Wilson's Blogmanac: June 2006

Sydney Rally for Palestine

Rally for Palestine
12 noon, Sunday July 2

Assemble in Wiley Park, corner of Canterbury Road and King Georges Road, Wiley Park (a five-minute walk from Wiley Park station), for a march to Lakemba. Speakers include Sheikh Taj al-Hilaly.

A massive war crime is being carried in full view of world opinion.

Israel is preparing for an all-out invasion of the Gaza Strip.

Israel has kidnapped 24 members of the democratically-elected Palestinian parliament, plus 8 members of the cabinet, cut the electricity supply to hundreds of thousands of Gaza residents, and shelled farmland in the north of the Strip. This response is completely disproportional to the kidnap of one Israeli soldier by Palestinian militants. It is an act of collective punishment, and as such is illegal under international law.

Join the protest in Sydney this Sunday.

Write to newspapers and express your disapproval of Israel's actions:
letters@dailytelegraph.com.au
letters@smh.com.au
letters@theaustralian.com.au

For more information on the Sydney rally phone 0405 760 929 (English) or 0415 394 555 (Arabic).

More up-to-the-minute information on events in Palestine, visit http://electronicintifada.net/new.shtml or http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage

The mysterious Tunguska Event

Today according to Australian Eastern Standard Time when this item was posted

1908 7:17 am A giant fireball impacted in Central Siberia (Tunguska Event).
The mass of the unidentified object has been estimated at around 90,000 tonnes (about 100,000 tons) and the force of the explosion at 40 megatons of TNT. This is 2,000 times the force of the bomb exploded over Hiroshima in 1945. Even today, the exact cause of the explosion is unknown.

As old photographs show, and modern research confirms, an area as big as a large city had all its trees flattened by the awesome blast. The ‘event’ was so enormous that it has been estimated that had such an explosion occurred over Europe instead of the sparsely populated region of Siberia, the number of human victims might have been 500,000 or more.

Surprisingly, scientists of the day showed little interest in this extraordinary event and its consequences. Russia for the first two decades of the 20th Century was embroiled in war, revolution, and civil war, so it wasn't until the 1920s that anyone performed a serious investigation of what had happened on that fateful day at Tunguska ...

Tagged: history, russia, anomalies, mysteries

Antidepressants, air conditioning might spark obesity

"Writing in the International Journal of Obesity, study author David Allison said too much attention is being paid to the 'big two' causes of obesity [fatty food consumption and lack of exercise]. Allison cited other factors, including the growing use of antipsychotics, antidepressants, antihistamines, and other drugs known to cause weight gain, Bloomberg news service reported."
HealthCentral

Google News on this subject

Air-conditioning: Our Cross to Bear
America's Air-Conditioned Nightmare

Tagged: health, environment

Be a part of the SievX Memorial project

Click to enlarge

Canberra, Australia: "The SievX Memorial is being built on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin to remember the worst maritime tragedy in our region since World War Two - the drowning of 353 parents and children on a refugee vessel bound for Australia in 2001.

"Community groups, churches and school students around Australia are contributing individually decorated wooden poles - to form a permanent memorial by the lakeshore ...

"We will assemble the poles in Canberra on Sunday October 15th, for the 5th Anniversary Memorial Event, attended by bereaved families, survivors, school students, churches and the international community concerned for refugees.

"You may choose to travel bringing your pole, or if you are far away, to send it by freight to be erected by volunteers on the day."
http://www.sievxmemorial.com/

Tagged: sievx, refugees

A heavenly sky show on the 4th of July

"This drives astronomers crazy. Every summer, on the one night when millions of Americans are guaranteed to be outside at nightfall, necks craned upward watching the sky, almost no one pays attention to the heavens. It's all fireworks, fireworks, fireworks. Stars and planets don't stand a chance.

"But this 4th of July is different.

"At sunset, just as the fireworks are about to begin, the Moon and Jupiter will pop out of the twilight side-by-side: sky map. These are the brightest objects in the night sky, easily beaming through the flash and smoke of a fireworks display."
NASA

Tagged: astronomy

Supreme Court blocks Bush, Gitmo war trials

"The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that President Bush overstepped his authority in ordering military war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees, saying in a strong rebuke that the trials were illegal under U.S. and international law.

"Bush said there might still be a way to work with Congress to sanction military tribunals for detainees and the American people should know the ruling 'won't cause killers to be put out on the street.'

"The court declared 5-3 that the trials for 10 foreign terror suspects violate U.S. military law and the Geneva conventions."
ABC USA

Court rejects military tribunals
High Court Blocks Gitmo Tribunals :: World reacts with skepticism, optimism :: News 8 Austin
Channel 4 News :: Reuters.uk : The Age :: all 998 related »

Commentary from Lindsay Beyerstein's blog at AlterNet:

"Marty Lederman of SCOTUSblog sees huge implications for this decision:

More importantly, the Court held that Common Article 3 of Geneva aplies as a matter of treaty obligation to the conflict against Al Qaeda. That is the HUGE part of today's ruling. The commissions are the least of it. This basically resolves the debate about interrogation techniques, because Common Article 3 provides that detained persons "shall in all circumstances be treated humanely," and that "[t]o this end," certain specified acts "are and
shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever"—including "cruel treatment and torture," and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment." This standard, not limited to the restrictions of the due process clause, is much more restrictive than even the McCain Amendment. See my further discussion here.

"This almost certainly means that the CIA's interrogation regime is unlawful, and indeed, that many techniques the Administation has been using, such as waterboarding and hypothermia (and others) violate the War Crimes Act (because violations of Common Article 3 are deemed war crimes)."

Tagged: usa, bush, military, army, guantanamo, law, legal, war+on+terror, torture, human+rights, civil+rights

Be a part of the SievX Memorial project

Click to enlarge

Canberra, Australia: "The SievX Memorial is being built on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin to remember the worst maritime tragedy in our region since World War Two - the drowning of 353 parents and children on a refugee vessel bound for Australia in 2001.

"Community groups, churches and school students around Australia are contributing individually decorated wooden poles - to form a permanent memorial by the lakeshore ...

"We will assemble the poles in Canberra on Sunday October 15th, for the 5th Anniversary Memorial Event, attended by bereaved families, survivors, school students, churches and the international community concerned for refugees.

"You may choose to travel bringing your pole, or if you are far away, to send it by freight to be erected by volunteers on the day."
http://www.sievxmemorial.com/

Tagged: sievx, refugees

Runic New Year and half-month of Feoh

Important in the runic year cycle, today marks beginning of the first rune, Feoh, sacred to Frey (pictured) and Freya (Freyja), the lord and lady often worshipped in modern Wicca. It is the half-month of wealth and success.

Tagged: calendar+customs, wicca, pagan, goddess

International Cruise Victims

The tragic death of Australian Dianne Brimble on a P&O cruise liner has brought to the fore a worldwide plethora of tragedies and scandals involving passengers and staff on cruise ships. The victims are represented by International Cruise Victims.

Tagged: australia, crime

Australian government and the destruction of Alkatiri

Wilson's Almanac news and current affairs blog

A media, government and public relations disinfo con job

It seems to me that very few political commentators on the current East Timor crisis, other than John Pilger, seem to have a clue what's going on, nor have noted the economic machinations behind the story of the Australian government and the destruction of Alkatiri. That's why I'm glad I found his article -- originally in Rupert Murdoch's right-wing rag, The Australian, of all places (some pinko editor must have snuck it through)!!

Hint: It's all about Australia stealing East Timor's oil and gas reserves.

Rule of thumb: When all the media and all the politicians, as with one voice, condemn any politician or popular movement, it's time to prick up the ears, strap on the bullshit detector, and do one's homework.

Tagged: australia, east+timor, imperialism, john+howard, neocolonialism, neo-cons

Ned Kelly's Last Stand

1880 Dressed in home-made armour and with revolver blazing, Australian bushranger Ned Kelly burst out of the Glenrowan Inn, which was surrounded by about 30 State troopers.

The most wanted outlaws the country has ever known, the four-member Kelly Gang, had £8,000 on their heads, at a time when a labouring man's wages were about 15 shillings a week. Their crime, among many others, was the murder of three policemen at Stringybark Creek.

At first the dumbfounded police could not understand why their bullets did not stop him. Even in the dawn light, they could see the helmet he was wearing, but when they aimed at his torso, nothing happened. Then they realised that under his long overcoat must be more armour, so they began firing at his legs. It wasn't long before he was brought down in a hail of bullets. Ned Kelly was hanged on November 11, 1880 ...

Tagged: australia, crime, bushrangers, history

That's what I wanted to hear!

Coffee drinkers at lower diabetes risk, says study

"Consumption of coffee, particularly the decaffeinated variety, is associated with a reduced risk of diabetes, according to a report in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

"The study is not the first to document this association.

"However, in previous studies it was unclear if the relationship were true among people of different ages and body weights and if the caffeine component was the ingredient primarily responsible for the anti-diabetes effect."
ABC News

Tagged: health

Consider what the war in Iraq is costing the USA

$1.27 trillion. Twice as much as the Vietnam War, according to this article:

"The number is so high as to defy human comprehension. All the numbers ending in '-illion' sound the same. But a trillion is what you get if you spend a million dollars a day ... for a million days. That's 2,737 years -- a cool mil a day, every day, in other words, until the Year of Our Lord 4743. Or, working backward, from the time when Homer wrote the Iliad up to now.

"The $270 billion in rounding error is worth another 750 years at the million-a-day rate. That takes us up to the year 5493 -- or back to when Moses fled Egypt."
AlterNet

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

Why did Shrub just sit there?

Why did Shrub just sit there? is a page of videos and photos that raise serious questions about the official story of the morning of September 11, 2001.

New video content added today.

Tagged: bush, usa, 9/11

The truth behind the blacklisting of my chronology?

The Wilson's Almanac Louisa and Henry Lawson Chronology contains approximately 100,000 words and many hundreds of hyperlinks for further information.

It is to my knowledge by far the biggest chronology on the Net covering Australian literature and history of the period – or perhaps any period – with an international context to aid research

Since 2005 the Chronology has repeatedly been rejected for inclusion at the Australian Government's Culture and Recreation Portal, the 'Directory of Australian cultural organisations and resources'.

Some of the reasons offered have been bizarre to say the least, such as:

"The extraneous material which is not Australian content and links which are not directly related to Henry and Louisa Lawson make it difficult for us to categorise this as either Australian History or Literature."

I wonder.

You might find it instructive to compare at random my free, high-Google ranking chronology with some of the sites that have been included on various subjects.Many of the sites the Portal links are miniscule, trivial and (unlike the Chronology) very commercial and with lots of advertisements.For example, type into the Portal's search box any subject, eg foreign-owned brands like Westinghouse, Microsoft, Kodak, Ford Motor Company, etc.

The real reason?
I wrote to my local conservative Federal Member of Parliament, Mr Luke Hartsuyker, who very kindly represented me before the (conservative) Minister for the Arts and Sport, Senator Rod Kemp. In Senator Kemp's reply is mentioned a few reasons why the site has been blacklisted. One of the reasons perhaps gets to the honest heart of the matter, and might explain why the Portal editor has given me such run-around answers rather than state straight out what Sen. Kemp, no doubt on the advice of the Portal management, says in his letter to Mr Hartsuyker:

" … I understand the site [Wilson's Almanac] includes commentary about the ‘War on Terror’ and international UN Security Council issues," writes Senator Kemp.

Of course, many of the websites listed by the Portal -- the ABC, The Sydney Morning Herald and the Adelaide Advertiser to name but a few -- contain vastly more such commentary than the Almanac does.

The Portal is undergoing a review of its policy and criteria (I wonder if my protests have precipitated this), the results of which will not be out till July at the earliest. Therefore, I am not pressing my case with my local Member at present. Stand by for further reports as I receive information.

Pregnant Gouldian

Pregnant Gouldian,
originally uploaded by wilsonsalmanac.

Poor Lizzie can hardly fly at present and no doubt is 'great with egg'. Usually no Gouldian would let you pick them up, but she can hardly move. I even nearly trod on her on the floor.

Meanwhile, Johnny Gould is busy renovating last season's nest in the nesting box. What a man!

(If you also live with uncaged birds indoors, there's a flickr group called Uncaged! Birds in our homes just for you.)

An anti-addiction pill?

"Last month, the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was host to a conference about addiction for a small, invitation-only crowd of neuroscientists, clinicians and public policy makers. It was an unusual gathering. Addiction conferences are usually sober affairs, but M.I.T. offered a lavish cocktail reception (with an open bar, no less). More important, the conference was a celebration of the new ways scientists and addiction researchers are conceptualizing, and seeking to treat, addiction.

"While many in the treatment field have long called addiction a 'disease,' they've used the word in vague and metaphorical ways, meaning everything from a disease of the mind to a disease of the spirit. Many assumed that an addict suffers from a brain-chemistry problem, but scientists had not been able to peer into our heads to begin to prove it.

"Now they can, using advances in brain-imaging technology. And they tend to agree on what they see, although not necessarily on how to fix it: addiction — whether to alcohol, to drugs or even to behaviors like gambling — appears to be a complicated disorder affecting brain processes responsible for motivation, decision making, pleasure seeking, inhibitory control and the way we learn and consolidate information and experiences. This new research, in turn, is fueling a vast effort by scientists and pharmaceutical companies to develop medications and vaccines to treat addiction ..."
Amherst Times

Lid dip to Chris Keeley.

Tagged: addiction, drugs, science

Emma Goldman, pioneer feminist and anarchist

1869 Emma Goldman (d. May 14, 1940), Lithuanian-born American anarchist-feminist writer, pioneer advocate of free love and contraception, and activist, who was deported to the Soviet Union for inciting World War I draft riots in New York.

Outspoken birth control advocate and champion of women's rights, Goldman wrote My Disillusionment in Russia; Anarchism & Other Essays; The Place of the Individual in Society.

In 1907, according to Goldman's autobiography, Living My Life, Melbourne anarchist Chummy Fleming (1863 - 1950) invited her to tour Australia and Australian anarchists had raised money for her fare. In 1908 she made preparations to go (she was to embark on the Makura at Vancouver on March 26, 1909), and 1,500 pounds of literature was despatched ahead. In April, Fleming wrote in the Melbourne Socialist that she had embarked, believing it to be so, but events had intervened, including police harassment and the US immigration department organising her deportation, but also a fit of jealousy over her lover, Dr Ben Reitman, whose promiscuity, despite her ideology, she was finding a challenge ...

See also Early progressives in the Book of Days

Tagged: anarchism, feminism, biography, radical+history, labor+history

UK rejects Hicks' plea for help

Australia: "THE Federal Government has backed Britain's decision not to lobby for the release from Guantanamo Bay of Adelaide terror suspect David Hicks.

"Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said it was entirely a decision for Britain.

"'I know what their perspective is because we have had some briefings provided to our officials by the British government,' Mr Downer told ABC radio from London.

"'It's really nothing to do with us.'"
Source

UK refuses to lobby for Hicks :: Hicks denied help by Brits :: all 12 related »
Bush’s Guantanamo Bay torture centre: Free David Hicks!
UK in talks with US on release of British residents from ...
Hicks should return home :: More at 'The Jurist'
Hicks no longer a Muslim: ex-detainee
Cindy Sheehan calls for David Hicks’ release

"Nothing to do with us"
That's it. An Australian citizen is held in appalling and cruel conditions for years without being charged, and it is nothing to do with Australia. The Australian government has shamed all who voted for it, and even those who didn't.

Tagged: uk, david+hicks, guantanamo

Photos by omnia

I recently discovered omnia's photos on flickr. You can see by the number of comments and testimonials she gets that she is a very popular flickr contributor, and with good reason.

This talented photographer hails from my neck of the woods and I love seeing her shots of my local area; some of her beach shots are sort of like mine -- as an elephant is like an ant.

Tagged: photography, photos, flickr

Australia-wide potests to say NO to unfair work laws

Click for more global actions one person can take

"This Wednesday June 28, there will be rallies and events all around Australia to Say No to unfair work laws.

"[Opposition Leader] Kim Beazley last week promised to abolish AWA individual contracts if the Labor Party wins the next election. Mr Beazley can take this stand thanks to the strength of the community campaign against the Howard Government's IR [industrial relations] laws. On June 28, let's show both parties that we will fight for our rights at work."

You can find all the times and city/regional venue details on the Rights at Work website.

Tagged: australia, action, activism, labor, civil+rights

Tom DeLay The Big Guy

Today I watched the new DVD The Big Buy: Tom DeLay's Stolen Congress.

Thanks to Almaniac Alinda L for sending me a copy of this chilling and important expose of corporate and political crime in Texas and Washington DC Republican circles. Well worth watching, so I've placed it in the Almanac store, Cafe Diem at a discount price.

The same people are about to release Iraq For Sale: The War Profiteers. Can't wait to see it.

Tagged: corporations, usa

Billionaire donates $37bn to Gates charity

"Billionaire investor Warren Buffett is to donate about $37bn (£20bn) - most of his vast personal fortune - to Bill Gates' charitable foundation. Mr Buffett will hand 10 million shares in his Berkshire Hathaway firm to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

"In a statement, Mr and Mrs Gates said they were 'awed' by the donation, thought to be the largest charitable gift ever made in the United States.

"The foundation aims to fight disease and promote education around the world.

"News of the donation comes shortly after Mr Gates announced he is to step away from his day-to-day role at software giant Microsoft."
BBC

Warren Buffett at Wikipedia

Tagged: corporations

Father Gill and his close encounter

1959 In perhaps the best documented and most celebrated UFO experience of all time, Australian missionary Father William Booth Gill and the entire staff and clients of an Anglican Mission at Boianai, in the former Australian colony of Papua-Niugini (Papua-New Guinea), saw an aerial disc-shaped object and exchanged waves with four passengers on board. The 'close encounters' carried over into the next two days.

For some time, a spate of alleged UFO sightings had been reported by numerous people around the mission, and Gill’s colleague Rev. Norman EG Cruttwell had been keeping records and interviewing witnesses, while Father Gill himself had been dubious. Even a sighting by his assistant, Stephen Gill Moi, who claimed to have seen an "inverted saucer" above the mission at 1 am on June 21, had left Gill sceptical, but the priest's doubt was not to last ...

This new sighting, with Gill present (though why the missionary's testimony should carry more weight than those of the other witnesses is rather telling) began at around 6.45 pm on June 26 and lasted several hours, with Gill later estimating that length of the craft was similar to five full moons lined up end to end. The priest and at least 38 of his fellow-villagers saw four human-like figures moving about on the top of the object, occasionally disappearing below, and reappearing soon after. Later, Father Gill wrote:

"As we watched it 'men' came out from the object and appeared on what seemed to be a deck on top of the huge disc. There were four figures in all, but only occasionally were all on view at once." ...

See also Out Of The Blue (UFO documentary) for other famous encounters

Tagged: anomalies, ufo, australia

Independence from America Day 2006

Click for embetterment

Australia: The sixth annual Independence from America Day will be celebrated in Byron Bay, NSW next Sunday, July 2.

I hope to see you there. Assembling in Apex Park, Main Beach at 11am.

http://www.peacebus.com/FourthJuly

Tagged: usa, action, activism

"It's crap but you've got to play the game" - student

A beautiful discussion by a panel of Australian academics on the messed-up effect pomo (postmodernism) is having on learning of high school pupils. A generation of pomo-taught teachers is now passing on to impressionable minds the pompous nonsense it learned at university in the '80s and '90s, although pomo is now passé in the academy. Great stuff.

Simon Haines: "... to a great extent, to a surprising extent, pomo at the academic level is a feature of the 1980s, and in many ways that kind of playful...there's often a playful way of thinking about putting things together that you wouldn't normally put together, a collage way of thinking, did become overtaken in the 1990s by other things. I don't know if your other guests would agree with this, but my take on it is that we're actually dealing with something that's a bit passé, at least at the university level, and yet we're seeing the kind of roll on effects of it coming out through school curricula even now, maybe because of a generation of curriculum setters or even in some cases school teachers who picked ..."

Audio and podcast will be here in a few days.

Tagged: education, postmodernism

Geldof called in by Blair to police G8 poverty deal

"The pledges to the world's poor made by the leaders of the rich world at the G8 summit in Gleneagles last year are to be policed by an independent, high-level international group being set up by Tony Blair.

"The announcement ... comes in the week that celebrity campaigners Bob Geldof and Bono launch their own evaluation of how well the G8 leaders have kept their promises. The report, commissioned from a team of independent experts, will be published by Data (Debt, Aids, Trade, Africa), the rock stars' lobbying organisation, on Thursday - three days before the anniversary of last year's Live8 concerts."
Independent

Tagged: africa, uk, blair, poverty

Yarri and Jacky, heroes of Gundagai

1852 Australia: Seventy-seven (some sources put the number up to 83 or higher) out of 250 residents of the village of Gundagai, New South Wales, drowned when the Murrumbidgee River flooded. Gundagai at the time was a crossing point for people en route to the Victorian gold fields.

Many were saved by local indigenous people, notably Yarri who rescued 49 stranded people in his bark canoe, braving the torrents of one of the continent's largest rivers to pluck the survivors one at a time from treetops and roofs, working perhaps 50 hours without a break.

Following the rescue, Yarri was given a copper shield to wear around his neck (breastplates were a decoration not infrequently bestowed by Europeans to Aboriginals considered worthy of respect), but for nearly 140 years neither Yarri nor Jacky, his partner in the rescue, really gained the recognition they deserved ...

Tagged: australia, indigenous

The global digital commons and other unlikely tales

The global digital commons and other unlikely tales is a stimulating new article by David M Berry.

'Darwin's tortoise' dies in Australia, aged 176

Harriet, a Galapagos turtle and the world's oldest known creature, has died in an Australian zoo, aged 176.

Darwin's Dinner Plate (2002) :: The origin of myth

My talk on the Lawsons

My talk on the Lawsons,
originally uploaded by wilsonsalmanac.

On Wednesday night, June 21, I gave a talk at Coffs Harbour City Library on the topic of Louisa Lawson and Henry Lawson, entitled, 'What you weren't taught at school'. My topic was based on the novel I have just written about the Lawsons, and my research (contained in the 100,000-word online Louisa Lawson and Henry Lawson Chronology).

In this one-hour talk I covered in haste the relatively unknown lives of these two great Australians -- the 'Mother of Women's Suffrage' and her poet/author son. I covered such topics as terrorism, sedition, communes, mental illness, and much more.

It was very pleasing that more than 90 people returned RSVPs for this occasion. Unfortunately, space was limited and more than 20 people had to be turned away. My thanks to Enzo Accadia and Judy Atkinson for organising the sucessful wine and cheese night, and to all who attended on a cold and rainy Winter Solstice night.

This is the best photo available. The blue sleeve is because I stood in front of the projector.

Tagged: henry+lawson, louisa+lawson, australia, australian+history, progressive, radical+history, literature

Robert Bradford Williams

1860 (?) Robert Bradford Williams (d. 1942), African-American-New Zealander lawyer (Class of 1885, Yale), born a slave in Georgia.

He was a 'black minstrel' in Australia for a lengthy period beginning in the late 1880s, a colleague of Orpheus Myron McAdoo in the Fisk Jubilee Singers. Williams later became the longest-serving Mayor of Onslow, a suburb of Wellington, New Zealand ...

Tagged: biography, usa, australia, new+zealand

Thawing permafrost could unleash tons of carbon

"WASHINGTON - Ancient roots and bones locked in long-frozen soil in Siberia are starting to thaw, and have the potential to unleash billions of tons of carbon and accelerate global warming, scientists said Thursday.

"This vast carbon reservoir, contained in permafrost soil in northeastern Siberia, contains about 75 times more carbon than the amount released into the atmosphere each year by the burning of fossil fuels, the researchers said in a statement ..."
ENN

Alaska permafrost thawing at an alarming rate (lid dip to Mary Jane at pagans4peace)

Tagged: environment, global+warming, climate+change

Midsummer Eve

Click to enlarge

Midsummer Eve (St John's Eve): bonfires and a magickal herb

Saint John's Eve is the night before the Feast Day of St John the Baptist, and in Europe, from pre-Christian times, Summer Solstice festivities and spiritual practices have been a part of this day. Also called Midsummer Eve, June 23 is a time rich in folklore.

On this night in olde Britain, people would go into the woods and bring back branches to their homes, celebrating the eve of the birth of John the Baptist (the only Christian saint whose birth date is a feast, as well as the day of his death – August 29). Fairies speak in human tongues on this night; the flower of happiness blooms ...

Tagged: calendar+customs

Australia's most important forest action in years

John Seed writes:

"This is the most important forest action in years.

"Please help stop our oldgrowth from being woodchipped for $10/tonne. Please come to the Eden Chipmill Rally on Sunday July 2nd (hear Kerry Nettle, Penelope Swales et al) http://www.woodchippingsux.net.au/ (carpooling, accommodation, flyers etc).

"Arrive Saturday 1st for the Pambula Hall gig that evening. See you there.

"For the Earth,

"John Seed"

Rainforest Information Centre
Box 368 Lismore
NSW 2480
AUSTRALIA
61 2 66897519
www.rainforestinfo.org.au

Tagged: rainforest, environment, action, activism, australia

Laptops give hope to the homeless

"Happy Ivy doesn't have a bathroom or a kitchen in the bus he calls home. He does, however, have a video-editing station.

"Living in a squalid, Woodstock-style bus parked in a Fillmore, California, orange grove, the 53-year-old homeless man charges a power generator from a utility shed and uses Wi-Fi from a nearby access point. From this humble camp, he's managed to run a 'round-the-clock internet television studio, organize grassroots political efforts, record a full-length album and write his autobiography, all while subsisting on oranges and avocados ...

"Nearly all homeless people have e-mail addresses, according to Michael Stoops, director of the National Coalition for the Homeless. 'More have e-mail than have post office boxes,' Stoops said. 'The internet has been a big boon to the homeless.'

"Helping the homeless get e-mail addresses has been a priority for years at shelters across the country. And in an age when most every public library in the nation offers internet access, the net has proven a perfect communication tool for those without a firm real-world address ..."
Wired

Tagged: poverty, internet

Afghan MP says she will not be silenced

How alcohol corps are changing the face of India

"The production of alcohol is a multi-billion dollar industry hungry for new markets.

"One of the industry's main targets are countries where most people don't drink.

"In the second part of the series, Nigel Wrench travels to India where drink is becoming part of an elite lifestyle.

"As he hears there's not only big money at stake, but cultural tradition too."
BBC

Listen now (RAM) :: Download :: Podcast

For podcasts from 100 sources, see our Podcasts Page

Tagged: india, corporations, addiction

The world's oldest map of the heavens

Click to enlarge

Seen from the Mittelberg, a 252m hill in the Ziegelroda Forest, Nebra, 180km south-west of Berlin, the sun sets every June 22 behind the Brocken, the highest mountain in northern Germany. The Brocken is in a direct line of sight on a clear day, 85km (about 53mi) to the north-west.

The Brocken is fabled in northern European mythology as the place where witches gather for a coven every Walpurgisnacht, April 30.

Treasure hunters on the Mittelberg in 1999 found a 32cm bronze-and-gold disc, crafted around 3,600 years ago. The map on its face shows the Brocken as well as 32 stars including the Pleiades. The Nebra disc, with the oldest concrete representation of the stars in the world, was placed in a pit in the middle of a ringwall during the early Bronze Age. The ringwall was built in such a way that the sun seemed to disappear every equinox behind the Brocken. Scientists believe the map and site formed an observatory, used to set the calendar for planting and harvesting crops ...

Tagged: astronomy, germany, calendar+customs

A phone company is ...

My favourite quote from the media this week:

"A phone company is a thin veneer of greed wrapped around a regulatory monopoly."
Cory Doctorow, Late Night Live, June 19, 2006

Tagged: internet, corporations

The longest day

From Heritage and Culture at Scotsman.com:

"We are fast approaching the longest day of the year and for Scots the benefits of living far north are manifest in the long, light nights. It sometimes seems as though the sun barely sets, the low rays splashing the evening sky with colour as beautiful as an impressionist painting.

"Whilst many people will be marking midsummer with a celebration of the summer solstice, Heritage & Culture has gone for her polar opposite and gets up close to the moon. It is thought by many archaeologists that a number of Scotland's great stone circles were constructed primarily to measure not the journey of the sun, but the moon. Read all about druids and moon worship during one extraordinary night in the Callanish standing stones on the Isle of Lewis."

Thanks, Extra! Extra!

Tagged: astronomy, pagan, calendar+customs

Packaging lies

Happy solstice

The solstices are the longest and shortest days of the year. In the Northern Hemisphere, Summer Solstice (June 21 or 22) occurs when the sun is farthest north. In the Northern Hemisphere, Winter Solstice (round about December 22) occurs when the sun is farthest south.

In the Southern Hemisphere, the winter and summer solstices are reversed, so my family, friends and I are enjoying Winter Solstice, or Yule, as it is known in the Celtic tradition. Meanwhile our northern friends are enjoying Litha ...

The new narcissism

"The Body Project is Joan Jacobs Brumberg's fascinating account of the changing sense of self, over a century, in adolescent American girls.

"Looking at their diaries, she found that in the late nineteenth century, girls scarcely mentioned their bodies. Moral language was reserved for improving character. In a diary of 1892, for example, there is the entry:

"Resolved, not to talk about myself or my feelings. To think before speaking. To work seriously. To be self-restrained in conversation and action. Not to let my thoughts wander. To be dignified. Interest myself more in others.

"A diary entry in 1982 reads:

"I will try to make myself better in any way I possibly can with the help of my budget and babysitting money, I will lose weight, get new lenses, already got a new haircut, good make-up, new clothes and accessories."

Anne Manne, 'What about Me? The New Narcissism'; The Monthly (Australia), June, 2006

No hard evidence on Osama, says FBI -- allegation

"On June 5, 2006, the Muckraker Report contacted the FBI Headquarters, (202) 324-3000, to learn why Bin Laden’s Most Wanted poster did not indicate that Usama was also wanted in connection with 9/11. The Muckraker Report spoke with Rex Tomb, Chief of Investigative Publicity for the FBI. When asked why there is no mention of 9/11 on Bin Laden’s Most Wanted web page, Tomb said, 'The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Usama Bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.'

"Surprised by the ease in which this FBI spokesman made such an astonishing statement, I asked, 'How this was possible?' Tomb continued, 'Bin Laden has not been formally charged in connection to 9/11.' I asked, 'How does that work?' Tomb continued, 'The FBI gathers evidence. Once evidence is gathered, it is turned over to the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice than decides whether it has enough evidence to present to a federal grand jury. In the case of the 1998 United States Embassies being bombed, Bin Laden has been formally indicted and charged by a grand jury. He has not been formally indicted and charged in connection with 9/11 because the FBI has no hard evidence connected [sic] Bin Laden to 9/11.'

"It shouldn’t take long before the full meaning of these FBI statements start to prick your brain and raise your blood pressure. If you think the way I think, in quick order you will be wrestling with a barrage of very powerful questions that must be answered. First and foremost, if the U.S. government does not have enough hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11, how is it possible that it had enough evidence to invade Afghanistan to 'smoke him out of his cave?'"
Source

“On September 20, 2001 the Taliban offered to hand Osama bin Laden to a neutral Islamic country for trial if the US presented them with evidence that he was responsible for the attacks on New York and Washington. The US rejected the offer."
The Guardian

‘Taliban Met With U.S. Often’, Washington Post, October 29, 2001

"Meanwhile, President Bush rejected Sunday the latest Taliban offer to discuss turning over Osama bin Laden to a third country if the United States stops its bombing campaign and provides evidence of bin Laden's complicity in the September 11 attacks." CNN, October 14, 2001

"A secret meeting takes place between Taliban and US government representatives in the city of Quetta, Pakistan. Afghan-American businessman Kabir Mohabbat serves as a middleman. US officials deny the meeting takes place, but later in the month Mohabbat explains that the US demands the Taliban hand over bin Laden, extradite foreign members of al-Qaeda who are wanted in their home countries, and shut down bin Laden's bases and camps. Mohabbat claims that the Taliban agrees to meet all the demands. However, some days later he is told the US position has changed and the Taliban must surrender or be killed. Later in the month, the Taliban again agrees to hand over bin Laden unconditionally, but the US replies that 'the train had moved.'” [Counterpunch, 11/1/04; CBS, 9/25/01]

Source: Complete 911 Timeline

FBI's Osama Bin Laden 'Most Wanted' webpage

Myths of the ‘War on Terrorism’ and Iraq - in the Scriptorium

Tagged: 9/11, war+on+terror, afghanistan, fbi, bin+laden

Heil Herriman

1910 Krazy Kat, by George Herriman (1880 - 1944), made his or her debut in comics.

In a 1999 special issue, The Comics Journal named Krazy Kat as “the greatest comic strip of the 20th Century”, and many comic artists have acknowledged the influence Herriman had on their work ...

Tagged: cartoons, biography, comics, comix, humor, humor

Supermutt

Lid dip to Baz le Tuff (L) and Peg (R).

Wrong way in Coffs

Wrong way in Coffs,
originally uploaded by wilsonsalmanac.

Seen in the main street of Coffs Harbour, NSW, Australia. Today.

I asked the friendly parking inspector if he sees this sort of thing very often, and he said only sometimes, and they're usually drivers from the UK. Don't ask me why.

As GW Bush says, click to increasnify.

Tagged: funny, funny+pictures, humor, humour, photos

Slip up

My local branch of St George Bank has several lemon-yellow petticoats hanging from the ceiling, and green balloons strung gaily around the walls.

When I asked the pleasant young female teller why this was so, she explained (with a hint of embarrassment, if I'm not wrong) that the bank was promoting its car insurance 'green slips'.

While recognising the visual pun of 'green (balloon) plus (yellow) slip', I couldn't help but wonder why the slips were not green like the balloons. Perhaps it's a Dadaist promotion. If so, it's very clever.

I bit my lip. I know that I dare not pitch my wits against the superior intellect of a graduate team of marketing professionals from Head Office.

Hopi Indian 'going home' ceremony

Niman Kachinas, Hopi Indian 'going home' ceremony (c. Jun 19 - 29)

Kachinas (katsinam; singular katsina) are spiritual messengers who listen to prayers of the holy men and elders and convey them to the gods. They have human forms and distinctive personalities. Kachinas are benevolent in the main, if treated respectfully. They taught the sacred dances to a group of youths who became the first priests.

A sixteen-day event, it begins around the time of the Summer Solstice. The Niman is one of the most solemn and dramatic of all Kachina rituals.

It is time to say goodbye to the Kachinas who return home to the San Francisco mountains for another Winter. The Niman is similar to Christmas: children receive gifts from the Kachinas before they leave.

Tagged: indigenous, folklore, calendar+customs, usa, festivals

Reduce incidence of soccer riots the easy and fun way

What did the Canterbury monks see in 1178?

1178 About an hour after sunset, according to Gervase of Canterbury (c. 1141 - 1210), the famous medieval chronicler, a band of five eyewitnesses (Canterbury monks) watched as the upper horn of the bright, new crescent Moon “suddenly split in two. From the midpoint of this division a flaming torch sprang up, spewing out … fire, hot coals and sparks … The body of the moon, which was below writhed … throbbed like a wounded snake”. The phenomenon recurred another dozen times or more, the witnesses reported.

A long-held belief has it that a meteor collision witnessed by these 12th-Century Englishmen resulted in a violent explosion on the moon, so creating the moon’s Giordano Bruno crater, named after the 16th-Century astronomer burned at the stake for heresy in 1600. However, this notion doesn't hold up under scientific scrutiny, according to Paul Withers of the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.

“I think they happened to be at the right place at the right time to look up in the sky and see a meteor that was directly in front of the moon, coming straight towards them,” Withers said.

Tagged: astronomy

Paul McCartney turns 64 today

When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now,
Will you still be sending me a Valentine, birthday greetings, bottle of wine?
If I'd been out 'till quarter to three, would you lock the door?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four?

You'll be older, too. Aaah, and if you say the word, I could stay with you.

I could be handy, mending a fuse, when your lights have gone.
You can knit a sweater by the fireside, sunday mornings, go for a ride.
Doing the garden, digging the weeds, who could ask for more?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty four?

Every summer we can rent a cottage in the Isle of Wight if it's not too dear.
We shall scrimp and save.
Grandchildren on your knee, Vera, Chuck, and Dave.

Send me a postcard, drop me a line stating point of view.
Indicate precisely what you mean to say, yours sincerely wasting away.
Give me your answer, fill in a form, mine forever more.
Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty four?

[The image above, used in Fair Use, was published about 35 years ago in a book of Beatles artwork. It was an artist's representation of what the Beatles might look like when they were 64.]

EPA rule loosened after oil chief's letter to Rove

WASHINGTON — "A rule designed by the Environmental Protection Agency to keep groundwater clean near oil drilling sites and other construction zones was loosened after White House officials rejected it amid complaints by energy companies that it was too restrictive and after a well-connected Texas oil executive appealed to White House senior advisor Karl Rove.

"The new rule, which took effect Monday, came after years of intense industry pressure, including court battles and behind-the-scenes agency lobbying. But environmentalists vowed Monday that the fight was not over, distributing internal White House documents that they said portrayed the new rule as a political payoff to an industry long aligned with the Republican Party and President Bush.

"In 2002, a Texas oilman and longtime Republican activist, Ernest Angelo, wrote a letter to Rove complaining that an early version of the rule was causing many in the oil industry to 'openly express doubt as to the merit of electing Republicans when we wind up with this type of stupidity.'

"Rove responded by forwarding the letter to top White House environmental advisors and scrawling a handwritten note directing an aide to talk to those advisors and 'get a response ASAP.'

"Rove later wrote to Angelo, assuring him that there was a 'keen awareness' within the administration of addressing not only environmental issues but also the 'economic, energy and small business impacts' of the rule."
LA Times

Tagged: environment, oil, bush, rove, corporations

AWU celebrates 120 years as voice for the worker

"AUSTRALIA'S oldest and largest union was born in a Ballarat pub in 1886. Union organiser William Spence and firebrand shearer David Temple, 24, mounted a campaign against pastoralists who had cut the shearers' pay from 20 shillings per 100 sheep to 17 shillings and sixpence. Responding to an advertisement in the local paper, 40 shearers signed up for the new shearers' union, which was to become the Australian Workers Union ...

"[Victorian] Premier Steve Bracks helped unveil a plaque commemorating the anniversary, which includes Henry Lawson's poem about the Eureka Stockade, with the famous line: 'If blood should stain the wattle.'"
The Age, today

WG Spence, Henry Lawson, Australian Socialist League and Australian Worker in the Book of Days

Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson in the Book of Days

Tagged: australia, labor+history, radical+history, henry+lawson

Who was Henry Lawson?

"Give me a pound a column, and a drop to clear my throat,
An' I will write the reddest song as ever poet wrote"

1867 Birth of Henry Lawson (d. September 2, 1922), Australian's best-known writer of short stories and verse, noted for his realistic portrayals of bush life and the revolutionary politics of his earlier writing.

Henry Lawson was born dirt-poor in a bark hut* on the goldfields at Grenfell, New South Wales. Likewise, he died in abject poverty, under a tree in his garden, and Prime Minister William Morris Hughes ordered one of the grandest State funerals ever seen in Australia, and the first for a writer, which was attended by many thousands in St Andrew's Cathedral and out on the streets of Sydney (picture of funeral).

Years later, his face was on Australia's $10 note, only to be removed and replaced with that of his conservative friend and Bulletin magazine poetic sparring partner, Banjo Paterson. On the reverse of today's $10 note is one-time Communist Mary Gilmore, who Lawson once asked to marry him, but was refused. She changed her mind soon after she had sailed to Paraguay to live on the William Lane-led radical communal experiment, New Australia, but by then it was too late as Lawson had married the daughter of two of Australia's most famous fiery radicals, William and Bertha McNamara.

Henry Lawson's mother was the pioneer feminist and 'Mother of Women's Suffrage', Louisa Lawson (1848 - 1920), publisher/editor of the progressive women's journal, Dawn (a “paper in which women may express their own opinions on political and social questions”), which Henry Lawson printed in its earliest editions. His brother-in-law was another fiery labor man, Jack Lang, who became Premier of New South Wales in 1925 ...

Henry Lawson lived much of his life in poverty and alcoholic despair, but even during his lifetime he was acknowledged as a poetic genius, much-loved by the Australian people who until recently had a strong poetic culture. With Andrew Barton ‘Banjo’ Paterson (1864 - 1941), he is Australia's national poet and the two names are often said together. His poetry, however, like his short stories (he was prolific in both genres), has much more of a radical bent than that of Banjo. The two men were friendly rivals and a famous poetic duel (Up the Country), was fought publicly between them in The Bulletin. Paterson's poem romanticised the Aussie outback; Henry Lawson, ever the cynic-realist, answered decrying its harshness, poverty and social injustice ...

Tagged: henry+lawson, louisa+lawson, australia, literature, history, labor+history, radical+history, poetry, biography

Robin Goodfellow: A midsummer night's imp

Watch out, watch out, there are imps about! Charles Kightly in his The Perpetual Almanack of Folklore (Thames and Hudson, 1987) tells us that the red-stalked Herb Robert (Geranium robertianum) blooms around English houses in June, associated with Summer Solstice (June 21) and Midsummer (June 24). (In North America, however, it is a noxious weed.) Herb Robert is also known as Death-come-quickly, Robin's eye, Robin Hood, Robin-i’-th’-hedge, Stinking Bob, Stinker Bobs and Wren flower.

Weed or not, beware how you treat it, for it is Robin Goodfellow’s flower and he might direct a snake to bite you, especially if you destroy it.

Robin Goodfellow is an English imp, a trickster from the woods. As a forest dweller, he symbolises the pagan (wood-dwelling) pre-Christian peoples who the Church worked hard at converting from their wicked ways. Robin is a cognate of the famous European Green Man (a name coined by Lady Raglan in 1939 for a medieval image usually found in churches), and of Robin Hood. The English sometimes called him Puck, frequently representing him as a goat, while the Irish knew similar fantastic beings as Pooka. In Killorglin, County Kerry, Ireland annually on August 10 - 12, a goat is still the mascot of the ancient Puck Fair ...

Tagged: calendar+customs, uk, england, folklore, green+man

War Porn and Iraq

David Swanson's 'The Iraq War as a Trophy Photo', and Tom Engelhardt's article that precedes it, 'War Porn and Iraq', make stimulating and disturbing reading. Check them out.

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

Hail to the Chump

Finally!

"It is essential to acknowledge that the war itself was a mistake ... It was wrong, and I was wrong to vote for that Iraqi war resolution."
John Kerry (Source)

Activists Jeer Clinton Over Iraq Stance

Hillary Clinton Is Booed by Anti-War Left Truthdig :: ABC News :: all 275 related »

Tagged: usa, war+on+terror, military, activism, action

A Lesson on Life

This matters....

this does not...

this matters...

this does not...

this matters...

this does not...

this matters...

this does not...

this matters...

and this does not...

the end.

Republished with permission of Alinda at This Wild Ride blog.

Criss Angel, illusionist

ABC Radio National podcasts

Having vigorously searched all around the Net, I can say that I've found no radio service that provides a better range of excellent, thought-provoking podcasts than ABC Radio National, Australia. Thirty five programs are now regularly available as downloadable MP3 audio files. Last time I looked, even BBC didn't seem as prolific, nor as professional.

Radio National podcasts, although new, are becoming very popular, with downloads of some shows approaching 100,000 per week. Last week, Life Matters had 8,000 downloads from Latvia alone.

I highly recommend Late Night Live ( a must for thinkers -- Australia's best and most challenging radio program; more than 40 per cent of its downloads come from the USA), The Science Show and Background Briefing for top-quality radio journalism on important international matters.

Some of the best of these are available any day of the week at our Podcasts Page. Listen on your computer or your ipod.

There are dozens of other podcast providers represented at this page. Here's another: Audio Activism, featuring the current story, Did your US House Rep Sell Out the Internet?

Tagged: podcast

People in Action website

People in Action, "a web guide to carefully selected and commented resources on ecology, solidarity, human rights, peace, NGOs ... and about the countless people who in the world are trying to change a little the things in a positive direction" is a huge website well worth checking out and bookmarking.

Tagged: progressive, internet+resources

Rising of the Nile, Egypt

This phenomenon from ancient times usually commences on or about this day, reaching its greatest height at the Autumnal Equinox, with the waters gradually subsiding until the following April.

According to Edward W Lane (An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, 1836), the night of June 17 is called 'Leylet-en-Nuktah', or 'the Night of the Drop', because "it is believed that a miraculous drop then falls into the Nile and causes it to rise". An interesting ceremony used to be performed at 'the cutting of the dam' in old Cairo. A round pillar of earth was formed; it was called the 'bride', and seeds were sown on the top of it. Lane says that an ancient Arabian historian "was told that the Egyptians were accustomed, at the period when the Nile began to rise, to deck a young virgin in gay apparel, and throw her into the river, as a sacrifice to obtain a plentiful inundation". The caliphs abolished this practice, instead throwing a letter into the water, in which it was commanded to rise if it were the will of God.

Pictured: NASA satellite shot of the Nile River and Red Sea.

Tagged: egypt, folklore, calendar+customs

My favourite photo this year

This photo of white cockies in flight by simon62 is definitely a wonder to behold.

Click 'All Sizes' then 'Original Size' if you would like to see it in its full cockatoo glory.

Tagged: birds, australia, photo, photography, nature

Captain Bligh and his amazing navigation feat

1789 After 41 days at sea, Captain William Bligh and 18 (or 19) loyal crewmen arrived at the island of Timor after drifting 5,600 km (3,480 mi) following the mutiny on Bligh's ship HMS Bounty, when they were put to sea in a small boat with provisions sufficient to reach the most accessible ports, a sextant and a pocket watch, but no charts or compass.

Bligh’s seamanship and leadership qualities had kept all the men alive although beset by near starvation and extreme thirst. Bligh oversaw the distribution of tiny amounts of water to each man per day, and almost all survived an impossible situation. The only casualty was one crewman killed by hostile natives.

In 1792 Bligh returned to Tahiti, collected the breadfruit seedlings, which was his original purpose before the mutiny, and successfully brought them to the West Indies. He became governor of New South Wales in 1805. There he suffered another mutiny, this time the Rum Rebellion, and was imprisoned from 1808 to 1810.

Tagged: australia, uk, history

Dictionary of Sydney

I'm sure many other Sydneysiders will be interested in the Dictionary of Sydney website which was launched today.

"The Dictionary will represent Sydney's story on-line and through a variety of other mediums [sic]. It will become a forum for public discussion, education and entertainment.

"The definition of Sydney includes its natural forms, such as its botany and geology, and its built forms, those present and those lost through demolition or the passage of time, its catastrophic natural and human disasters, as well as the triumphs and achievements that have contributed to its development."

I'm just wondering why it's not being run as a wiki, and whether it will have RSS as well as email subs. At any rate, I'm delighted to see that it's happening.

What it will contain

Tagged: sydney, australia, online+resources

Rich countries virtually ignore major human disaster

The earthquake in Yogyakarta 18 days ago has left 1.5 million people homeless, far more than officially calculated a week or two ago, according to the World Bank.

Although the actual loss of life was less than in the notorious Boxing Day tsunami, far more villagers have lost their homes in this disaster, and the cost of rebuilding is about twice as great. The victims of this huge tragedy are now in danger of illness and death due to lack of toilets, fresh water and all the other facilities that make life liveable. Children are already starting to die, according to distraught aid workers.

The Australian Government has committed a contribution of a measly $7.5 million (about the cost of 6 fancy powerboats or 18 average houses in Sydney, according to current prices). The richest country in the world, the USA, with a population 17 times greater than Australia, has shelled out a pathetic $2.5 million according to the USA Government (source). That's less than a cent per person.

There is a number of international appeals currently open for non-measly and non-pathetic human beings to aid victims of one of the world's greatest natural disasters of the last ten years.

Let's just pretend Indonesians are white and send a few bucks ... please.

Photos

Tagged: action, activism, earthquake, natural+disaster

John Fox forced to leave Welfare State International

John Fox, well known worldwide for his progressive and innovative theatre company Welfare State International, has decided to leave collaborative art and work alone.

The reason? As he explains in this PDF file, 'Whose Culture?', after 40 years his work was impossibly cramped by government bureaucracy. WSI's indoor and outdoor events and commitment to community events will be sorely missed.

"We joined to make spontaneous playful art outside the ghetto -- not to work three years ahead in a goal-orientated corporate institution where matched funding and value-added output tick-boxes destroy imaginative excess. Free imagination, the essentialorgan of communion, is being poisoned. The PAYE vulture descends. Working in the art business becomes a job and not a vocation. Health and safety, child protection, alarm systems, licensing, family friendly badges and employment laws invade with their suffocating culture of inertia and fear. The final straw? The 'hot work' permit for a bonfire in a field. Had we swept the floor and were the overhead sprinklers working?"

For information on the new arts company at Lanternhouse, which has taken over where WSI left off, please visit the Lanternhouse International website.

Tagged: theatre, bureaucracy

Hicks subjected to most extreme CIA torture, expert says

"An expert in CIA interrogation techniques says the Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks has been subjected to the most extreme torture in the agency's history.

"American academic, Professor Alfred McCoy, has been studying CIA interrogation techniques for 50 years.

"Professor McCoy says Guantanamo Bay is an ad hoc laboratory used to perfect CIA psychological torture methods.

"He has told ABC TV's Lateline program that Hicks was subjected to 244 days of sensory disorientation, was left in a dark cell and denied sunlight and his only contact was a weekly visit by the military chaplain.

"'David Hicks has suffered untold psychological damage that will take a great deal of care, a great deal of treatment, and probably the rest of his life to move beyond,' he said.

"'Confinement at Guantanamo constitutes torture. The question is, what kind of torture? It is psychological torture. Not the conventional, physical, brutal torture, but a distinctively American form of torture - psychological torture.'

"The suicides of three inmates has prompted renewed concern for Hicks's welfare."
ABC News

Related Video
History expert Professor Alfred McCoy says the treatment of Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks must be viewed through the lens of CIA psychological torture techniques.
Real Broadband :: Real Dialup :: Win Broadband :: Win Dialup

Tagged: david+hicks, guantanamo, usa, cia, torture, human+rights

Fascist fruitcake held surprising political sway

Eric Butler, Australia's most influential fascist who ran the infamous Australian League of Rights, has carked it, not a moment too soon.

He preached a zany gospel that the Nazis were a Jewish plot, and that people like Winston Churchill were covert Communists.

Australia's current Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, once addressed a League of Rights meeting.

Fascist fruitcake held surprising political sway :: More

Due to Presidential Executive Orders ...

A friend of mine has added this to her email sig (signature):

NOTICE: Due to Presidential Executive Orders, the National Security Agency may have read this email without warning, warrant, or notice, and certainly without probable cause. They may do this without any judicial or legislative oversight. You have no recourse other than petitioning your elected officials and exercising your constitutional rights. This message is intended for the use of the person(s) to whom it is addressed. It may contain information that is privileged, confidential, and exempt from disclosure under law. Please do not forward this email without my expressed permission. If you are not the intended recipient, your use of this message for any purpose is prohibited.

Francis Fukuyama - No longer neocon

"Fukuyama is a conservative, but not an ideologue. And recently he has been critical of the Bush Administration."
Francis Fukuyama - No longer neocon

Tagged: usa, military, foreign+policy, iraq, war+on+terror, islam, fukuyama, neo-con, neo-cons

Meteorite hit Norway like an A-bomb last week

Strange how little press coverage this got this week:

"A large meteorite struck in northern Norway this week, landing with an impact an astronomer compared to the atomic bomb used at Hiroshima."
Source

Maybe it's divine punishment for what Norway is doing to the whales.

More meteorite Norway news at Google News

Update
"A spectacular fireball that flew over Norway last week, causing sonic booms and making the ground shake when a meteorite presumably hit the ground, was not quite as spectacular as first reported. Researchers now estimate the kinetic energy of the event as 300 tons of TNT, far short of the Hiroshima-like blast described in some news reports."
Space Weather News for June 16, 2006 http://spaceweather.com

Tagged: science, astronomy, norway, whaling, environment

The Limelight Department pioneered movie making

1892 Australia: The Limelight Department, one of the world's first film studios, was officially established in Melbourne. In the next nine years it produced arguably the first feature-length film and documentary film in the world.

The Limelight Department was operated by The Salvation Army in Melbourne, Australia, between 1891 and 1910. It produced evangelical material for use by the Salvation Army, as well as private and government contracts. In its 19 years of operation, the Limelight Department produced about 300 films of various lengths, making it the largest film producer of its time ...

Tagged: cinema, movies, history

The big wave

Bilderberg-bound filmmaker held at airport

"Canadian authorities detained an American activist filmmaker at the Ottawa airport late Wednesday night, confiscating his passport, camera equipment and most of his belongings.

"Citizenship and Immigration Canada agents stopped Alex Jones, whose films include Martial Law 9/11: The Rise of the Police State, and questioned him for nearly four hours before letting him go with only one change of clothes and telling him to return Thursday morning.

"'It’s really chilling, like a police state,' said Mr. Jones of his detention."
Canada.com

Alex Jones Detained On Orders Of Bilderberg Group
When George W. Bush Had Alex Jones Arrested For Asking A Question
Bilderberg Group at Wikipedia

Thank you, Janette, for this one.

Oh, Philip

1921 Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, husband of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom. Philip is famed for his racist comments.

He was born (on the dining-room table) at Mon Repos, his parents' small house on the island of Corfu, the son of Prince Andrew of Greece and Princess Alice of Battenberg, a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom.

He is particularly known in Britain for his occasional gaffes when on public visits.

For example:
When visiting China in 1986, he told a group of British students, "If you stay here much longer, you'll all be slitty-eyed".
After accepting a gift from a Kenyan native he replied "You are a woman aren't you?"
"If it has four legs and is not a chair, has wings and is not an aeroplane, or swims and is not a submarine the Cantonese will eat it." (1986)
"British women can't cook." (1966)
Suggested the locals were cannibals on a visit to Papua New Guinea by asking a British student "You managed not to get eaten then?"
Asked a Scottish driving instructor "How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough for them to pass the driving test?"
Told a group of deaf school children at a fund raising event standing next to a Jamaican steel drum band "Deaf? No wonder you are deaf standing so close to that racket."
He asked an Australian Aborigine, "Still throwing spears?" (2002)
Said to a Briton in Budapest, Hungary, "You can't have been here that long -- you haven't got a pot belly." (1993)
To the President of Nigeria, who was dressed in traditional Muslim robes, "You look like you're ready for bed!"

Aussie socialist was first leader of New Zealand Labour Party

1868 Harry Holland (Henry Edmund Holland; (d. October 8, 1933), Queanbeyan, NSW, Australia-born New Zealand writer (Red Roses on the Highways, 1924) politician and unionist.

In 1890 Holland, unemployed, left the Salvation Army, believing that its response to poverty was inadequate, joining the small Australian Socialist League two years later. Following this, with his friend Tom Batho ('The Vag'), he began a career of socialist journalism, launching the Sydney Socialist in October 1894. The year 1896 saw him convicted of libelling the superintendent of the New South Wales Labour Bureau, and he served three months in prison. On his release, he transferred his newspaper to Newcastle, calling it the Socialist Journal of the Northern People, then in 1900 he published it out of Sydney as the People.

In 1901 he organised the Tailoresses' Union of New South Wales. In 1909, after having worked editing labour papers in Grenfell and Queanbeyan and launching the International Socialist Review for Australasia, Holland was convicted of sedition (he had advocated violent revolution against capitalism during the Broken Hill miners’ strike) and was jailed for two years. The labor movement also widely condemned his militancy, and in 1911 Holland suffered an emotional collapse. In 1912 he left Australia for New Zealand. The following year he was imprisoned again for three months for the use of seditious language. In 1916 he helped form the New Zealand Labour Party and became its first leader, was elected to Parliament in 1918 and occupied the chair of that party until his death. In 1933, Holland died of a heart attack and was given a state funeral. His successor, the moderate Michael Joseph Savage, went on to lead the Labour Party to victory in the 1935 elections.

Tagged: radical, labor, history, socialism, sedition, labor+history, radical+history, australia

Spike Milligan and the World's Funniest Joke

"DETECTIVE work by a British academic investigating the psychology of humour has shown that Spike Milligan was the author of the world's funniest joke.

"Five years ago Richard Wiseman, of the University of Hertfordshire, conducted an online experiment in which 300,000 people from around the world took part in LaughLab, in which they voted for the best gag.

"At the Cheltenham Science Festival on Thursday, Professor Wiseman said he had discovered that it was almost certainly written by Milligan.

"The joke runs as follows: Two hunters are out in the woods in New Jersey when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed.

"The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps: 'My friend is dead! What can I do?'

"The operator says: 'Calm down, I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead.' There is a silence, then a shot is heard.

"Back on the phone, the guy says: 'OK, now what?'

"'It is very rare to be able to track down the origin of any joke but this is an exception,' Professor Wiseman said.

"'There is some very rare footage from 1951 showing the Goons in their first TV appearance. Just by chance I saw it on a documentary and saw a version of the very same joke.'

"The material would have been written by Milligan and the script reads:

"Michael Bentine: I just came in and found him lying on the carpet there.

"Peter Sellers: Oh, is he dead?

"Bentine: I think so.

"Sellers: Hadn't you better make sure?

"Bentine: All right. Just a minute. Sound of two gunshots.

"Bentine: He's dead."
Sydney Morning Herald (ta Baz le Tuff)

Tagged: humor, humour

The Purpose Driven Life Takers

"Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life.

"You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission -- both a religious mission and a military mission -- to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state - especially moderate, mainstream Christians. Your mission is 'to conduct physical and spiritual warfare'; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice. You have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years old. You are playing a real-time strategy video game whose creators are linked to the empire of mega-church pastor Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life.

"The game, slated for release by October 2006 in advance of the Christmas shopping rush, has been previewed at video game exhibitions, and reviewed by major newspapers and magazines. But until now, no fan or critic has pointed out the controversial game's connection to Mr. Warren or his dominionist agenda ..."
Talk To Action

Rick Warren at Wikipedia

Lid dip to mojo at pagans4peace

Tagged: religion, christianity, fundamentalism

Bad day at Myall Creek

Australia: On Saturday, June 9, 1838 (some sources say June 10), twelve European stockmen rounded up approximately 28 of about 40 Kwiambal people squatting at Henry Dangar's station at Myall Creek (a branch of the Gwydir River, near Narrabri), and killed them with knives and guns.

Later they killed another three. The stockmen, who had accused the Aboriginal people of pilfering, were acquitted at a trial on November 15, but faced trial again on November 26 and were found guilty (see court transcript). Seven of the twelve murderers were executed under Governor Sir George Gipps’s authority.

Image source

Tagged: australia, history, indigenous

Who would Jesus bomb?

The death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is the big news of the week.

While I hold no brief for this apparently loony extremist and callous murderer of innocents, I've been sickened by the whole deal and the reactions of some politicians.

According to ABC Radio National, some witnesses have claimed that there were women and children killed in the raid that killed al-Zarqawi. If this is so, how can anybody be "delighted", to quote from Australia's Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer?

In the USA, Rumsfeld said that al-Zarqawi was probably the one person with the most blood on his hands in the whole world. Now there is a textbook example of the pot calling the kettle black. Dastardly al-Zarqawi was not responsible for the deaths of scores of thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq. Rumsfeld and Bush are.

They killed al-Zarqawi with a 500-pound bomb. They didn't drop a 500-pound can of sleeping gas or MACE, which would have done the trick. No, in true Bush-macho horror style, they used a massive explosive weapon, no doubt obviating the possibility of the world hearing al-Zarqawi in court condemning America's cruel State-sponsored terrorism perpetrated on the people of Iraq.

It seems to me that Jesus Christ (aka Prince of Peace), who is apparently a member of the current USA administration, used to have quite a different take on what to do with one's enemies.

Update: Kate, a reader, writes: "he was killed with two 500 lb. bombs and yes, there were others killed."

Tagged: war+on+terror, iraq, usa, rumsfeld, bush, terrorism

Thank you Lt. Ehren Watada

"Wednesday, June 7th U.S. Army First Lieutenant Ehren Watada became the first commissioned officer to refuse deployment to the unlawful Iraq war and occupation. He announced his duty to disobey the illegal order to deploy to Iraq in coordinated press conferences in Tacoma, Washington and Honolulu, Hawaii. Although he was restricted from attending the noon event in Tacoma as planned, a video statement was shown. Later that evening, Lt. Watada appeared before the press in Tacoma to answer questions directly.

Sign the petition!

"Thank you Lt. Ehren Watada for standing up for international, US and military law by refusing to deploy to Iraq in support of the ongoing illegal war and occupation.

"From the preemptive invasion based on deception, to the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians and nearly 2,500 U.S. troops, to the infamous Abu Ghraib torture cells and the recent Haditha massacre, no more evidence is required of how very wrong this war is. In light of these facts, we appreciate your decision to now follow your conscience."
Thank you Lt. Ehren Watada

And lid dip to the excellent blog (subscribe!) Maryannaville for the tip-off.

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

Who killed Martin Luther King?

1968 Dr Martin Luther King Jr's alleged killer, James Earl Ray (1928 - 1998), was found in London.

Ray recanted his confession within three days after his conviction for the April 4, 1968 assassination, claiming that a person with the alias 'Raoul' was involved, as was his brother Johnny, but not himself. He spent the remainder of his life attempting (unsuccessfully) to withdraw his guilty plea, presenting his case for a conspiracy in the book, Who Killed Martin Luther King Jr? (foreword by Rev. Jesse Jackson). It was Ray's contention that he had been a patsy, set up by 'Raoul' and others to purchase a rifle, believing he was actually taking part in a gun-running crime. He also contended that his lawyer, Percy Foreman, had inveigled him into a guilty plea in order to profit from a multi-thousand-dollar deal Foreman had done with a journalist ...

In 1997 Martin Luther King's son Dexter King met with Ray, and publicly supported Ray's efforts to obtain a retrial ...

Tagged: usa, assassination, legal, law

The Outcast at Camp Echo

In support of their request, General Hill attached a memo from Guantanamo's Joint Task Force 170 recommending: first, "stress positions (like standing) for a maximum of four hours"; second, "isolation facility for up to 30 days"; third, "deprivation of light and auditory stimuli"; fourth, hooding; fifth, "use of 20-hour interrogations"; and, finally, 'Vet towel and dripping water to induce the misperception of suffocation".

The Outcast of Camp Echo: The Punishment of David Hicks

Tagged: david+hicks, guantanamo, rendition, torture, usa, bush, rumsfeld, cia, human+rights, war+on+terror, afghanistan

New GuestMap

The old GuestMap served us well, but only allowed for 100 entries. So now we have one powered by Google Maps. And here it is. Why not show us where you live?

Irish effect on Australian English

Is the word 'didgeridoo' Irish and not Australian Indigenous?

"What could be more Australian than the droning sound of this native instrument? Yet there’s a linguistic mystery about it. Firstly, the name isn’t recorded in Australian English until 1919, astonishingly late. And it isn’t Aboriginal—native names include yidali, illpera and bombo, but nothing that sounds even vaguely like didgeridoo. Lexicographers have traditionally got round this by saying it is imitative, but didgeridoo bears scant relation to the noise the instrument makes. Now Dymphna Lonergan, currently working on a PhD thesis concerning the Irish influence on Australian English, may have solved the problem. Her theory appeared in Australian newspapers six months ago, and is reported in more detail in the current issue of Ozwords, published by the Australian National Dictionary Centre. She points to a possible Irish source in two words dúdaire and dubh. Gaelic spelling is in a class by itself: Ms Lonergan suggests the words are actually said rather like 'doodjerreh' and 'doo' (though some native speakers dispute this). The first means 'trumpeter'; the second means 'black'. Put them together (adjective following noun in Gaelic) and you get a phrase that means 'black trumpeter' and which sounds remarkably like the instrument’s name."
World Wide Words

Didgeridoo, sheila, brumby ... were these typically Australian words actually adopted from Irish?

See also Lingua Franca where you can hear Dymphna Lonergan talk about the Irish effect on Australian English.

Listen at
Sounds Irish 1
Sounds Irish 2

Note: The audio might only be there for a couple of weeks.

Tagged: australia, ireland, irish, australian, english, language, pronunciation, indigenous

Taj Mahal built as a monument to love

1631 [Sources differ as to date.] While on a campaign with her husband (Shah Jahan, Mughal Emperor of India), Mumtaz Mahal (born Arjumand Banu Begam), died.

The Taj Mahal, described by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore as "a tear on the face of eternity", is often said to be one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World, and is her tomb. The grand Taj Mahal stands as a monument to the love of a man for a woman.

As she lay on her deathbed, it is said that Mumtaz whispered to Jahan a dying wish for him to build a monument that would express the beauty of their love for each other. Stricken with grief, Shah Jahan remained indoors for a week; when he emerged his hair had turned white, his back was now bent, and his face lined with despair. He ordered his entire kingdom into mourning for the next two years, and it is said he was inconsolable to the point of contemplating abdication in favour of his sons.

Some believe the great building was designed by Geronimo Verroneo, an Italian in service to the Mughal (Moghul) Empire, and certainly many European craftsmen were among the 20,000 workers who worked on the tomb, bringing with them Renaissance skill and vision – not that the Moghul culture was lacking in either skill or vision. Craftsmen from as far as Turkey came to join in the work ...

Tagged: india, history

Commercial Hotel, Ulmarra

Commercial Hotel, Ulmarra,
originally uploaded by wilsonsalmanac.

I went north to Lismore today -- a few hours drive north of home -- and didn't get time to blog. But I thought I'd show a nice part of Australia before I hit the hay.

For many years I drove the Pacific Highway through Ulmarra (just north of Grafton, NSW) and never turned my eyes left into Coldstream St. Discovered it recently and popped in tonight. It's a quaint and old-fashioned precinct with this grand old Aussie pub down the end near the river.

To the north (right) is a beautiful little park with lots of flowers and botanical name tags on trees, no doubt placed there by local citizens. This street is a nice stopover on the trip, and quite out of this world in the dark.

Green Buildings + Sustainable Communities at Flickr

Green Buildings + Sustainable Communities is a Flickr photo group worth keeping an eye on for ideas and inspiration.

Tagged: permaculture, environment, nature, architecture, sustainability, flickr

Saint and destruction of pagan sacred sites

Feast day of St Boniface of Crediton, Apostle of Germany

Destruction of sacred sites
Boniface is remembered for destroying idols and pagan temples, and building Christian churches on the sites. 'Thor's Oak' was an ancient tree near Fritzlar in northern Hesse (Germany) and one of the most sacred of sites of the old Germans. In 722 or 723, St Boniface cut down the tree to demonstrate the superiority of the Christian god over Thor and the other Germanic/Nordic deities, building a chapel from its wood at the site. This event commonly marks the beginning of the Christianization of the non-Frankish Germans. This was at the forest of Geismar, Saxony, near the present-day town of Fritzlar in northern Hesse. (Some sources say that the tree might have been sacred to Odin/Woden.)

The Hessians believed that their god would protect the tree, but Boniface was quite resolved to cut it down. Boniface walked up to the tree, removed his shirt, took up an axe, and without uttering a word chopped down the two-metre-wide wooden god. The saint defiantly stood on the trunk, and asked, "How stands your mighty god? My God is stronger than he." As they watched, the Christian fable has it, he took an axe to it and was aided by a huge gust of wind. The crowd's reaction was mixed, but some conversions were begun. What actually occurred we shall probably never know, but it seems that in the face of superior strength, the Hessians submitted to Christian authority ...

Tagged: saints, religion, christianity, paganism, pagan, folklore

Death of suffragette Emily Davison

1913 Emily Davison, British suffragette and member of the Women's Social and Political Union, tried to grab the reins of King George V's horse, Anmer, as it rounded Tattenham Corner at the Epsom Derby. Film footage of the incident still survives.

She fell beneath the horse and was trampled, receiving critical injuries and died on June 8, never having regained consciousness. Her very large funeral was held on June 14 (qv).

Tagged: feminism, activism, britain, suffragettes

Cells in our bodies may be 90 per cent bacteria

"We are somehow like an amalgam, a mix of bacteria and human cells. There are some estimates that say 90 percent of the cells on our body are actually bacteria," Steven Gill, a molecular biologist formerly at TIGR and now at the State University of New York in Buffalo, said in a telephone interview.
Reuters via Maryannaville

Tagged: science, biology, bacteria

Is it raining aliens?

"As bizarre as it may seem, the sample jars brimming with cloudy, reddish rainwater in Godfrey Louis’s laboratory in southern India may hold, well, aliens. In April, Louis, a solid-state physicist at Mahatma Gandhi University, published a paper in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Astrophysics and Space Science in which he hypothesizes that the samples—water taken from the mysterious blood-colored showers that fell sporadically across Louis’s home state of Kerala in the summer of 2001—contain microbes from outer space.

"Specifically, Louis has isolated strange, thick-walled, red-tinted cell-like structures about 10 microns in size. Stranger still, dozens of his experiments suggest that the particles may lack DNA yet still reproduce plentifully, even in water superheated to nearly 600?F. (The known upper limit for life in water is about 250?F.) So how to explain them? Louis speculates that the particles could be extraterrestrial bacteria adapted to the harsh conditions of space and that the microbes hitched a ride on a comet or meteorite that later broke apart in the upper atmosphere and mixed with rain clouds above India. If his theory proves correct, the cells would be the first confirmed evidence of alien life and, as such, could yield tantalizing new clues to the origins of life on Earth ..."
Popular Science via Baz le Tuff.

Tagged: science, space, biology, bacteria, india

Ludi Saeculares, Rome's Centennial Games

These Annual Roman celebrations were concerned essentially with the chthonian (non-Olympian) divinities Dis (Dis Pater) and Prosperpina, but on the first day the games, in the Tarentum, sacrifices were offered also to Jupiter, Juno, Neptune, Minerva, Venus, Apollo, Mercury, Ceres, Vulcan, Mars, Diana, Vesta, Hercules, Latona and the Parcae.

Today, offerings were made to Apollo and Diana on the Palatine Hill of Rome. First on the Palatine and then on the Capitoline Hill, 27 boys and as many girls sang Horace’s hymn, the 'Carmen Saeculare', which was commissioned by Augustus Caesar for the games. They sang other hymns and paeans in Greek and Latin, to ensure the safety of the cities under Rome; other ceremonies besides were performed.

Tagged: ancient+rome, festivals, calendar+customs, mythology, religion

John Gould gathers for the nest

John Gould gathers for the nest,
originally uploaded by wilsonsalmanac.

I put some cut long, dry grass from the park into this philodendron planter as the birds are nesting. Unfortunately there is no longer an egg in the nest. I guess their first attempt at parenting was a failure (teen marriage), so maybe next season.

John takes this to the nest box in the bathroom, and he's been weaving a very nice nest -- much nicer than the earlier picture I posted, the one with the egg -- for when Lizzie does start laying properly.

From my cabin at Sandy Beach, NSW, Australia. Fly to this location (Requires Google Earth) or see where I live at Sandy Beach on Google Maps.

Tagged: gouldian, lady+gouldian, finch, bird, australia

Cagliostro could turn people into gold

Cagliostro's sigil

1743 Count Alessandro di Cagliostro (d. August 26, 1795), late-18th-century roving adventurer, freemason and alchemist who mixed with most of the major figures in Europe at that time, including Casanova, Mozart, Goethe and Catherine the Great.

There are two Cagliostros, or at least, two accounts of his life. In one popular version he was a cunning fraud, and in the other, he was a nobleman and great magus. The former states that Cagliostro was born Giuseppe Balsamo to a poor family in Palermo, Sicily, and when his father died he was educated at the expense of some of his mother’s relatives.

It has been said that he robbed his uncle and forged a will, and spent time in Palermo’s prisons more than once. His reputation as a charlatan is so great, he even shows up as a crooked Marvel Comics character ...

Alchemists in the Almanac
Cornelius Agrippa :: Roger Bacon :: John Dee :: Edward Kelley :: Robert Fludd :: Isaac Newton
Paracelsus :: James Price :: Tycho Brahe :: Raymond Lulle :: Elias Ashmole
The Alchemy Web Site :: Wilson's Almanac Alchemy Clock (a bit of fun) :: Shop Alchemy

Tagged: crime, fraud, biography, alchemy, occult, magick, esoteric

Lincoln Hall rescue pix

Click to see Google News -- Hall Dead then Hall Alive

Dan Mazur and Myles Osborne have posted two photos and a written account of the scene of the rescue of Lincoln Hall, thought to have died near the summit of Mt Everest last week.

"Sitting to our left, about two feet from a 10,000 foot drop, was a man. Not dead, not sleeping, but sitting cross legged, in the process of changing his shirt. He had his down suit unzipped to the waist, his arms out of the sleeves, was wearing no hat, no gloves, no sunglasses, had no oxygen mask, regulator, ice axe, oxygen, no sleeping bag, no mattress, no food nor water bottle. 'I imagine you're surprised to see me here,' he said. Now, this was a moment of total disbelief to us all. Here was a gentleman, apparently lucid, who had spent the night without oxygen at 8600m, without proper equipment and barely clothed. And ALIVE."

Dan Mazur and Myles Osborne -- I dips me lid to these heroes and the others who risk their lives and, in some cases, a chance to summit the great mountain, to help a person in distress.

Tagged: australia, tibet, nepal

Richard Grove on 9-11

Richard Grove (Richard Andrew Grove) weaves the most intricate 9-11 conspiracy theory yet, one that has all the 9-11 conspiracy people talking. Grove is highly critical of that very community, by the way.

He's either onto something, a good hoaxer, sowing the seeds for a bestselling novel, or a raving lunatic. How would I know? Maybe all 17.

The most interesting bit to me (at least less disarming than his statement about oil not being a fossil fuel) was the connections he makes between various big corporate names. Well worth a listen (and there's a transcript).

Listen through the first 30 minutes as his story unfolds. Then the two-hour audio program becomes quite fascinating -- at least it's incredibly entertaining, if a well-crafted crock of shit. I have not formed an opinion as yet.

Update: Mr Grove has been in touch with me, and he's a gentleman.

http://www.911blogger.com/files/audio/MeriaHellerRichardAndrewGrove.mp3 (21.5 MB)

from http://www.911podcasts.Com/display.php?vid=101

Also at

http://subscribe.streamguys.com/meriaheller_od_free/todaysshow.wma

from http://www.meria.net/freeshow.html

I dips me lid to to two Almaniacs, who I'm sure would prefer anonymity, for their tipoff.

Also of interest: 9/11 videos at Google Video and
Pentagon footage a fiasco, scholars conclude (press release)

Tagged: richard+grove, 9-11, 911, conspiracy, corporations, audio

Digital photo and cellphone forensics

It's amazing how much information is stored in a photo taken on a modern camera. For example, see how much info is on the Flickr More details page that is linked from this photo I took of a sea urchin yesterday. Even info about me -- what time I toook the photo. It all depends on the EXIF (Exchangeable Image File) data.

And of course, Flickr can tell you all that my camera knows, including what time I uploaded it to Flickr, unless I turn off that function, which doesn't bother me and ... never ... will (gulp!).

The forensic applications alone are fascinating, and make it easier for Perry Mason to fix the time of my crime than by measuring the shadow lengths. Aha! says Perry Mason. You told your boss you were sick, but you were on the beach! (Actually, I haven't been well and have cut down on my workload and taken a little beach therapy, but will Perry believe this? What about Della Street? She's always pretty nosey. And now you even know how long it is since I've seen a lawyer TV show.) Then there are issues of privacy.

This article on digital photo forensics is sort of interesting; the cellphone forensics kit perhaps moreso.

Tagged: photography, legal, crime, privacy, flickr

America. Freedom to Fascism - Success at Cannes

CANNES, FRANCE - Aaron Russo's incendiary political documentary which exposes many of the governmental organizations and entities that have abridged the freedoms of U.S. citizens had its international premiere at Cannes and won a standing ovation ...
America: Freedom to Fascism - Success at Cannes

Folklore of June, month sacred to goddess Juno

The sixth month of the year derived its name from the Roman junius, a gens or clan name related to juvenis, meaning young ...
Read on at the June folklore page

Tagged: goddess, calendar+customs, folklore, ancient+history, greece, rome

Monsoon comes to Thiruvananthapuram

There is a tradition that on this day each year the monsoon first arrives in India and is first experienced at the town of Thiruvananthapuram (formerly known as Trivandrum), capital of the Indian state of Kerala near the southernmost tip of the sub-continent.

The monsoons were so tiresome and troublesome to the English settlers in India, they coined a proverb: "Two monsoons are the age of man".

At Cherrapunji, the wettest place on earth, one year they had 26.2 metres (86 feet) of rain. Here, predicted behaviour of the coming monsoon is divined by holy men who smash an egg on a flat rock to read the auguries.

Thiruvananthapuram is an ancient city with trading traditions dating back to 1000 BCE, and was for centuries a trading post for spices.

"The name 'Thiruvananthapuram' means the abode of the sacred snake-god Ananthan, on whom Vishnu, the God of Preservation, is believed to be reclining. The old name Trivandrum is the anglicized form of the word, Thiruvananthapuram." Source: Kerala Government website

Monsoon vigorous, toll up at 19
Deepika, India - 5 hours ago... to 19 as rains lashed the state under the influence of the South West Monsoon. Sources said two persons each were killed in Thiruvananthapuram and Ernakulam ...
Kerala Government announces fortnight's free rations for rain ... :: Monsoon in full fury; toll fourteen Monsoon rains lash Kerala, three dead, 25 hurt :: Hindu :: Gulf News :: all 9 related »

Tagged: weather, india, climate

Wilson's Blogmanac

Friday, June 30, 2006

Sydney Rally for Palestine

The mysterious Tunguska Event

Antidepressants, air conditioning might spark obesity

Be a part of the SievX Memorial project

A heavenly sky show on the 4th of July

Supreme Court blocks Bush, Gitmo war trials

Be a part of the SievX Memorial project

Thursday, June 29, 2006

Runic New Year and half-month of Feoh

International Cruise Victims

Australian government and the destruction of Alkatiri

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Ned Kelly's Last Stand

That's what I wanted to hear!

Consider what the war in Iraq is costing the USA

Why did Shrub just sit there?

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

The truth behind the blacklisting of my chronology?

Pregnant Gouldian

An anti-addiction pill?

Emma Goldman, pioneer feminist and anarchist

UK rejects Hicks' plea for help

Photos by omnia

Monday, June 26, 2006

Australia-wide potests to say NO to unfair work laws

Tom DeLay The Big Guy

Billionaire donates $37bn to Gates charity

Father Gill and his close encounter

Independence from America Day 2006

Sunday, June 25, 2006

"It's crap but you've got to play the game" - student

Geldof called in by Blair to police G8 poverty deal

Yarri and Jacky, heroes of Gundagai

Saturday, June 24, 2006

The global digital commons and other unlikely tales

'Darwin's tortoise' dies in Australia, aged 176

My talk on the Lawsons

Robert Bradford Williams

Friday, June 23, 2006

Thawing permafrost could unleash tons of carbon

Midsummer Eve

Australia's most important forest action in years

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Laptops give hope to the homeless

Afghan MP says she will not be silenced

How alcohol corps are changing the face of India

The world's oldest map of the heavens

A phone company is ...

The longest day

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Packaging lies

Happy solstice

The new narcissism

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

No hard evidence on Osama, says FBI -- allegation

Heil Herriman

Supermutt

Wrong way in Coffs

Slip up

Monday, June 19, 2006

Hopi Indian 'going home' ceremony

Sunday, June 18, 2006

Reduce incidence of soccer riots the easy and fun way

What did the Canterbury monks see in 1178?

Paul McCartney turns 64 today

EPA rule loosened after oil chief's letter to Rove

Saturday, June 17, 2006

AWU celebrates 120 years as voice for the worker

Who was Henry Lawson?

Friday, June 16, 2006

Robin Goodfellow: A midsummer night's imp

War Porn and Iraq

Hail to the Chump

Finally!

A Lesson on Life

Thursday, June 15, 2006

Criss Angel, illusionist

ABC Radio National podcasts