Tilting at Windmills
Part of the Druinet
network, "Tilting at Windmills" was first intended as a sort of nexus
for selected news, comment and reports garnered from a variety of
alternative (as in not mainstream) sources.
A number of projects fed into the initial TaW concept: the first of
these was "Mike's Home Page", literally a personal webspace
that contained topical social/political comment and a hodge-podge
of material relating to the editor's personal interests.
Then there was "Labyrinth" and the "Fellowship of the Dragon"
(FOTD), two interconnected sites representing the on-line community
of the Pagan/neo-Druidic working group founded in 1979 from which
the latter website derived its name.
And finally there was "Britons vs Bush", a now-defunct activist-orientated
site that grew out of the antiwar movement.
Along the way there have been a number of other projects, sites and webgroups that have contributed inspirationally to this present site.
Effectively TaW is a response to the increasing bias and "spin" that is perceived to exist in the mainstream media, and parallels Mike's growing involvement with independent alternative journalism principally focussed upon political and environmental activism.Note 1
Consequently, although TaW's main up-front content consists of reports, comments and opinion on topical social, environmental and political issues, the casual surfer shouldn't be at all surprised to find significant unconnected content - this is no more than a reflection of the diverse range of Mike's, and his friends', interests and involvements.Note 2
Why "Tilting at Windmills"?
"Tilting" means jousting. Allegorical really. Good references can be
found at Wikipedia
and phrases.org.uk
but briefly, the phrase derives from the 17th century Spanish literary
classic "The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha" by
Cervantes.
Don Quixote, the hero, much taken with tales of knightly daring and
chivalry, sets out on his own quest of knight errantry in honour of
his lady, Dulcinea del Toboso. Thus, accompanied by his faithful servant
Sancho Panza he sallies forth on a quest to fight injustice and achieve
knightly honour.
Alas, his worthy steed is a bit decrepit; his arms and armour are
somewhat rusty, and our hero himself is a bit long in the tooth -
not to put too fine a point on it, a bit senile. So what, to his failing
vision, are the foul giants with flailing arms that he encounters
on his way are actually nothing other than windmills.
The moral of the story in relation to TaW is really quite simple: those whom we regard as our opponents may not be the real opponents at all, but illusions floated before us to detract us from that which really matters.
There is also of course a rather more romantic, and somewhat more attractive, interpretation; which is that of the idealist taking up the gauntlet against opponents whom he cannot possibly (for whatever reason) hope to conquer,
(Best not to dwell too long on any alleged similarities between the idealistic but ageing and somewhat foolish Don Quixote and Mike!)
And paraphrasing from another tradition (and literary classic!), it always pays to ask of anything: "Whom does this serve?"
TawNews
Usage of this name originally came about just as a convenient and rather snappy abbreviation for Tilting at Windmills (far too much of a mouthful for normal conversation). However, with the acquisition of quite a few TawNews-based domain names, and the growing desire to "open up" this site to user-generated content it was decided to set up a semi-separate entity under this rather catchy name, which can now be located at tawnews.org.uk (a subdomain of Tilting at Windmills in fact, but with oodles of space going spare it was the obvious solution).
Whilst some attempt has been made to distingusih between the two sites by the adoption of different site layouts and appearance, the reality is of course that the two are and will remain very closely connected.
[Note 2: Much of this unrelated content has been or is being hived off to form the basis of other websites, the whole of which are now being produced under the collective fotdpublishing.org.uk]
