Wilson's Blogmanac
Wed, 03 Dec 2008 12:09:07 +0100
Eureka Day, Australia
 We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other,
and fight to defend our rights and liberties.
The diggers' oath was not sworn before a deity, but a constellation
1854 Australia: The Battle of Eureka Stockade, an uprising of Victorian Gold Rush gold miners against the State of Victoria; six troopers and 22 miners died in the civil revolt by gold miners against the officials supervising the gold-mining regions of Ballarat. Although the revolt failed, it has endured in the collective social consciousness of Australia. As Mark Twain wrote, "It was the Barons and John over again ... it was Concord and Lexington". Eureka has been variously described as the birthplace of Australia's democracy, republicanism and multiculturalism. It is often regarded as being an event of equal significance in Australian history as the storming of the Bastille was to French history, the Easter Uprising to the Irish, or the Boston Tea Party or Battle of the Alamo to the history of the USA. Pictured below is the Eureka Flag.
 Its multicultural heroes include an Italian writer (Raffaello Carboni), a freed African-American slave (John Joseph, who was the first to be charged with sedition), a former German soldier and sundry American democrats, Canadians, Irish rebels and British Chartists. The first incident was the arbitrary arrest of a physically disabled, non-English speaking Armenian, wrongfully charged with assaulting an officer ... Categories: australia, history, australian-history, labor-history, progressive, rebellion, activism, authoritarianism
Wed, 03 Dec 2008 12:09:07 +0100
Coleridge in the army
 1793 English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 - 1834), fleeing his debtors, enlisted in the Light Dragoons.
Coleridge used the alias Silas Tompkyns Comberbeck, to retain his initials. A legend has it that when a drill sergeant asked, "Whose dirty rifle is this", Coleridge asked in return, "Is it very, very dirty?" The sergeant answered that it was. "Then it must be mine," Coleridge is said to have replied. His only real service was in a military hospital, from which possibly he found the imagery for the dead sailors in 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'.
Later, after his parents had paid off his commission, at Cambridge University he came into contact with political and theological ideas then considered radical. Motivated by the heady political and intellectual atmosphere of the early years of the French Revolution, he dropped out of Cambridge without a degree and joined the Oxford poet Robert Southey (the two poets later married two sisters, Sarah and Edith Flicker) in a plan, soon abandoned, to found a utopian communist-like society, called 'pantisocracy', in the wilderness of Pennsylvania ...
Tagged: poetry, literature, military, army, uk, biography, history
Tue, 02 Dec 2008 11:39:57 +0100
The collapse of Afghanistan is closer than the world believes
The collapse of Afghanistan is closer than the world believes
Categories: afghanistan, war-on-terror, war
Mon, 01 Dec 2008 07:56:15 +0100
A smiley face in the sky tonight
"The world may be facing its worst economic turmoil in decades, but the heavens are about to smile on Australia.
"A rare cosmic alignment tonight will produce a smiling face - or an emoticon, depending on your generation - high over the country.
"From soon after 8pm until just before 11pm the planets Venus and Jupiter will stare down from the western sky like two brilliant eyes. Directly below, the crescent moon will form a happy mouth.
"'I think it will be very spectacular,' Sydney Observatory's astronomer, Nick Lomb, said. 'The three brightest objects in the night sky will all be in the same patch of the sky.'
Sydney Morning Herald
More
Bookmark the Universe page in Wilson's Almanac
Click image to enlarge
Categories: australia, astronomy
Mon, 01 Dec 2008 07:08:59 +0100
Save the Net in Australia
 Did you know the Australian Government is proposing an internet censorship scheme that goes further than any other democracy in the world?
From GetUp: The Federal Government is planning to force all Australian servers to filter internet traffic and block any material the Government deems 'inappropriate'. Under the plan, the Government can add any 'unwanted' site to a secret blacklist.
Testing has already begun on systems that will slow our internet by up to 87%, make it more expensive, miss the vast majority of inappropriate content and accidentally block up to 1 in 12 legitimate sites. Our children deserve better protection - and that won't be achieved by wasting millions on this deeply flawed system.
Sign the petition.
Children's welfare groups slam net filters
"Support for the Government's plan to censor the internet has hit rock bottom, with even some children's welfare groups now saying that that the mandatory filters, aimed squarely at protecting kids, are ineffective and a waste of money ..."
Sydney Morning Herald
More ... more ... and more from Wilson's Almanac.
Categories: internet, censorship, children, australia, pornography, authoritarianism, rudd
Mon, 01 Dec 2008 05:10:41 +0100
|
