV' -- the post-combat period that has killed far more Americans than the 'real' war -- as of secondary importance to the planning of Gen. Tommy Franks's blitzkrieg. I never dreamed that Ambassador Paul Bremer and Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the two top civilian and military leaders early in the occupation of Iraq -- brave, honorable and committed though they were -- would be so unsuited for their tasks, and that they would serve their full length of duty nonetheless. I did not expect that we would begin the occupation with cockamamie schemes of creating an immobile Iraqi army to defend the country's borders rather than maintain internal order, or that the under-planned, under-prepared and in some respects mis-manned Coalition Provisional Authority would seek to rebuild Iraq with big construction contracts awarded under federal acquisition regulations, rather than with small grants aimed at getting angry, bewildered young Iraqi men off the streets and into jobs.

"I did not know, but I might have guessed."

Eliot Cohen is Robert E. Osgood Professor of Strategic Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.
Washington Post

Bush's Press Secretary interrogated over Rove

What's happening? Can it be that the roll-over-and-die US media are getting some teeth at last? Of course, it wouldn't have happened if one of their own hadn't been chucked in the slammer for withholding informants' identities. Still, gratitude for small mercies, I guess.

Read the transcript for a really good laugh at Scott McClellan's (and the Shrub's) expense.

Flashback: September 29, 2003: White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan on Karl Rove: "He wasn't involved,... The president knows he wasn't involved. ... It's simply not true." Link

Valerie Plame (Wikipedia)

Almost 9,400 people pledge to resist UK ID cards

"For those of you reading from Britain, a reminder that a pledge has been set up on the Pledge Bank website which aims to get 10,000 people to pledge to resist registering for id cards by the 9th October.

"However, in just a month, already almost 9,400 people have already signed the pledge to resist, and it only needs another 600 or so people to sign the pledge for the No2id campaign to reach their target.

"Please sign the pledge, if you are opposed to the introduction of id cards in Britain by clicking here."
The Progressive Blog Alliance HQ

1992 The Kiama Blowhole Tragedy

The north coast of the state of New South Wales, Australia, where your almanac is produced, is very beautiful, but for picture postcard scenery, take a drive south from Sydney along the Prince’s Highway. After a few hours of picturesque countryside and coastline and you will arrive at the small town of Kiama, famous for a spectacular natural phenomenon.

The Kiama Blowhole is a natural cavern or chasm at Blowhole Point, on a seaside cliff near town. When the seas run from the south-east, a spectacular plume of water erupts as high as 60 metres (about 65 yards). Something like 600,000 people a year come to the Blowhole to marvel at the sight.

The British naval surgeon and explorer of Australia, George Bass, was the first European to see this sight, when he anchored his whale boat in the sheltered bay, now known as Kiama Harbour, in December, 1797.
Bass wrote: “The earth for a considerable distance round in the form approaching a circle seemed to have given way; it was now a green slope … Towards the centre was a deep ragged hole of about 25 to 30 feet in diameter and on one side of it the sea washed in through a subterraneous passage...with a most tremendous noise ...”

The Blowhole and the adjacent lighthouse have long been a popular tourist attraction. In January, 1889 a tightrope walker named Charles Jackson attracted large crowds to see his daring crossings of the mouth of the chasm.

Tragedy strikes Kiama
Kiama had been the site of a tragedy on February 22, 1949 when a ship called the Bombo, a steel vessel of 640 tons built in Leith, Scotland in 1930 especially for carrying blue metal from Kiama to Sydney, sank in a gale with the loss of all but two of her crew. The Blowhole itself has also been the location of a number of suicides. In 1992, tragedy struck the town again, this time at the Blowhole. And it was not to be the last occasion.

On Saturday, July 11, 1992, 26-year-old Afghan refugee Fared Cina, his wife Angella, 28 and their four-year-old daughter Baran, were standing by the blowhole as so many have before and since. Enjoying the “whoosh!” of the famous blowhole with the the Cina family were Mrs Cina’s nephew Arash, aged 7.

Nasarin Zobair, 37, her daughter Kahlida, 21 and eleven-year-old son Mustafa were also watching Nature’s show with their friends, when the water rose up with tremendous force, knocking all seven of them into the chasm and rushing them out to sea, with three relatives left standing hopelessly nearby. Mr Cina’s body was never recovered.

At the time I had very close associations with Australia’s relatively small community of Afghan people, most of them refugees who suffered unspeakable abuses under the Communists and Taliban, and I remember well the pall of grief that fell over this already benighted community.

Tragedy strikes again
Tragically, on April 10, 1997, the bodies of Sydney cousins Masuda Khushbakht, 16, and Khatera Nawabi, 20, both relatives of four of the people who died in the blowhole in 1992, were found floating in the ocean off Kiama.

Those who lost their lives in the Kiama Blowhole in two separate incidents were refugees from oppression who had settled in Australia, or else their children. The mother of one of the victims of the 1992 tragedy, Mahboba Rawi, who had formerly walked for ten days from Kabul, across mountains to Pakistan to escape tyranny, suffered as any woman would suffer when losing a child. However, after some time, which saw the breakdown of her marriage to a fellow Afghan refugee, she turned her attention to the plight of others whom she considered less fortunate even than herself. She helped to establish programs to aid the people suffering in the refugee camps of Peshawar, Pakistan, where she herself had been forced to live in the 1980s.

Newsweek to nail Rove

The July 18 issue of Newsweek will run a story: Matt Cooper's Source: What Karl Rove told Time magazine's reporter. David Corn tipped the story here and has analysis, namely, what it could mean for Bush's top adviser. Maybe soon Rove won't be thumbing his nose at the human race.

Lady Godiva Day

July 10, 1040 According to one tradition, Lady Godiva made her famous ride, naked on horseback, through the streets of Coventry, England. Thus, today is Lady Godiva Day in that city.

Lady Godiva – Godgyfu as her name was originally – really did exist and was a Saxon noblewoman and patron of the arts, married to Leofric, Duke of Mercia in England. The couple moved to Coventry, Warwickshire, from Shrewsbury, Shropshire (where Leofric had earned his fortune and title from the mutton trade). It is known that Leofric began spending large amounts of taxpayers’ money, as politicians are wont to do, on grandiose public works, while the people of Coventry, as people are wont to do, lived in poverty.

The legend says that Godiva, generous and strong-willed, was outraged at a poll or tax that Leofric was planning to levy on the people of Coventry, and she persistently asked him to lift the imposition, or at least use the money for the provision of works of art that the peasants might enjoy. Leofric laughed so much that he injured his left wrist slightly as he fell off his stool in the hall of the village burghers. However, the nouveau-riche gentleman offered her a deal: if his wife would ride naked on horseback through the town, then he would agree to waive the tax

Blair Put UK in the Firing Line

The war on Iraq made the attack on London inevitable

"Amid all the punditry about whether there was an al-Qaida connection to Thursday's attacks on London commuters, it should not be forgotten that the bloody trail of blame leads straight to 10 Downing Street.

"The prime minister's early return to Westminster was a fitting response to the carnage unleashed on the capital. It was the only hint of personal responsibility for our entanglement in a war that has made prime targets of innocent Britons.

"The fury generated by Tony Blair's decision to coat-tail George Bush into what only the blind still call a justified war has put us all in the firing line. When Blair led us into the war on terror, he knew that a country with which Islamist networks had no immediate axe to grind would be drawn into their sphere of hate as a consequence."
Common Dreams

Alternative to Acrobat for PDF

For about two months, I haven't been able to open my Acrobat reader for PDF. I've tried uninstalling, downloading, reinstalling, about three or four times.

Baz 'Adobe Sweet Adobe' le Tuff sent me this link http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php for a third party reader. It's only 1.2mb and workd beautifully.

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/pdfrd.zip

Charles IV and 135797531

1357 5:31 am, Saturday: Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor assisted laying the foundation stone of Charles Bridge in Prague.

How do we know the precise time? Because the palindromic number 135797531, carved on the Old Town bridge tower, was chosen by the royal astrologists and numerologists as the best time for starting the bridge construction.

We have a webcam showing the beautiful Charles Bridge and environs ...

Permaculture: Most urgent solution of all

One thing we never seem to hear these days in discussions about Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa and all the hot spots and big issues is the most important issue of all: land use, and the permaculture solution.

How the land is used determines almost all conditions of human life and the prime factors of prosperity, equality, liberty, poverty and conflict. I have to admit with surprise and dismay that more people seemed to have been aware of this in 1975 than are in 2005. Wha' happened?

We permaculturists simply can't have done our work well enough. Of course, we have every big vested interest known to man, such as governments and capital, in opposition to this rational solution, with their media working hard to maintain the status quo despite its tragic consequences for us all.

I'm also constantly baffled how often people indicate to me that they think permaculture is a synonym for 'organic gardening'. It is actually a principle of land use design (based on five zones) for any bioregional, climatic or cultural environment on earth. It is, to my knowledge, the smartest one worked out in human history. I believe that without it, the Planet as we know it has virtually zero chance of survival, and the propagation of the elegant principle is thus extremely urgent.

I'm utterly fed up with hearing issues discussed without permaculture, the most important and urgent solution of all, as a central part of the discussion. Because I was so upset that permaculture was missing from the G8 and even Live8 agenda, I've decided to add it to the regular postings in the Blogmanac and try to get the message out a bit more regularly. I invite readers to follow links whenever they appear here. Here's the first:

"'We need to get these competent gardeners of the Third World to rich countries to teach people how to grow food.' Bill Mollison 1989

"What is Permaculture? Why is it nicknamed the quiet, peaceful rebellion? To quote David Holmgren, Permaculture is a design system for sustainable living and land use. The ethics of Permaculture are fairly simple: 1. Care of the Earth: Provision for all life systems to continue and multiply, 2. Care of People: Provision for people to access the resources necessary for their existence 3. Share our Resources: By governing our own needs, we can set resources aside to further our ethics.

"Now how Is America, and the rest of the western developed world breaking these ethical principles?

"I think we need to first begin with the western attitude towards agriculture ..."
American Chronicle

Permaculture links

"Permaculture Magazine"

There is also permaculture news constantly updating every day in the Almanac's Daily Planet News.

Paul Harvey's Tribute to Slavery, Nukes, Genocide

Hateful rant shows Disney's double standard on speech

"Disney/ABC radio personality Paul Harvey, one of the most widely listened to commentators in the United States, presented his listeners on June 23 with an endorsement of genocide and racism that would have been right at home on a white supremacist shortwave broadcast.

"Harvey's commentary began by lamenting the decline of American wartime aggression. 'We're standing there dying, daring to do nothing decisive because we've declared ourselves to be better than our terrorist enemies--more moral, more civilized,' he said. Drawing a contrast with what he cast as the praiseworthy nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II, Harvey lamented that 'we sent men with rifles into Afghanistan and Iraq and kept our best weapons in their silos'--suggesting that America should have used its nuclear arsenal in its invasions of both countries.

"Harvey concluded:

"'We didn't come this far because we're made of sugar candy. Once upon a time, we elbowed our way onto and across this continent by giving smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans. That was biological warfare. And we used every other weapon we could get our hands on to grab this land from whomever.

'And we grew prosperous. And yes, we greased the skids with the sweat of slaves. So it goes with most great nation-states, which--feeling guilty about their savage pasts--eventually civilize themselves out of business and wind up invaded and ultimately dominated by the lean, hungry up-and-coming who are not made of sugar candy.'"

Take action and read Harvey's full transcript:

FAIR.org

Be a Patriot -- Reform the Patriot Act

"The ACLU and Working Assets are joining together to ask for your help protecting the future of American freedom and privacy.

"Decisive House and Senate votes on the USA Patriot Act are right around the corner. For nearly four years, our government has claimed extraordinary powers that challenge our most fundamental principles of democracy. The Patriot Act was passed in the weeks immediately following September 11th, with the understanding that many of these powers –- especially the most controversial -- should only be temporary.
Click here to tell Congress to reform -- not expand -- the Patriot Act."
Source: Act for Change

Shelley: His heart would not burn

1822 Percy Bysshe Shelley (b. 1792) drowned on this day, aged only 29. The great English poet was the eldest son of a Member of Parliament and grandson of a baronet. He was sent to Eton for his education, where he was mocked and bullied as ‘Mad Shelley’, and later to Oxford University from which he was ‘sent down’ – expelled – for circulating a pamphlet entitled The Necessity of Atheism.

After eloping to Scotland with Harriet Westbrook he became interested in the ideas of the anarchist philosopher William Godwin ('The First Anarchist' as he is sometimes known). He began to visit Godwin’s house and fell in love with Mary Godwin, the sixteen-year-old daughter of Godwin by his first wife, the feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft, who had written A Vindication of the Rights of Women and had died eight days after Mary’s birth in 1797.

Smitten by Godwin’s daughter, his marriage with Harriet in tatters, Shelley eloped to France with Mary Godwin (Mary Shelley) and her 15-year-old stepsister Jane ‘Claire’ Clairmont. The sisters maintained a ménage à trois with the poet in various parts of Europe for the next eight years. In the summer of 1816 Claire urged that they should go to Lake Geneva (to be with the man of her obsession, Lord Byron, with whom she had previously had a one-night stand and to whom she later bore a child). It was at Lake Geneva that, as a result of a bet to see who could write the best Gothic novel, the brilliant young Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein.

In the Autumn of 1816, Harriet drowned herself in the Serpentine in London. Two years later, Shelley, pursued by creditors, suffering from ill-health, and understandably a social outcast in England, took his lovers to Italy, “the Paradise of Exiles” as he called it, where they could live more cheaply. In Italy he wrote prolifically much of the best poetry of his career. It was in Italy, however, that he met his demise. Shelley had often forecast his death by drowning ...

London bombs: Bush's hypocrisy

"Earlier today, Smiling turned Somber George Bush pretended not to welcome today’s all-too predictable attacks, which were certainly expected at some point by planners in the National Insecurity State.

He seized the opportunity to say that 'the contrast between what we’ve seen on the TV screens here, what’s taken place in London and what’s taking place here is incredibly vivid to me. On the one hand, we have people here who are working to alleviate poverty, to help rid the world of the pandemic of AIDS, working on ways to have a clean environment. And on the other hand, you’ve got people killing innocent people. And the contrast couldn’t be clearer between the intentions and the hearts of those of us who care deeply about human rights and human liberty, and those who kill—those who have got such evil in their heart that they will take the lives of innocent folks.'

Insofar as anything is happening at the G8 summit to reduce poverty, save global ecology, or overcome AIDS, we can be sure it is in spite of the White House’s best efforts. The Bush administration is a zealous, dedicated proponent of militantly regressive, so-called 'free-market' economics at home and abroad. The essence of Bush’s corporate-financed domestic and global policy agenda is massive state protection and subsidy for the already super-opulent combined with savage market discipline and coercive state punishment and regulation of the poor. The essence of this agenda is the externalization of corporate costs on to the broader society and the gravely endangered (in terms of human inhabitability) ecosphere. It is all about the distribution of wealth yet further upward in a world where:

* “The world’s richest 1% of people receive as much income as the poorest 57%”
* “The richest 10% of the U.S. population has an income equal to that of the poorest 43% of the world. Put differently, the income of the richest 25 million Americans is equal to that of almost 2 billion people.”
* “The income of the world’s richest 5% is 114 times that of the poorest 5%.”
(See Box 1.1., titled “Global Inequality – Grotesque Levels, Ambiguous Trends,” on p.19 in the first chapter of United Nations, Human Development Report 2002 at http://stone.undp.org/hdr/reports/global/2002/en/)"

ZNet

So, Mr Bremer, where did all the money go?

"At the end of the Iraq war, vast sums of money were made available to the US-led provisional authorities, headed by Paul Bremer, to spend on rebuilding the country. By the time Bremer left the post eight months later, $8.8bn of that money had disappeared. Ed Harriman on the extraordinary scandal of Iraq's missing billions ...

"The US Congress also voted to spend $18.4bn of US taxpayers' money on the redevelopment of Iraq. By June 28 last year, however, when Bremer left Baghdad two days early to avoid possible attack on the way to the airport, his CPA had spent up to $20bn of Iraqi money, compared with $300m of US funds. The 'reconstruction' of Iraq is the largest American-led occupation programme since the Marshall Plan -- but the US government funded the Marshall Plan. Defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Bremer have made sure that the reconstruction of Iraq is paid for by the 'liberated' country, by the Iraqis themselves.

"The CPA maintained one fund of nearly $600m cash for which there is no paperwork: $200m of it was kept in a room in one of Saddam's former palaces. The US soldier in charge used to keep the key to the room in his backpack, which he left on his desk when he popped out for lunch. Again, this is Iraqi money, not US funds ..."
Read on at The Guardian

Wikipedia London bomb article

2005 London transport explosions, a remarkable piece of quick work by the good folks at Wikipedia.

See also Technorati and the item below on this page, 'London bombings: blogs on frontline'.

Movie clip of new baby

No photos of the new baby yet, but Grandma accidentally took a short movie (MOV file, 8.5 megs) when meaning to take a photo (done the same thing myself -- just as well someone in the family can get things right). Julia had the bub at home, no doctor. She doesn't get her courage from me. That's Sienna holding the baby, whose name I don't know yet.

Plame: CIA leak case rocks US media

"A top US journalist has been jailed in a case that has concerned newsrooms across the nation.

"New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine faced 120 days in prison for refusing to name their sources to an inquiry into the unmasking of a CIA agent.

"Cooper has now said he will testify but Miller refused, in Wednesday's climax to a case dubbed an 'historic showdown' with the government.

"Journalists and media observers have greeted the saga with anger and dismay.

"'The case is particularly outrageous because... [the] prosecutor is training his guns on the wrong culprits,' Robert Kuttner wrote in the Boston Globe on Wednesday."
BBC

July 2003: Valerie Plame's work is revealed by conservative newspaper columnist Robert Novak
Sept 2003: Department of Justice launches probe into allegations that White House staff illegally blew her cover
Feb 2005: Appeals court rules Miller and Cooper must testify about their sources to inquiry
June 2005: Supreme Court refuses to take up the case

(Also from BBC)

London bombings: blogs on frontline

I just got an email from a friend in central London who told me about the bomb blast that took place a couple of hours ago. "We are locked in at work, everything is ok at the moment," she writes.

This just came in from Blog Herald:

"As news and first pictures start to emerge of the carnage caused by multiple bomb blasts on the London Underground (the Tube) blogs and bloggers are providing news that cant be gathered elsewhere (the BBC is currently offline, possibly due to traffic)

"The Guardian Newsblog is providing up to date reports from the chaos that combines the strength of the mainstream press with the imediacy of blogging.

"Across the Atlantic has up to the minute reports from the BBC TV coverage.
More shortly as this is still breaking news, watch this space for updates

"Updates: ABC TV here in Australia is running a live feed from the BBC: reports highly confused, 1, maybe more buses where bombs have exploded, multiple tube stations, reports of bodies in the street, 7 bomb sites, mixed reports of 'security incidents' in other English towns. BBC and CNN websites are both off line as at 10:20 GMT

"Reaching for Lucidity is covering the story from Littlehampton."
The Blog Herald

The Guardian writes: "We have no news yet of the number of injuries, or deaths, although eyewitnesses quoted on the BBC say there are a number of bodies under sheets, in several locations in the city."

ABC

BBC News

It's a girl!

My daughter Julia had a daughter weighing in at 4.2 kg. Mother and daughter are both well.

Date of birth July 7, 2005, 9:30 AM. A new sister for Sienna, Jayden, Briar and Bailey.

Staggering poll on Impeachment

"A recent Zogby poll reported that four in 10 Americans (42%) think Congress should consider impeaching Bush if he is found to have lied when giving his reasons for going to war in Iraq. [source]

"Only three mainstream outlets made even cursory mention of the poll last week when it came out."
WordWhammy

Google to Release Firefox Toolbar?

"daria42 writes 'Google is about to release a Firefox version of its toolbar, according to an e-mail sent to developers of the open source GoogleBar project. The e-mail claims to have been sent by Google engineer Fritz Schneider and is dated 1 July. 'It has pretty much the same features as the latest IE toolbar except of course for things like the popup blocker,' the e-mail said (Pop-up blocking is an in-built feature of Firefox).'"
Slashdot

I Wrote Bush's War Words -- In 1965: Daniel Ellsberg

"President Bush's explanation Tuesday night for staying the course in Iraq evoked in me a sense of familiarity, but not nostalgia. I had heard virtually all of his themes before, almost word for word, in speeches delivered by three presidents I worked for: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon. Not with pride, I recognized that I had proposed some of those very words myself.

"Drafting a speech on the Vietnam War for Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara in July 1965, I had the same task as Bush's speechwriters in June 2005: how to rationalize and motivate continued public support for a hopelessly stalemated, unnecessary war our president had lied us into.

"Looking back on my draft, I find I used the word 'terrorist' about our adversaries to the same effect Bush did ..."
Source: ZNet

Doubts over 'clean' nuke power

"Nuclear power generates more damaging greenhouse gas emissions than gas-fired power, an Australian scientist says.

"As federal and state politicians debate the merits of starting down the nuclear power path to help reduce Australia's contribution to global warming, scientists say it may not be so clean after all.

"University of NSW Institute of Environmental Studies senior lecturer Dr Mark Diesendorf says nuclear power stations do not emit carbon dioxide (CO2) themselves, but the processes involved in creating nuclear energy do.

"Mining, milling, uranium enrichment, nuclear fuel production, power station construction and operation, storage and reprocessing of spent fuel, long-term management of radioactive waste and closing down old power stations all require the burning of fossil fuels, he says."
Source: News Com

Tanabata Star Festival (Double 7 Day)

Tanabata Star Festival (Hoshi Matsuri; Weaving Loom Festival; Festival of the Seven Evenings) Japan

[Tanabata may be translated as ‘weaving with the loom (bata) placed on the shelf (tana)’.]Tanabata is a nationwide celebration, featuring very large festivals, with streets decorated with lanterns, festooned bamboo and colourful streamers, notably at Hiratsuka, Miyagi Prefecture and Shounan City, Kanagawa Prefecture. In some districts, such as Sendai City, the Tanabata festival is celebrated according to the lunar calendar, in early August, or specifically on August 7 ...

Scary people

----- Original Message ----- From: Jill The Legend To: pipwilson at acay.com.au Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2005 1:12 AM Subject: Question - Sandy Beach area


Hello Mr Wilson,

We have been admiring your extensive website on Sandy Beach and its surrounds, as well as the many other interesting facets of this site.

May we ask you a question about Sandy Beach as we are looking to purchase a house for sale, 11 [name deleted -- PW] Rd later this month at auction. Do you know the residents of this area/street at all? Our main concern is that there are 'yahoos' or native Australians, that may cause the re-sale value to be low.

I'm sorry we are asking you, its just that there are no other websites or local information bureaus that are able to help us. The Coffs real estate agent, is a little vague about the residents of the eastern side of the highway.

We are in Sweden at the moment but returnig in the near future.

Hope you can help as you seem to have the run down on everything in the area....if not, we shall continue to read your almanac regularly....its fantastic!

Cheers,

Jill & Steen

INTERNATIONAL THRILLSEEKERS INC.

* Ø * Ø * Ø *

Dear Jill and Steen,

Thank you for your kind comments. Unfortunately, I don't know any of the residents of [name deleted -- PW] Rd personally, so I can't vouch that they are any better or any worse than you.

For information about native Australians in the area, perhaps you might ask the good people at Yarrawarra Aboriginal Corporation, Red Rock Rd, Corindi Beach, NSW, 2456. I'm sure they would find your enquiry amusing and deal with it appropriately. I will post your enquiry on my website so local residents can take note.

I do hope that you get the neighbours you deserve.

Sincerely,

Pip Wilson

A Sandy Beach Almanac

Cop of the Year Award

"US President George W Bush hit a police officer while he was riding a bike on the grounds of the Gleneagles golf resort in Scotland ...

"Bsh has fallen off his bike before."
Source: SMH

Glad to know the Shrub has so much free time on his hands.

Annette Kellerman: The Australian Mermaid

1887 Annette Kellerman (born at Marrickville, NSW; d. November 5, 1975), Australian professional swimmer, vaudeville and film star, women's rights advocate and writer, portrayed on the silver screen by Esther Williams.

Billed as "The Diving Venus" and "The Australian Mermaid", Kellerman was famous (or notorious) in her day for wearing a one-piece bathing suit instead of the old pantaloons costume, and in 1907 was arrested in Boston, USA for wearing one of her naughty creations.

As a toddler she was crippled with rickets (caused by Vitamin D deficiency, not uncommon in Sydney in Australia's 1890s Depression), requiring her to wear leg braces until the age of seven. Swimming was prescribed to strengthen her limbs, and by 1902 she won her first title: Swimming Champion of New South Wales. She was the women's 100 metres world record holder by the age of 16 and in 1905 at the age of 17 she was the first woman to attempt to swim the English Channel, although unsuccessfully:

It was two o’clock in the morning when we assembled on the beaches. The pores of my skin were rubbed full of porpoise oil and my goggles glued on. I was ready. It was the most terrible ordeal I ever went through. The salt water stung my eyes, and I was finally so blinded I could barely see a foot ahead of me. I became very seasick. After 11 hours in the cold and choppy seas, the tide turned, sweeping us all back from the French coast. It was my first Waterloo.

She also appeared in several movies, sometimes as a mermaid. Kellerman was famous for her advocacy of the right of women to wear a one-piece bathing suit, which was a controversial topic in the early 20th century. She was portrayed by Esther Williams in the 1952 movie Million Dollar Mermaid. Williams said of her: "She was her own woman. She didn’t follow any rules, she didn’t let anybody tell her, ‘Women can’t do that. They can’t swim,’ and I always had a warm feeling for any woman who stands her ground and says, ‘I’m going to do this whether it’s proper or not.’"

Annette Kellerman was sister to cinematographer Maurice Kellerman.

Kellerman herself was in several early movies: Miss Kellerman's Diving Feats (1907); Miss Annette Kellerman (1909); Jepthah's Daughter: A Biblical Tragedy (1909); The Perfectly Formed Woman (1910); The Mermaid (1911); A Daughter of the Gods (1916); Queen of the Sea (1918); What Women Love (1920) and Annette Kellerman Returns to Australia (1933), and she played herself in The Great Stone Face (1968).

G8: Why Are People Protesting?

"This is a page that aims to collect content and analysis of the main issues behind the G8 Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland. It aims to be an archive of texts, reports and websites that provide background information explaining why people are protesting against the policies of the G8."
Source: Indymedia UK

NSW Premier plays down Hillsong visit

Heads of both the major Australian parties are courting the Christian fundo vote, which proved so significant in the Fed elections late last year.

Now even Labor Premier of New South Wales, Bob Carr, is getting in on the charismaniac act, and my mate David Garland from PAN writes:

"Well maybe we should invite him to the next Full Moon on the Hill if he is so committed to what he has said. Mr Carr today said part of his role as premier was to attend functions and celebrations hosted by all religious denominations and faiths."

Here's the story at News (ptuii) dot com

By the way, if you live in or near Sydney, people travel from many k's to get to PAN's full moon event, so check them out. I can't begin to tell you how much I miss them.

DNA samples reveal new dolphin species

"Two north Queensland researchers have identified a new species of dolphin in Australian waters.

"The australian snubfin dolphin lives in shallow coastal waters in northern Australia and possibly Papua New Guinea.

"It initially was thought to have been an irrawady dolphin, usually found in Asia and Australia.

"But researcher Isabel Beasley, a PhD student from Townsville's James Cook University, says DNA samples and skull measurements have proved otherwise."
Source: ABC

Tynwald Day, Isle of Man

Today they will be partying off the coast of Ireland … or is it off the coast of England … or of Scotland? In the Irish Sea between Britain and Ireland lies the Isle of Man, where men are Manx and proud of it (and so are the women). Man (or Mann) is famous for Manx cats and Grand Prix motor sports, and it is a small island with a big history.

The Isle of Man is not part of the United Kingdom, but a Crown Dependency. Queen Elizabeth II is acknowledged as Lord of Mann, and in 1979 she presided over the millennial celebrations of the Tynwald, the Manx parliament, which is commemorated each year on July 5.

The High Court of Tynwald, as the parliament is known, is of Norse (Viking) origin and at over 1,000 years old is thus the oldest parliament in the world to enjoy an unbroken existence. (Iceland’s Althing was founded earlier but its existence was interrupted.) Tynwald has two branches, the Legislative Council and the House of Keys ...

Greenlighters: underground sex movement

"Greenlighters are an emerging underground movement of sexually promiscuous teenagers, including bisexual, homosexual, and heterosexual members. Members of this movement wear a green polo shirt with the collar up, indicating that they are open to pretty much any sexual adventure. When someone comes up to them and puts the collar down, they are "collared" and will go with that person and do whatever sexual act they ask. Transfer of money is not usually involved. Some parent groups are starting to get involved - urging parents to go through their kids clothes and confiscate green shirts and polos."
Source: Metafilter

Free-fall mannequin

The woman falls through space and bounces on big balls. Use your curser to help her.

Indian Ocean atoll alleged abuse site

CIA under fire for secret detentions. Indian Ocean atoll alleged abuse site

Island paradise or torture chamber?

"From satellite pictures, Diego Garcia looks like paradise.

"The small, secluded atoll in the Indian Ocean, with its coral beaches, turquoise waters and vast lagoon in the centre, is 1,600 kilometres from land in any direction.

"A perfect hideaway. But no one is allowed to set foot on it.

"The little-known British possession, leased to the United States in 1970, was a major military staging post in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. It continues to be, in effect, a floating aircraft carrier, housing 1,700 personnel who call it Camp Justice.

"But intelligence analysts say Diego Garcia's geographic isolation is now being exploited for other, darker purposes ..."
Source: South News

The Real News in the Downing Street Memos

This is The Real News in the Downing Street Memos:

"American media coverage of the Downing Street memo has largely focused on the assertion by Sir Richard Dearlove, head of British foreign intelligence, that war was seen as inevitable in Washington, where 'the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.'

"But another part of the memo is arguably more important. It quotes British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon as saying that 'the U.S. had already begun "spikes of activity" to put pressure on the regime.' This we now realize was Plan B.

"Put simply, U.S. aircraft patrolling the southern no-fly zone were dropping a lot more bombs in the hope of provoking a reaction that would give the allies an excuse to carry out a full-scale bombing campaign, an air war, the first stage of the conflict.

"British government figures for the number of bombs dropped on southern Iraq in 2002 show that although virtually none were used in March and April, an average of 10 tons a month were dropped between May and August.

"But these initial 'spikes of activity' didn't have the desired effect. The Iraqis didn't retaliate. They didn't provide the excuse Bush and Blair needed. So at the end of August, the allies dramatically intensified the bombing into what was effectively the initial air war.

"The number of bombs dropped on southern Iraq by allied aircraft shot up to 54.6 tons in September alone, with the increased rates continuing into 2003.

"In other words, Bush and Blair began their war not in March 2003, as everyone believed, but at the end of August 2002, six weeks before Congress approved military action against Iraq.

"The way in which the intelligence was 'fixed' to justify war is old news.

"The real news is the shady April 2002 deal to go to war, the cynical use of the U.N. to provide an excuse, and the secret, illegal air war without the backing of Congress."

Take the Bill O'Reilly Torture Quiz

"A new voice has joined the growing call for an investigation into U.S. interrogation and detention policies: Fox News Anchor Bill O’Reilly.

"In his commentary on the Fox web site, O’Reilly wrote: 'The Bush administration should set up an independent commission to investigate American detainee policy across the board.' Our guess is that your Senators will be surprised to learn that an influential conservative has made such a call.

"Get their attention on this issue with our Bill O'Reilly quiz."
Source: Human Rights First

Is US blogging dead?

USA: "Acknowledging the Internet's growth, a federal judge last year ordered the FEC to extend some of the nation's campaign finance and spending limits to political activity on the Webline.

"The FEC plans this summer to decide how far to go. Bloggers view whatever happens at the commission as just the first step in their quest to remain free of government oversight."
Bloggers band together to resist efforts at regulation

"Bill Hobbs has ceased publishing his blog. We're sorry to see his blog go. On the plus side, though, he has decided to replace it with an online magazine.His concern, of course, is that, since the FEC has decided to regulate blogs, blogging is now dead."
Source: The QuandO Blog

An End To 'Everybody's Press'?

See Google News on the subject

Yahoo self-instals toolbar on my browser

It's taken them years to figure out how to do this to my machine. They finally did it.

A few minutes ago there was suddenly a Yahoo! search bar on my Internet Explorer toolbar. I don't know how they did it, but I've uninstalled it and I'm not too impressed. It feels like someone coming into your house and sleeping in one of the beds.

Live8 online

Watch Live8 online here, sign the Live8 List here and check out Make Poverty History. And of course, the Live8 website. Good to hear that James Brown, Sheryl Crow and the Cure have joined the line-up of the Paris concert. Watch the rally on Make Poverty History TV.

See also Make Borders History

The Dog Days (Jul 3 - Aug 11)

In olden days it was believed that July's warmth, and the associated diseases, were to do with the heliacal rising and setting of the star Canicula – the Little Dog, or Dog Star (Sirius). Thus they called the period from July 3 to August 11, ‘caniculares dies’ -- ‘the Dog Days’.

Sirius comes from the Greek word seirios, meaning ‘scorching’. However, another explanation exists for the naming of the Dog Star: the Egyptians named it after Sihor, the Nile, and the Romans altered this to Sirius. According to Greek mythology, Sirius was seen as the dog of Orion the hunter, and he was also called kyon, Greek for dog ...

200,000 march to make poverty history

"More than 200,000 people today marched through the streets of Edinburgh, calling for resolute action on African poverty at next week's Group of Eight summit in nearby Gleneagles.

"The Make Poverty History rally, which formed a walking band of white around the heart of the Scottish capital, coincided with the Live 8 series of rock concerts in nine nations around the world."

Thanks Dave Muller at South News

"For full collected reports see IMC G8 Newsblast

"At least 200,000 demonstrators from very different backgrounds, ranging from religous organisations to samba bands and the Infernal Noise Brigade to the Clown Brigade, joined today's Make Poverty History march in Edinburgh. The organisers had called for people to wear white clothes. The march was set up with staggered starting times, but because of the number of people and small funnelled start gate many were unable to join the actual march. ReportPhotos: [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ]Audio: [ interviews speeches ]"
Source: Indymedia UK

For gorsake, stop laughing, this is serious!

One of my favourite Australian cartoons, by Stan Cross.

Man arrested for US warship protest

"A man was arrested yesterday following a low-key protest against a United States warship visiting Hobart in Tasmania.

"The guided missile destroyer USS Fitzgerald and its 300 crew arrived in Hobart early on Friday morning.

"Martin Wyness was arrested when, accompanied by his 11 year-old daughter Sophie, he parked his car across the port entrance.

"Mr Wyness says he believes in the message he was sending.

"'Basically it's a peaceful protest to say that the crew of the ship are very welcome in Hobart as always but perhaps the war machine they've brought with them isn't,' he said."
Source: ABC News

Truth, Lies and Intelligence

Truth, Lies and Intelligence

A documentary by Carmel Travers

If you thought Fahrenheit 9-11, Outfoxed, The Corporation and similar documentaries in our Cafe Diem! store were good, try to get to see Truth, Lies and Intelligence, by veteran Australian investigative journo, Carmel Travers. Unfortunately, it's not in Cafe Diem! yet, but we're working on it.

"Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, used as the catalyst for the invasion by the coalition of the willing, have not been found. According to intelligence reports, they may never have existed.

"So why did government leaders in the US, Britain and Australia use the claim to justify their military involvement?

Documentary producer Carmel Travers talks to former US intelligence agent Greg Thielman, who advised Colin Powell on the threat posed by Iraq. He contradicts many of the claims that were made by Powell to the UN Security Council before the invasion of Iraq.

"Closer to home, Andrew Wilkie, former senior intelligence officer with the Office of National Assessment in Canberra, details his decision to voice his opposition to the war through the media. 'I did not betray my country. I betrayed my government for the country that I love,' Wilkie tells Travers."
Source

"Journalist, broadcaster and filmmaker Carmel Travers' incisive new documentary examines the response of the intelligence community to the war in Iraq. Interviews with Australian and American whistleblowers are interspersed with stories of the Iraqi people whose lives have changed irrevocably. The film powerfully illuminates that in war, the truth varies according to your level of engagement."
Source

Google Travers truth lies intelligence

Bungers and double happies

Thanks Chris Keeley for The Underappreciated Art of Firecracker Labels, which brought back great memories of Cracker Night (May 24) in Australia, a popular tradition killed by the nanny state.

Mt Fuji climbing (Jul 1 - Aug 31)

Mt Fuji climbing (Jul 1 - Aug 31)

Through July until the end of August, the warmest season, it is a Japanese rite of passage to climb to the summit of Fujiyama (Mt Fuji), which Shinto tradition says is the home of gods. A favourite time to climb is through the night so the eighth and final station can be reached at sunrise. Fuji is an ancient fire goddess, grandmother of Japan. The climbing tradition comes from an Edo period (1603 to 1867) climbing cult. A sacred mountain since ancient times, Fujiyama’s summit was forbidden to women until the Meiji Era ...

Mariah Carey did not say this

Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can't help but cry. I mean I'd love to be skinny like that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff.

Mariah Carey did not say this. See Snopes. Well spotted, Baz 'MariahWatch' le Tuff.

Big list of TV, anti-TV quotations

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.
John Lennon

Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can't help but cry. I mean I'd love to be skinny like that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff.
Mariah Carey

On September 10, half the world was already living, if one can call it that, on less than $2 a day, with a fifth surviving on half of that. Thirty thousand children were already dying needless deaths daily. Inequality is exploding both within and among nations, and perhaps contrary to the poor of the nineteenth century, today's poor know they are poor. The plausible fantasies of Western television constantly remind them of their own failure to capture the material rewards of modernity.
Susan George

Heaven would be a place where bullshit existed only on television. (Hallelujah! We's halfway there!)
Frank Zappa, The Real Frank Zappa Book, p. 234

A whole shitload of TV quotes here in the Book of Days

"The Labor Department worked for more than a year to maintain secrecy for studies that were critical of working conditions in Central America," reports the Associated Press. The department hired a contractor to study the likely effect of the Central America Free Trade Agreement, now before Congress. But the contractor, the International Labor Rights Fund, concluded that "labor laws on the books in Central America are not sufficient to deter employers from violations." The Labor Department ordered the report removed from the contractor's website, sequestered paper copies and forbade discussions of it with outsiders. The department also launched "a pre-emptive campaign to undercut the study's conclusions," disseminating talking points that called the report "unsubstantiated" and filled with "biased attacks, not the facts." The department and "an independent evaluator" concluded that the contractor "failed to meet the academic rigor expected."
Source: Associated Press, June 29, 2005
via Center for Media and Democracy

It’s time for Google to act on Blogger

The Strange World of Blogspot Spam Blogs

"I have heard of trackback spam. Heck, I have even had to remove my fair share of it! But for someone to create a Blogspot blog just to create posting spam - that is simply sad.

"'I've been cruising the Blogspot world lately looking for cool stuff that the bigger geeklogs might have missed (and I found some cool knitting sites as a result last time I did this). What I've found, though, is that a large percentage (maybe up to a third) of all Blogspot blogs are spam-logs - sites created to increase the Google ranking of some other site (which is itself usually a Google-spamming site). The ultimate purpose of these spamlogs is usually to drive traffic to a commission-paying pharmacy, pr0n, or casino site.

"'Some of the spamlogs hosted at Blogspot, which apparently does not have a policy against them, are obvious in their intent (for example). It requires a human to start a new Blogspot-hosted site, but after the initial setup (which can be partially aided by scripts, I'm sure), bots can post like crazy. Usually the posts are strings of highly searched terms (like the names of celebrities, TV shows, or something Google Adsense pays a lot for, like asbestos litigation), with a link to the external site that the spammer is trying to bump up in the Google rankings.' [Read the rest]"
Source

It’s time for Google to act on Blogger
" ... amongst the crowd of blog fraudsters and thieves one service stands out as the choice of the spamming scum, and that’s Google’s Blogger ... Google remains to [sic] busy launching yet another new feature or another every day of the week and ignores the fact that its servers contain more spam blogs than any of its competitors 100 times over. As more and more spam blogs are created, search engine results become more and more polluted. Sure, you could argue that as market leader Google would never threaten one of its own businesses. But its not Google that’s the concern. As Google results become more polluted web surfers will start to turn to Google’s competitors for their search needs. Current and new service providers will start to offer blog free search, or at least blogspot.com free search ..."
Source: Blog Herald

The sinking of the Montevideo Maru

1942 The sinking of the Montevideo Maru with the loss of approximately 1,053 mainly Australian lives. About 610 Australian soldiers and 130 civilians perished when American submarine, USS Sturgeon, commanded by Lieutenant Commander WL Wright, mistakenly opened its torpedoes on the 7,267-ton transport, Montevideo Maru. The Japanese ship, carrying hundreds of Australian POWs, was sailing from Philippine waters off Cape Bojidoru, Luzon, westwards towards the South China Sea.

Although the sinking had been reported in Japanese newspapers, the American and Australian governments did not inform Australian loved ones anxiously wondering about the fate of the hundreds of victims until October 30, 1945 – more than three years later.

Almost twice as many Australians lost their lives in that one night as did in the ten years of the Vietnam War, and some 71 Japanese crewmen and naval guards also perished in the tragedy

The month of July in folklore

July is the seventh month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 31 days. The seventh month of the year was named by Mark Antony for Julius Caesar. The Roman calendar had previously called it Quintilis, as it was the fifth month of their year.

The Dutch called this month Hooy-maand (‘hay-month’), and the old Saxon name was Maedd-monath (because the cattle were sent to the meadows to feed) and Lida aeftevr (the second mild or genial month). Just to confuse things, the Saxons also called this time of year Hen-monath (probably ‘foliage month’), a word most likely derived from the German hain, meaning ‘wood’ or ‘trees’. Another Saxon term was Hey-monath because at this time they mowed and made hay

Take the TV challenge

"Television is by nature the dominator drug par excellence. Control of content, uniformity of content, repeatability of content make it inevitably a tool of coercion, brainwashing, and manipulation. Television induces a trance state in the viewer that is the necessary precondition for brainwashing. As with all other drugs and technologies, television's basic character cannot be changed; television is no more reformable than is the technology that produces automatic assault rifles."
Terence McKenna


Life Matters is having a challenge to its audience to give up TV for two weeks, which is a good start. Congratulations oto the producers for heading in the right direction. I think I can safely guarantee that of the people who take up the challenge, many will be surprised at the withdrawal symptoms. If the challenge were made to cover a year, very many people would discover the improvement to the imagination and consciousness as the pathological effects of television start to subside. As with recovery from drug addiction, four seasons need to be gone through to know if one is addicted, and also to begin to feel really well.

AIDS, malaria and TV are the world's great epidemics, but the third is little recognised because it's the only one that extracts vast amounts of money from the wallets of the sufferers, through the consumerism it promotes. If you are an average Australian and live to 75, you will sit for nine whole years in front of the boob-tube. Many people can't imagine what they could do with that time, because TV atrophies the imagination. But there are ways to quit. Resources for the addict who still suffers: TV Turn-Off Week in the Book of Days has some links.