More authoritative allegations on torture of US detainees

"A discussion with the Chief of the Human Rights Office for the United Nations operation in Iraq for the past 2 years. John Pace started in Baghdad in the months after the former U.N. Special Representative, Sergio De Mello was killed by a truck bomb, and his term has just finished, as Iraq’s sectarian violence explodes into full world view. He describes a total breakdown of individual and human rights in Iraq, citing sectarian violence and a string of secret prisons in which people are held without any judicial authority."
Source

Listen :: Real Media :: Windows Media :: Download MP3 :: Podcast

[We referred to John Pace's allegations in the Yellow Pages item Torture 'rife' in US prisons in Iraq. Now, in this dramatic interview he says that 40,000 detainees in Iraq is a conservative estimate, and he repeats his assertions about the high level of torture, based on careful UN analysis in Baghdad. John Pace is interviewed about 20 minutes into this recommended program.]

Tagged: usa, torture, iraq, human+rights

Happy Pancake Day

Shrove Tuesday (Pancake Day) (moveable feast)
Known in French as Mardi Gras ('Fat Tuesday')

Tomorrow (Ash Wednesday, also moveable) begins the 6-week period of fasting in the Christian world, known as Lent, the forty days' fast preceding Easter. Today is known to the French as Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday), as it is the day that all foods may be eaten. Pancakes were popular as families ate the last of the eggs and butter that they were allowed before Lent.

The name ‘Shrove’ comes from the archaic English word ‘to shrive’, which means to confess or hear confessions of sin, a practice that was customary in the church on this day.

The custom of eating pancakes at Shrove Tuesday was popular in many parts of Europe, including many parts distant from Britain, such as the Zemaitija province of Lithuania where it was an important celebration. Pancakes were popular as families ate the last of the eggs and butter that they were allowed before Lent.

To the Germans it is known as Fasnacht. The word has also come to mean a diamond-shaped foodstuff that's eaten on the occasion: a yeast-raised potato pastry that's deep-fried like a doughnut. They were originally made and served on Shrove Tuesday to use up the fat that was forbidden during Lent ... Read on

Tagged: folklore, easter, lent, religion, christianity, calendar+customs

Australia's largest online library opens for business

Libraries Australia, a service that enables anyone with an Internet connection to select from more than 40 million items held in over 800 libraries across the nation, was launched on Monday.

Libraries Australia is unique. No other country in the world has an equivalent national database representing the nation’s library collections. Of course, you don't have to be in Australia to use it.

Tagged: internet, resources, online+resources, libraries, information, australia

John's Background Switcher

John's Background Switcher periodically changes the wallpaper (background image) on your computer. I have it load every ten minutes the most popular images tagged 'Nature' in flickr -- you can use any tag -- but you can also point it to a folder of photos on your own computer. It works beautifully, is a free, quick download, is easy to set up and use, and I've had no problems with it.

If you get sick of the flickr pictorial theme, you can change 'Nature' for any tag you want. Like 'Australia', 'yellow', 'frog' or 'sunset', for example. To do this, you right-click on the John's Background Switcher icon which you will find in the 'tray' or menu bar at the bottom-right of your monitor. Then click 'Settings' and make changes. You can also change the amount of time the images take to change.

Combine it with a free Wilson's Almanac screensaver (no spyware, no ads, virus free) ... heaven!

My flickr photos

Tagged: internet, resources

Breaker Morant's last day

1902 Harry ‘Breaker’ Morant (b. 1864) was executed by firing squad in South Africa.

On this day in 1902 one of the most famous moments in Australia's history took place on a field not in Australia, but thousands of kilometres away in South Africa.

Harry Morant, nicknamed ‘The Breaker’, poet and rebel, had been born 37 years earlier in Devonshire, and arrived in Queensland in 1884 after a period of service in the Royal Navy. Following a period as a poet published in the important Australian journal, The Bulletin, The Breaker signed up to fight with the colonial troops in the Boer War in South Africa, after having walked to Adelaide, South Australia to enlist.

The war bored this man of action, and instead of capturing prisoners and bringing them back to camp, he shot 12 and stood trial accused of killing intending prisoners of war. Found guilty, his death warrant was personally signed by the British commander in South Africa, Lord Kitchener. He was executed by firing squad (sources differ as to date) with a comrade-at-arms Lt Peter Handcock.

In 1980, Australian director Bruce Beresford made the movie Breaker Morant.

Footnote: On March 13, 1884 Morant had married Daisy May O'Dwyer, who later became famous in Australia as the controversial anthropologist Daisy Bates ('Kabbarli'), who lived among tribal Indigenous people for many years.

Tagged: australia, history, australian+history

Bird Flu forces London's beloved ravens indoors

"As the bird flu spreads across Europe, The Tower of London has moved its ravens indoors to protect them. The six birds are usually found on the lawns outside the castle, but are now in cages in one of its towers."
NPR

John Schumann and the Henry Lawson album

"... I was about 10 I reckon and I was transfixed by someone who could describe the Australian landscape exactly as I saw it -- and more importantly -- exactly as I felt it. This chance encounter sparked a lifelong interest in the life and work of Henry Lawson, culminating in 2005 in the recording of an album of songs drawn from his poems. A number of Australia’s finest musicians and singers joined me in the project, including Russell Morris, Mike Rudd, Rob Hirst, Shane Howard and Broderick Smith.

"Response to the album has been illuminating. In the three months since its release, the Lawson album has been received warmly and has been the subject of genuinely enthusiastic reviews and commentary. It has also been politely and, in some cases, pointedly ignored. A number of our nation’s newspapers gave the Lawson project terrific coverage. Our one national daily, on the other hand, found itself unable to do more than publish a dismissive little paragraph in a gossip column.

"The sad truth is that Lawson is great Australian writer whose name is widely known but whose work, generally, isn’t.

"Rather than literature, Australians are fixated on sport and reality TV ...

"We have so little regard for our own history and heritage that lots of us sit around watching formulaic reality crap on television thinking it’s an accurate reflection of who we are and what we are. If it is, God help us.

"In contrast -- and not that I have ever been a big fan of America -- Americans are generally more familiar with, and respectful of, their poets and writers than we are ..."
Perspective

So who was Henry Lawson?

See also The Louisa Lawson and Henry Lawson Chronology (five big pages)

[I have just written a novel about Henry Lawson and his remarkable mother and am now looking for an agent and publisher.]

Tagged: australian+literature, literature, bush+poetry, henry+lawson, history, australia, music, poetry

Torture 'rife' in US prisons in Iraq

It is some years since the world started calling for the outrageous Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld torture policy to be stopped. In a democracy, only the American people can make this happen. It has still not happened and appears to be getting worse. When will our American cousins make sure that it is stopped?




"780 bodies, including 400 having gunshot wounds or wounds as those caused by electric drills"

Blair faces torrent of criticism on human rights

UK Government’s "war on terror" policies put people at risk of torture

More on the Bush torture policy :: Please Fight Bush's Torture Policy

Amnesty's Stop Torture Campaign :: USA torture policy

Christians vs Bush's Torture Policy

Picture from 'Latest Abu Ghraib photos are "'a quantum leap' in the depravity of anything previously seen"'

Tagged: uk, usa, blair, rendition, bush, torture, iraq, war+on+terror, human+rights

Matthias breaks the ice

Feast day of Saint Matthias, apostle of Jesus

Also known as the ‘thirteenth apostle’, because he replaced Judas, St Matthias was first stoned and then beheaded with an axe, or, so it is said. His symbol is a battleaxe and he is patron of woodcutters and carpenters.

Folklore has it that if there is sharp frost on his day it will last several days, something that happens on a February morning here in Australia about … never. A weather proverb also says:

Matthias breaks the ice, if he finds it;
If he does not break it, he makes it all the harder.

Tagged: folklore, religion, christianity, saints

Darwin's Nightmare

"Darwin's Nightmare is a tale about humans between the North and the South, about globalization, and about fish.

"Some time in the 1960's, in the heart of Africa, a new animal was introduced into Lake Victoria as a little scientific experiment. The Nile Perch, a voracious predator, extinguished almost the entire stock of the native fish species. However, the new fish multiplied so fast, that its white fillets are today exported all around the world.

"Huge hulking ex-Soviet cargo planes come daily to collect the latest catch in exchange for their southbound cargo… Kalashnikovs and ammunitions for the uncounted wars in the dark center of the continent.

"This booming multinational industry of fish and weapons has created an ungodly globalized alliance on the shores of the world’s biggest tropical lake: an army of local fishermen, World bank agents, homeless children, African ministers, EU-commissioners, Tanzanian prostitutes and Russian pilots."
Darwin's Nightmare, a film by Hubert Sauper

Tagged: globalization, africa, poverty

Wheat fields and battle fields

Historically, millions upon millions of acres of Australia were deforested and stripped to grow wheat, for the profit of corporations. The men who slaved on the farms were usually paid a pittance and often died before their time. The loss of wildlife habitat has been immeasurable, and Aussies have made more species extinct than people of any other nation.

That's the great Aussie wheat story, although not the one they teach kids in primary school.

The Australian Wheat Board (AWB) used to be a nasty government monopoly which marketed all the country's wheat around the world. Now it's been privatized and it's just an ordinary nasty monopoly. Now it's embroiled in controversy due to accusations that it paid the Saddam Hussein regime $300 million in kickbacks during the Oil For Food Program.

The guys in suits who run the AWB are just the kind of people who would have argued at dinner parties that we should invade the towelheads. Who said there is no honour among thieves?

The New Iraqis are not happy with the AWB, not at all, because the kickbacks Saddam received helped him torture and maim their fellows. They have put a temporary ban on the AWB. The usual suspects -- Australian media, politicians and agribiz interests -- are screaming and bleating that it will be a disaster if Iraq bans Australia selling it wheat in perpetuity, so the Prime Monster John Howard in desperation is sending his Trade Minister to Beautiful Downtown Baghdad to fix things up. The Jurassic Labor so-called Opposition under Kim 'Bomber' Beazley thinks this is a good thing too.

The Trade Minister, not a Jurassic but a Pleistocene creature, has laval rocks in his head so he's packing to go into the eye of Howard's war-storm. "He'd better pack his flak jacket, too," I hear you say.

With luck, he will fail in his misguided mission. The continent wants him to fail. Mother Nature is pleading with the Iraqi 'Government' that he will fail. One of the best things that could happen to Australia is for weeds to start growing in broadacre wheat fields, and agribiz fields of all kinds, because weeds form the first storey of regeneration and there's a chance that a bit of Australia might take root in their shade.

Australia has 20 million people on a continent about the size of the USA, with just about every known climatic region existing on this continent. Everything you can put in your mouth on a fork grows here. Blind Freddy can see that there's no need for it to import or export food at all -- it's a 19th Century paradigm for a 21st Century landmass, a paradigm created not by people but by huge companies for profit.

Permaculture holds the disarmingly simple solution to this and most other pressing planetary problems, and will save oceans of polluting oil because fossil fuels are quite unnecessary when food and other resources (fuel, fibre, timber, etc) come from where you live instead of the other side of the world.

The AWB scandal merely serves to bring Australia's tragic folly into high relief, but anything that reveals it can only be a welcome thing.

Tagged: permaculture, environment, deforestation, corporations, australia, globalization, agribiz

What was and never shall be

"Again and again, it's distressing how little we know about how Iraq looked before destruction became an everyday occurrence. And so the first glimpse, for many, of the Askariya shrine was not of a magnificent shining dome, but twisted metal and broken walls."
Washington Post

The Bush administration didn't destabilize Iraq and the Middle East for gold gold, but for black gold. Get over it, pardner.

There goes Howard's Christian vote

Howard defends new tourism campaign

Australia: "A new international tourism campaign that uses the word 'bloody' should not be considered offensive, Prime Minister John Howard says.

"The $180 million campaign, unveiled today by Tourism Minister Fran Bailey, seeks to lure international travellers Down Under by posing them the question: 'So where the bloody hell are you?'

"The question follows a sequence of footage in which everyday Australians are shown saying: 'We've poured you a beer, we've shampooed the camel, we've got the `roos off the green' and 'we've got the sharks out of the pool'.

"A young woman says: 'We've saved you a spot on the beach.'

"Mr Howard, who in late January stressed the need for Australians to be more polite, today defended the campaign, saying he did not believe the ads were offensive."
The Advertiser

Umm, not today, thanks Ratty

Ratko Mladic is back in the news and we all hope he gets caught.

Is it just me, or do his name and appearance make it impossible to believe that he ever gained a position of authority, let alone genocide?

"Helloooo, Joe. My name it iss Rrrrratko. Ziss iss my new hat. I vant you to keel lots off peeples for me."

I don't think so.

Webmasters - Get your Impeach Bush corner ribbon

If you've seen our SiteMap, you've seen the Impeach Bush corner ribbon. If you want one for your own site, it's a simple bit of javascript to paste in, and you can get it here. Not much can be more important for the safety of the world than to impeach the war criminal Bush, so you can do your bit. It's never too late to work for peace, Nature and reason.

Tagged: impeach, bush, dubya, impeach+bush, activism, progressive

Dr Steven Jones Blows the Roof off a Utah Auditorium

I don't yet have an opinion on this, but I don't intend to let Dr Jones slip off my radar:

"On Wednesday, February 1, a quiet, 'churchy-looking' gentleman in a white shirt and tie walked into a packed auditorium on the campus of Utah Valley State College and electrified the room like a rock star. ... Dr. Steven Jones, this pious professor from the Mormon Church-owned Brigham Young University, calmly, gently, gave a simple physics lesson on the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings, the implications of which awed the audience with a sense of world-historical significance, and implied an indictment of the present administration so utterly devastating that it made Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 look like a Bush apologia."
Source

Tagged: 911, 9-11, wtc

Protect Europe's last old growth forest

International Day of Action to Protect Europe's Last Old Growth Forest

March 3, 2006
Save Bialowieza, Europe's last, low-land, old-growth forest home to the last wild european bison.

March 3 events are planned in: London (UK), Dublin (Ireland), Briest (Belarus), Prague (Czech Republic), Bratislava (Slovakia), Helsinki (Finland), Bucharest (Romania), Leipzig (Germany), Vienna (Austria), Colombo (Sri Lanka), Pretoria (South Africa), Kampala (Uganda), Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Canberra (Australia), Seoul (South Korea), Toronto (Canada), Tokyo (Japan), Kiev (Ukraine), New York (USA). Hopefully this is not the end of the list.

For more information and background to the campaign, visit http://www.bison.org.pl/ If you are in Australia, contact Ruth Rosenhek & John Seed ruthr AT ozemail.com.au johnseed1 AT ozemail.com.au

Those fun-loving Germans

"A humorous sketch about what to do and what not to do at work." Here

Calendar Magic, highly recommended

I mentioned Calendar Magic the other day, but it's so damn good here I go again.

It has everything a calendar nut like me could want, but it's absolutely brilliant for anyone at all with its great range of features. And it's free. So check it out, if only for the alarm clock function which I find very useful (and I love the 'Reveille' wav file it uses).

The amazing thing, apart from the brilliant programming, is how so much can fit into such a small download.

And the support is excellent. I had a problem due to missing fonts on my system, and Alex Balfour kindly sent me a new set. You don't get support like that every day. Thanks, Alex.

It even has a function that shows your birthday details like Wilson's Almanac itself. It has measurement converters, global distances, reminders, sun and moon data ... you name it. Magic!

Tagged: calendar, shareware, freeware

Using jpeg metatags to locate crooks

Nora at Extra!Extra! (get a subscription, it's great) found this fascinating piece at Metafilter:

"To tell the truth ... I'm sorta surprised they haven't caught me yet"
"The Washington Post ran an interesting interview with a botmaster, a young man who made serveral [sic] thousands of dollars a month installing XXX spyware on machines that he controlled. He installed the software on the machines of people he did not know by hacking into them remotely. The lenghty [sic] article included a partial photo of the botmaster along with vauge [sic] descriptions of the small midwestern town where the man lives, and was published with the understanding that the man's identity would be kept secret. Someone should have told that to the person that manages photos at the Washington Post. An estute [sic] reader over at Slashdot was able to locate some extra information stored in the picture's metadata including the photographer and the location the picture was taken, Roland, Oklahoma, a town of less than 3000 people. Whoops."

Tagged: internet

Birthday happy

1886 Hugo Ball (pictured; d. September 14, 1927), Dada poet and author, born at Pirmasens, Germany. A staunch pacifist, he left Germany during World War I for neutral Switzerland in 1916.

Way ahead of his time, in Zurich on February 5, 1916 he founded Cabaret Voltaire, frequented by such luminaries as Tristan Tzara, Hans Arp, Guillaume Apollinaire, Vassily Kandinsky, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Max Oppenheimer, Jules LaForgue, Vladimir Lenin and Arthur Rimbaud.

His intentions with regard to Cabaret Voltaire (the club) he defined as follows: "It is necessary to clarify the intentions of this cabaret. It is its aim to remind the world that there are people of independent minds -- beyond war and nationalism -- who live for different ideals."

Tagged: dada, art

Loonies in high places

Major (P) Ralph Peters is assigned to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, where he is responsible for future warfare. He writes in a scary but worth reading article called Constant Conflict:

"The next century will indeed be American, but it will also be troubled. We will find ourselves in constant conflict, much of it violent. The United States Army is going to add a lot of battle streamers to its flag. We will wage information warfare, but we will fight with infantry."

Tagged: usa, army, military, war+on+terror

Scalping in the USA

I am convinced that those societies (as the Indians) which live without government enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under the European governments. Among the former, public opinion is in the place of law, and restrains morals as powerfully as laws ever did anywhere. Among the latter, under pretence of governing they have divided their nations into two classes, wolves and sheep. I do not exaggerate.
Thomas Jefferson, American philosopher, statesman

Possibly the first recorded instance of scalping in the Americas took place on February 20, 1725.

Ten sleeping Indians were scalped by Captain Lovewell and troops at Wakefield (in what became New Hampshire, USA) for scalp bounty. This is widely believed to be the first recorded instance of scalping, which some authorities insist was introduced to the Americas by Europeans. In 1820, an Allegheny Seneca chieftain named Cornplanter claimed that the natives were peaceful until Europeans came. However, other authorities show evidence that scalping existed in the Americas centuries before European colonization ...

Tagged: indigenous, aboriginal, native+american, colonialism, imperialism

Some more calendar magic

Attention calendar freaks (and I know many Almanac readers are).

This Mayan calendar links page is great, and there I found a very pretty and clever calendar converter called The Burden of Time. It works well and is free, as is an old fave of mine, Calendar Magic, which converts many calendars of the world.

When I need to convert dates online, I use Calendrica, which is brilliant so I'm progressively linking it from every day in the Book of Days.

Tagged: mayan+calendar, calendar

Sydney Anarchy Trial of February, 1894

Click to enrage

1894 Sydney Anarchy Trial of February, 1894: William McNamara (shown at right of cartoon above) and Sam Rosa (colleagues of Sydney anarchist Arthur Desmond) were convicted on charges of selling an edition of the anarchist journal Hard Cash "that contained a libel of the trustees of the Savings Bank of New South Wales".

McNamara and Rosa managed bookshops that sold radical journals; their sole defence was ignorance of the law concerning the selling of libellous newspapers. Justice Foster sentenced McNamara to six months in Parramatta Gaol and Rosa to three months.

Two other men who worked on the anarchist journal, but were not charged, were writer Henry Lawson's brother-in-law Jack Lang (who became Premier of the State of New South Wales) and William Morris Hughes, who became Prime Minister of Australia.

Tagged: australia, anarchy, anarchism, politics, progressive, history, australian+history, labor+history, radical+history, australian+labor+party

The beautiful Fayum Portraits and me dum

It's amazing how little I know. I think I'm reasonably well read but all the time I find I don't know the most basic things. I had never heard of a Segway until two weeks ago.

I was 45 before I learned where the human sinus is situated -- I'd always mentally placed it right at the end of the nasal cavity and didn't even know it was a quite large empty space (very dumb of me considering sinus is Latin for 'empty space' -- me dum). I thought it was a thing, like tonsils, not a hole the size of a bantam egg. In my case, it was no longer a void at all but a thing, a mass of polyps, hence the headaches.

The location and nature of the sinus was the explanation for 20 years of severe headaches I had endured (and which no doctor had ever diagnosed). Within minutes of being told by a specialist surgeon what the sinus was, I was placed at the head of his patient queue and in quick time I was under his knife -- and headache free for the first time since my youth. Knowledge is no substitute for wisdom but I take issue with people who say that you can have too much.

And until this morning I had never heard of the Fayum Mummy Portraits. I'd seen one or two of them and even used one in the Book of Days, but that was as far as it went; I didn't know there was a collection. And what a collection it is! Two-thousand-year-old portraits yet many with the look of modernism. It's great that Wikimedia Commons shows many of them.

Tagged: art, egypt, wikimedia

Dell vs Dell (David vs Goliath)

Email received today:

Hi Pip,
I'm a Wilson's Blogmanac subscriber and I wondered if you would be interested in this. It may not be the sort of thing you use - but I thought I'd try.
Basically, Dell Computers is suing a friend, Paul Dell (an Englishman working and living in Spain) for his website domain name, dellwebsites.com. They're claiming damages totalling around 300,000 Euro. (Yeah right, he has cost them nearly AU$500K in lost revenue etc? Since when does the PC manufacturer and retailer do website design, anyway?)
It's not the first time they tried to get the domain off him (see the article in The Register from Jan 2005 ) but this time they're asking big money and since it's short notice for him to raise the money for the legal fees, his lawyers have agreed it's ok for him to ask for donations. He's not allowed to talk about the case or be seen to be maligning Dell Computers though, so we his friends are trying to help.
(Ha. A friend just sent me this. It's real David and Goliath stuff: ---DALLAS (AP) Dell Inc. said Thursday that fourth-quarter profit rose 52 percent as the world's largest personal computer maker finally turned in stronger sales growth than expected, led by sales to businesses and to international customers. ---)
We started a blog for Paul here which gives a bit of background for this latest round. I also blogged it here but basically repeated the "official" blog. My friend Stephanie Sullivan (who is a prominent US web developer) has given quite a good run-down on it on her own blog.
Any publicity you could direct to this would be very much appreciated. Paul has to have the money for this specialist lawyer before Monday so we're in emergency mode.
Thanks!
Vicki. :-)
--Vicki Berry,
Distinctive Web :: Blog

This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm

Paul Dell is accepting donations by PayPal. You can go to his donation page for the donation link.

Tagged: corporations, internet

Beer involved in the Cheney lawyer shoot?

Who knows? But MSNBC scrubbed from its webpage a quote referring to alcohol ... so says David Allen at Thought Crimes and he presents a screenshot of the cached page as evidence.
Source

Tagged: cheney, disinformation, media

UN demands US close prison at Guantánamo

"United Nations human rights investigators called on the United States on Thursday to shut down the Guantánamo Bay camp and give prisoners quick trials or release them, but the White House promptly dismissed the report.

Arguing that many of the interrogation and detention practices constituted abuses amounting to torture, the report stated, "The United States government should close the Guantánamo Bay detention facilities without further delay."
International Herald Tribune

"In the final version of the report released in Geneva, the UN rapporteurs also charged Washington with violating international human rights treaties to get around their ban on torture.

"'Attempts by the United States administration to redefine "torture" in the framework of the struggle against terrorism in order to allow certain interrogation techniques that would not be permitted under the internationally accepted definition of torture are of utmost concern,' it said.

"'The confusion with regard to authorised and unauthorised interrogation techniques over the last years is particularly alarming.'"
ABC News (Australia)

Pressure over Guantanamo rises
UN calls for Guantánamo Bay to close
UN Releases Report Attacking Guantanamo Detentions

Google News: Track new stories about guantanamo – create an email alert or RSS

Tagged: guantanamo, torture, human+rights, civil+rights, usa, war+on+terror, un, united+nations

Louisa Lawson, a mother of women's suffrage

1848 Louisa Lawson (d. August 12, 1920), Australian feminist, inventor, poet, founder/editor of the Republican and (for 17 years) founder/publisher/editor of Dawn: A Journal for Australian Women; mother of Australian poet, Henry Lawson (1867 - 1922).

When female Australian British subjects won the vote with the Uniform Franchise Act (June 16, 1902), Louisa Lawson was hailed by her political sisters as “The Mother of Womanhood Suffrage”. (Women in South Australia were the first in the world to win the right to vote and stand for election.)

Lawson was a poor, Mudgee-born bush battler, forced by marital breakdown, economic depression and drought to move with her four surviving children to the city. She was an idiosyncratic but indomitable woman, a prodigious worker, powerful writer and fine poet, a spiritualist, farmer, inventor, postmistress and shopkeeper.

Lawson spent thirty-five years of her hard life fighting for women’s rights. She founded the Association of Women, and with Henry, in 1887 - 88 she published the journal, The Republican. Louisa Lawson then became founder, owner, publisher and editor of The Dawn, the new nation’s foremost women’s political magazine, announcing that it would battle for women’s rights, and the vote. “Why should one half of the world govern the other half?” was Lawson’s rallying cry.

While she supported her children in a little house at 138 Phillip Street near Sydney's docks, she had to teach herself the difficult trade of setting lead type, because of a black-ban by the New South Wales Typographical Association. The Postmaster-General’s Department refused to register The Dawn for sending through the post. In 1891, Lawson helped launch (with Maybanke Anderson, Rose Scott, and Dora Montefiore) the Womanhood Suffrage League of NSW. She also founded the Dawn Club, which met in various locations in Sydney, including the remarkable Quong Tart's tea rooms ...

[See also the Louisa Lawson and Henry Lawson Chronology]

Tagged: feminism, suffragettes, australia, history, journalism, australian+history, literature, australian+literature

Danish cartoons published last Oct in Egyptian paper

Thanks Baz le Tuff for the link.

Francis Galton and the ox

1822 Sir Francis Galton (d. 1911), English explorer, statistician, anthropologist, advocate of eugenics (i.e. the discredited notion of improving the physical and mental makeup of the human species by selected parenthood; he coined the term), and investigator of the human mind.

He was born into the remarkable Darwin - Wedgwood family and was the grandson of Erasmus Darwin and Charles Darwin’s half first cousin. It was Galton who gave statistics the concept of regression toward the mean.

Galton was an elitist, a believer in the power of a better class of people, noting “the stupidity and wrong-headedness of many men and women being so great as to be scarcely credible.” It will come as no surprise to the astute Almaniac that many of Galton's ideas have been used by the right wing of politics.

Galton and the ox
Some of his research seemed to show what James Suowiecki (in his book The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations) interprets as the superiority of group-think over experts. At one of England’s many fairs, he noticed a wagering competition in which people had to guess on the weight of an ox. In effect, it was like one of those “how many jelly beans in the jar” competitions. Eight hundred people wrote their guesses on slips of paper; some were butchers and farmers, while others were casual guessers.

Averaging the estimates, Galton expected the result to be nowhere near the mark, because so few of the guessers were professionals in the meat business. To his surprise, however, the crowd had come within one pound of the ox’s weight. The group as a whole had guessed that the ox would weigh 1,197 pounds, and the ox’s actual weight was 1,198 pounds.

Suowiecki extrapolates from this and other information that in order to predict winners political opinion pollsters would do better to ask people who they think will win an election, rather than who they want to win, because there is a group wisdom. In fact, bookmakers are better predictors than pollsters, because bettors tend to bet on what they think a result will actually be ...

Tagged: science, anthropology, sociology, history

New Abu Ghraib pix Bush doesn't want seen

"Fresh photographs and video footage of prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq were broadcast yesterday by an Australian television channel ..."
Source

Here you can read the transcript of last night's Australian report on the new Abu Ghraib photos and videos that George Bush doesn't want Americans to see.

New Abu Ghraib Photos Confirm Need for Real Inquiry (ACLU)

Tagged: abu+ghraib, abu+ghraib+photos, torture, usa, iraq, war, military, army, human+rights

Three arrested in Iraq video probe

"Three soldiers were being interviewed over the video footage showing the apparent abuse of Iraqi civilians by British troops.

"The video showed young Iraqi civilians being punched, kicked and headbutted by troops, and was accompanied by a leering commentary."
Scotsman

Another sweet mystery of life. Why has this major story almost sunk without trace? It sounds to me as big as the new Abu Ghraib happy snaps story. Possibly it's because of Cheney's blast, but the UK video doesn't seem even to rate at Technorati.

Tagged: iraq+video, uk, war+on+terror, army, military, human+rights, torture

Trust me. I'm a policeman - Constable Kenny

Imagine, if you will, you are the Mum or Dad of an Australian young person, and you found out that your son or daughter was about to do something incredibly stupid and wrong.

You discover that your kid has fallen in with a bunch of other stupid kids and is about to fly to Bali, Indonesia, in order to act as a drug 'mule' and fly back to Australia with drugs strapped to his body.

So you phone the Australian Federal Police -- maybe you find the number of the AFP's Kids, Youth and Family webpage and play the Constable Kenny Play it Safe Game while you're at it.

"Constable Kenny", you weep, "if you promise to stop my son before he gets on the plane in Sydney, I will tell you who he is, what he's about to do, and what the flight number is. You can even arrest him. Please, save my son because in Indonesia they have the death penalty. If he must be arrested, let it be in Australia where at least he can have family visits, and he might serve only 14 years in prison, not be killed or spend the next 80 years rotting in a sub-standard jail."

"Fair dinkum? Rightyo, Mum, you can count on Constable Kenny," says the cloth-eared toy koala. "Now, what's your nipper's name, eh?"

Imagine, then, that Constable Kenny takes all the info you have to offer, watches your boy board the big jet airliner, and phones through the damning evidence to the Indonesian Police. Then helps the Indonesians prepare the case against your child.

"Ha ha ha," says Constable Kenny.

That's what happened to a Mum and Dad in Sydney recently. The AFP allowed nine silly young Australians to fly into a death trap that they themselves set up with the Indonesian wallopers.

Now, two of the Bali Nine have been sentenced to be shot by firing squad and the lucky ones will spend their entire lives in a Bali jail.

You can trust the police. To be police.

The John Howard Government, of which the AFP is an agency, must change the rules immediately so that this never, ever happens again to Aussie kids, no matter how misguided or greedy.

Tagged: police, bali, drugs, heroin, australian+federal+police, australia, narcotics, civil+rights, death+penalty, human+rights, bali+nine

Cheney's idea of a sporting chance

Click to embiggen

Tagged: cheney, humor, humour, cartoon

Jon Frum Day, Tanna Island, Vanuatu

Jon Frum, a cargo cult, is a syncretic sect centred on Sulphur Bay on Tanna Island, Vanuatu, and found in some neighbouring islands. A white American named Jon, or John, Frum is also the name of the messenger of this movement; who on his return, will provide the Frum faithful with promised goods, or cargo.

An estimated 90 per cent of the population of Vanuatu is affiliated with a Christian denomination, the largest being Presbyterian, followed by Roman Catholic and Anglican. Jon Frum forms a small minority.

Some Frum members say that Jon Frum is a benevolent deity who lives in the crater of Tanna's highest mountain, Yasur, with his several thousand strong army, or else he is the 'king of America'. Jon Frum members believe that when Frum does return as promised, the mountains will crumble, filling the rivers, the land will become very fertile and prosperity will arrive in the villages. Frum himself will bring money so that the people can buy the goods of the white people, and he will provide schools for all.

Perhaps influenced by drinks of kava, a mildly narcotic drink popular in the western Pacific and northern Australia, visions and prophecies of Frum (by 'messengers' as the movement calls its priests and prophets) have directed the cult's world view. Some say it began as early as the 1930s, probably when a man of that name actually travelled or lived among the villagers ...

Tagged: folklore, lore, pacific, vanuatu, cargo+cult, religion

Cruddock

Source

http://www.richardneville.com/

Cruddock will tap your phone and emails

Australia: "Police and spy agencies will for the first time be allowed to monitor the phone calls, emails and text messages of people not suspected of a crime under laws to be introduced to parliament this week.

"A joint meeting of Nationals and Liberal parliamentarians today endorsed changes to surveillance laws establishing the powers indefinitely.

"Under the changes, police will be able to tap the phone calls and trace the emails and text messages of third parties to suspected crimes.

"Police will have 45 days to monitor a person not under suspicion in the hope it will lead them to the person or people they do suspect.

"The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) will have three months.

"The move, which sparked debate in the coalition party room today, would be subject to strict controls, Attorney General Philip Ruddock said ..."
SMH

Stop this man!
He is an evil baby-eating bastard and has green hair!
He is also joined at the head with John 'Children Overboard' Howard.

Picture of Philip 'Orwell Fellating' Ruddock from the website of ASIO, Australia's spy agency.

Tagged: civil+rights, sedition, war+on+terror, australia

Dismal guernsey comes to Oz

In come the dollars and in come the cents
to replace the pounds, the shillings and the pence.
Be prepared folks when the coins begin to mix
on the 14th of February 1966.

Clink go the cents folks
clink, clink, clink. Changeover day is closer than you think.
Learn the value of the coins and the way that they appear
and things will be much smoother when the decimal point appears.

In come the dollars and in come the cents
to replace the pounds, the shillings and the pence.
Be prepared folks when the coins begin to mix
on the 14th of February 1966.

1966 Decimal currency was introduced in Australia 40 years ago today. Pounds, shillings and pence gave way to dollars and cents. The conversion was aided by a large advertising campaign that lasted for months. A cartoon character named 'Dollar Bill' sang the words above, to the tune of the traditional Australian folksong 'Click Go the Shears'.

In 1966 most people were unaware of Valentine's Day as it was not celebrated then in Australia.

Me, I prefer the original folksong, especially the third verse about the British 'newchum' ("colonial experience man"):

Out on the board the old shearer stands,
Grasping his shears in his thin bony hands
Fixed is his gaze on a blue-bellied joe,
Glory if he gets her, won't he make the ringer go.

[Chorus sung after each verse]
Click go the shears boys, click, click, click,
Wide is his blow and his hands move quick,
The ringer looks around and is beaten by a blow,
And curses the old snagger with the blue-bellied joe.

In the middle of the floor in his cane-bottomed chair
Sits the boss of the board with his eyes everywhere,
Notes well each fleece as it comes to the screen,
Paying strict attention that it's taken off clean.

The colonial experience man, he is there of course,
With his shiny leggings on, just got off his horse,
Gazes all around him like a real connoisseur,
Scented soap and brilliantine and smelling like a whore.

The tar-boy is there waiting in demand
With his blackened tar-pot in his tarry hand,
Spies one old sheep with a cut upon its back
Hears what he's waiting for it's "Tar here Jack"

Now the shearing is all over, we've all got our cheques,
So roll up your swags and it's off down the track,
The first pub we come to it's there we'll have a spree,
And everyone that comes along it's 'Have a drink on me.'

There we leave him standing shouting for all hands,
Whilst all around him every 'shouter' stands,
His eye is on the keg which now is lowering fast,
He works hard, he drinks hard, and goes to Hell at last.

Glossary
Board: Floor of the shearing shed.
Ringer: fastest shearer on the team.
Swagger: lucky fella.
Blue-bellied (bare-bellied) joe: sheep with completely shaved belly.
Tar: antiseptic tar used for cuts on the sheep.
Shouter: One who shouts, ie, buys drinks for the others.

Hear the tune (midi)

Tagged: australia, folklore, folk+music, lore

Dick Cheney quail hunt game

Do the Dick Cheney quail hunt game. Very little skill required.

Have Americans developed a taste for torture?

"The author of a new book on torture wonders why public response to an issue that cuts to the very core of America's national identity has been so muted. And he lays out a series of questions for President Bush, congressional candidates and your readers aimed at bearing witness to what may turn out to be a fundamental shift in moral choices by the American public.

Questions for President Bush about Torture:

"Q. Are you prepared to instruct the CIA to provide information that will assist the Council of Europe's ongoing investigation into CIA rendition flights and secret prisons?

"Q. A Federal judge has considered releasing hundreds of photos and several videotapes of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib beyond the two dozen already broadcast by CBS. Weighing national security versus freedom of the press, do you think that those photos should be released to the press and public?

"Q. Are you concerned as Commander-in-Chief that, among the hundreds of service men and women charged with abuse of detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq, nobody above the rank of sergeant has been prosecuted? ..."
Source

CIA chief sacked for opposing torture

A Question of Torture by Alfred McCoy now in Cafe Diem!, the Almanac's store.

Tagged: torture, usa, cia, rendition, human+rights, war+on+terror

John Howard at the cricket

Click to embetter

Amazing how much time politicians seem to have to go to sports events, or to play sports. What a shame Little Johnny Howard didn't go shooting with Dick Cheney.

Google in China, graphics

Source

Google and China news

A Picture Says 1000 Words About Google's Censorship In China
How Google Censors Itself For China & Paid Exclusion As Being Evil

Lid dip to Nora from Extra!Extra!

Tagged: google, china, internet, human+rights, censorship, civil+rights

Who is Lizzie Humphrey? A Henry Lawson puzzle

It's just come to my notice, thanks to my friend in London, that Henry Lawson was in the 1901 UK Census, a fact that as far as I know is unknown to his biographers Denton Prout (aka Clement Semmler, the crook biographer) and Prof. Colin Roderick (the good one). The census is online and was probably never considered by historians before.

See this page in the Louisa Lawson and Henry Lawson Chronology for the details.

Now, I'm no historian, but I think that this might be important Lawsonia. There is more or less a lost year in Henry's life, during which time his wife Bertha was in Bethlem (Bedlam) Mental Hospital. Henry was on the verge of international literary success, then suddenly collapsed as a writer, forever. The biographers wonder why Bertha went crazy, and why Henry dried up at just this time.

As you will see if you follow that link, just after the census, Bertha made unknown but serious allegations against her hubby to Mary Gilmore (who disbelieved them). Also, Lawson's mate Arthur Maquarie wrote to The Bulletin around this time to refute rumours (unnamed) against Henry that were circulating in Oz. You will see from the census that Henry, aged about 33, was sharing accommodation with Lizzie Humphrey (aged about 24) from Harpenden, where the Lawsons were living when Bertha went mad. Who is Lizzie Humphrey?

Tagged: australia, literature, history, australian+literature, australian+history, bush+poetry

Ah, sweet mysteries of life

Why do spammers have such limited imaginations? Or, why is their stock inventory so limited?

Of the millions of products made and sold in the world, almost all of them unnecessary and demanding the exchange of sweat for shit (which has always seemed to me a bad bargain), why are those sold by spammers skewed into a remarkably small number of types? This is a mystery that has baffled me for the ten or so years that the bastards have been spamming me.

The overwhelming majority of spam consists of ads which no one reads, for products that no one wants: impotence cures, member enlargement, pharmaceuticals, software and wristwatches. I'm sure that anyone who wanted any of those things would just pop down the street and buy them, except, I suppose, for the member enlargement stuff (chutzpah has its limits even in the big city) but who on earth would believe that the spam for that is genuine? I mean, give me a break. The only one I really understand is software, but it still intrigues me why they think I would send money to an obviously dishonest person, as a spammer is by definition. Do these pricks ever actually get a sale? It seems impossible to me, but what do I know?

But back to the narrow range of products. I admit I don't have the pecuniary gene, but why isn't there spam for bathroom tiles? What am I missing here? Or any number of things; take for example: candles; keyrings; Barbie dolls; Zippo lighters; rare Coke bottles; T-shirts; wine; diaries; shoes; hearing aids; books (I think I sort of get that one); car seat covers ... and the rest of that propaganda consumer shite?

Then there's wallets; washing powder; pens; lightglobes; cufflinks; batteries; ambergris; old masters; doghouses; curtains; vases; anvils ... I mean, with regard to anvils, don't tell me it's only very light things that can be sent through the mail, because obviously no one believes that the spammers will actually send anything if you fork out money, because they've already established that they're bastards. And gemstones are light too but I've never had a spam for emeralds or opals. So, like, why?

Maybe all the spammers come from the same very small warehouse? My guess: Just outside Moscow.

I've never worn a wristwatch. So that's what people always like to give me as a gift. "Poor Pip Wilson, he don't have a watch. Did you see that wrist of his, Kevin? Poor bloke."

I do, I do! I have two-and-a-half drawers full of the bloody things, all gifts. And an email box full of ads for even more. I don't get it, I really don't. What's with telling the time, anyway? We're surrounded by clocks -- it's a Swiss dream nightmare. We swim in horology like herrings in the sea. I don't wear a watch and I annoy people because I'm anally punctual. Would anybody actually buy a watch? Over the Internet? They come in cereal boxes for free. You get a box of watches and a free cornflake.

As for member enlargement, I guess the majority of men wouldn't mind that. Most men would like bigger dorks, most women would like bigger norks. But pay for some cream to rub on the knob in some vain hope? They must be kidding, or extremely sad, sad salesmen with a room full of stuff they can't move. I wish that they would rub the whole lot of that goop over their flaccid, purrilent, pale Muscovite flesh and tug themselves to death. Or come down under and die of fright when they see a fair dinkum Aussie beach chubby, which is all the rage since parents started feeding their daughters Chicken With Hormones.

People worry that spam will take over the Net, but take my word for it, these imbeciles are on the way out of business. The basic building block of the Universe is stupidity, but not that stupid.

God I hope I'm not wrong. I need to trust that business is out to rip me off with intelligence. That's what made the West great.

Tagged: spam, internet

Happy Darwin Day!

Teaching biology without evolution is like teaching chemistry without the periodic table.
John Schweinsberg of Alabama Citizens for Science Education


1809 Charles Darwin, (d. April 19, 1882), British geologist and naturalist who laid the foundation for both the modern theory of evolution and the principle of common descent with his proposal of natural selection as a mechanism (Origin of Species). Despite his agnosticism, and the animosity directed at him from some religious quarters (even to this day), Darwin was interred in Westminster Abbey.

The Australian people, in great wisdom, named Darwin, one of their capital cities after him.

Did Darwin convert to Christianity?
It is a common myth, often promoted by fundamentalist Christians, that Charles Darwin became a Christian on his death bed. This story can be traced to one Lady Hope. However, Darwin’s son Francis put paid to this supposition:

"Lady Hope's account of my father's views on religion is quite untrue. I have publicly accused her of falsehood, but have not seen any reply. My father's agnostic point of view is given in my 'Life and Letters of Charles Darwin,' Vol. I., pp. 304-317. You are at liberty to publish the above statement. Indeed, I shall be glad if you will do so. Yours faithfully, Francis Darwin. Brookthorpe, Gloucester. May 28, 1918."

Tagged: evolution, science, natural+selection

Yalta yalta yalta

1945 The Yalta Conference ended – Europe's future was decided by Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at the Black Sea resort of Yalta.

Sustainable engineering with Engineers Without Borders

"You've heard of Doctors Without Borders, the medical humanitarian organization, but have you heard of Engineers Without Borders?

"They bring sustainable engineering projects to underdeveloped communities and train engineers. Simply put, EWB uses technology to fight global poverty."
Guide to Midwestern Culture

Good article, but a note of caution about the word 'underdeveloped' -- like 'developed' and 'development' it always has a corporate hook in it and all such terms are best avoided, IMHO.

Tagged: sustainability, permaculture, sustainable+engineering, aid, foreign+aid, development, poverty, environment

Cyber Storm - US conducts mock internet attacks

"The US government concluded its Cyber Storm wargame today, its biggest-ever exercise to test how it would respond to devastating attacks over the internet from anti-globalisation activists, underground hackers and bloggers.

"Participants confirmed parts of the worldwide simulation challenged government officials and industry executives to respond to deliberate misinformation campaigns and activist calls by internet bloggers, online diarists whose "web logs" include political rantings and musings about current events.

"The internet survived, even against fictional abuses against the world's computers.

"Experts depicted hackers who shut down electricity in 10 states, failures in vital systems for online banking and retail sales, infected discs mistakenly distributed by commercial software companies and critical flaws discovered in core internet technology ..."
Sydney Morning Herald

Lid dip to Baz le Tuff who rightly points out "Bloggers=Hackers?? WTF!"

I like this one too: Burglar checks email while robbing home

See what's being said in the blogs about Cyber Storm at Technorati

Tagged: cyber+storm, hackers, hacking, internet, blog, blogs, blogging

Macquarie Dictionary website a morass of errors

The Macquarie Dictionary is an excellent publication, the best Australian dictionary. The fact that it comes from my almer mater has nothing to do with it.

But the website is an absolute travesty. Take for example the page on slang (beginning with the letter 'B'):

* 'Baloney' isn't nor ever was Australian slang, but American. I'm interested in the historical connections between Australian and USA slang ever since the Gold Rush days, but this is really pushing it. The same goes for 'bunkum', 'bum steer', 'butt', etc, etc.

* Henry Lawson's poem 'The Captain of the Push' is not the derivation of the term 'bastard from the bush'. It comes from a rude poem called 'The Bastard from the Bush' which is sometimes attributed to Lawson, but no one knows who wrote it. 'The Captain of the Push' is a different poem, which 'The Bastard from the Push' parodies.

* 'epsecially in made while playing a team sport' is not only not a clause, it's utter nonsense and badly spelled, like so many other entries.

* Australia has many terms meaning 'a shiftless or dissolute person', but 'bum' can hardly be said to be one of them, outside of North America. 'Bum' means 'bottom' or 'backside' in this country. One suspects your lexicographers are addicted to American TV -- not a good place to start on anything.

* 'bushwhacker noun one who lives in the bush; a bushie; often viewed as unsohpisticated' -- don't you guys know any proofreaders? I'll do it for $25 an hour.

These are just a few quickly found examples from an Australian slang dictionary that is a morass of Americanisms, misspellings, bad grammar, errors of fact and just plain iggerance.

Macquarie, it's reasonable for your readers to expect that a dictionary website will do a great deal better.

Tagged: australia, australian+english, australian, slang, dictionary, dictionaries

Lunatics running the asylum ...

... and the crooks running the prison.

Melbourne is apparently going to be hosting something called the Commonwealth Games and taxpayers will be footing the bill for the closing and opening ceremonies. Only fifty million bucks.

Danish offensive cartoons a USA psyop?

Have you been thinking that the furore over the Danish cartoons of Muhammed stinks like a US psyop? Yeah, me too, and so has Russian Liberal Democrats leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky:

"A top Russian parliamentary leader has told Ekho Moskvy radio station that an attack on Iran is inevitable and that it will occur on March 28th. The leader of the Liberal Democrats Vladimir Zhirinovsky also believes that the Muslim riots were orchestrated by the US to garner European backing for the military strike ..

"Zhirinovsky told the Russian radio station that, 'The war is inevitable because the Americans want this war. Any country claiming a leading position in the world will need to wage wars. Otherwise it will simply not be able to retain its leading position.'

"'The date for the strike is already known -- it is the election day in Israel (March 28). It is also known how much that war will cost,' said Zhirinovsky.

"Commenting on the Muslim riots sweeping the Middle East and Europe, Zhirinovsky said that the publication of the offensive cartoons was a planned psyop on the part of the US and aimed to 'provoke a row between Europe and the Islamic world'."
Source

[PS I'm back, a bit. Finished my novel, now revising it.]