Mallorcan birds and orchids threatened by golf course plan

This video is called S’ALBUFERA DE MALLORCA: MANAGING FOR CONSERVATION (PART 1).

Part 2 is here.

Part 3, about the park’s biodiversity, is here. The Catalan langue version is here.

Part 4 is here.

About the island, often spelled ‘Majorca‘ in English.

From Birdwatch (unfortunately, the RSS feeds at that site are not working):

Mallorcan wildlife site under threat

[Monday 5 November 2007]

An important Mallorcan site for birds, orchids and other wildlife will be lost to a golf course development unless urgent action is taken, according to the Grup Ornitologic de les Balears (GOB) in Mallorca.

Son Bosc is an area of high biodiversity situated just outside the S’Albufera de Mallorca Natural Park. To birders it is known as an easily accessible European Bee-eater colony, as it has the best banks in Mallorca where they can make their traditional nesting burrows. The area is also rich in large flying insects which provide them with plenty of food.

In late spring and early summer the area attracts a flock of up to 100 Eleonora’s Falcons, which gather there to feed in the evenings. Again it is the large insects, especially beetles, which attract them there.

But it is the rare orchids which are most valuable, as Son Bosc is the main site for the Robust Orchid, holding more than two-thirds of the European population in 2007 (900 plants out of 1300). This species is only found on Mallorca, and two sites in Morocco and Algeria. Also found at the Son Bosc are thousands of Tongue, Bug and Bee Orchids.

The dune grassland habitat is the key to the area’s riches which also include and endemic moths and two species of hoverflies which may be new to science.

Once part of the Natural Park, the Son Bosc area was removed from the protection that the Park gave it in 2003, leaving it vulnerable to development.

A company has now put forward a proposal to build a golf course on the site and to date all attempts at the Balearic level have failed to persuade the authorities to act in favour of protecting the orchid. The development company has approached the Municipal Council of Muro (in whose jurisdiction the land falls) requesting a licence to go ahead with the development. If the Municipal Council grants the licence, the only way the golf course development can be stopped is by persuading the Balearic government to intervene. This appears unlikely unless pressure is applied at the international level.

Local naturalists have been monitoring the site to determine its value and together with GOB Mallorca they are getting international support. A webpage has been set up from which letters of protest can be individually emailed. If you would like to help save this unique area, then go to: here.

Poster against the golf course plans: here.

The Balearic islands are to freeze all construction along the most delicate parts of coastlines and around the islands’ capitals, which have been blighted by property developments since mass tourism first arrived in Spain in the 60s: here.

Threat to Los Monegeros in Spain: here.

Wildlife can thrive on golf courses: here.

Protecting threatened animals and plants in Thanh Hoa, Vietnam

This video, in Portuguese, is called The Gaur. The largest wild bull of the world (1.984 to 3.747 pounds / 900kg-1.700kg).

From VietNamNet:

Thanh Hoa works to conserve endangered animals, plants

10:48′ 05/11/2007 (GMT+7)

VietNamNet Bridge – The central province of Thanh Hoa has decided to dole out close to VND 1.9 billion to preserve endangered animals and plants in its nature reserves from now until 2010.

Of the funding, over VND 591 million will be spent on the conservation of [gaur] wild bulls (Bos gaurus) in the Bu Hu Nature Reserve and more than VND 592 million on the protection of a white-rumped langur (Trachypithecus delacouri) in the Pu Luong Nature Reserve.

The remaining sum will be used to preserve two species of plants, the pomu (Forkienia hodginsii) and the samu (Cunninghamia lanceolata) both in the Xuan Lien Nature Reserve.

Afghan feminist says Get Canadian troops out of Afghanistan

This is a video of Malalai Joya being interviewed on Ten TV Channel in Australia.

From Torstar news service in Canada:

Pullout urged for Afghan mission

Politician warns against support of government

Canada must pull its troops out of Afghanistan and no longer support a government full of “warlords, drug lords and criminals” if it wants to aid in rebuilding the stricken nation and avoid another 9/11, says a controversial Afghan politician.

“(Canada) must act independently and not follow the policy of the United States,” said Malalai Joya, 29, a firebrand currently on a nationwide speaking tour that brings her to Toronto tomorrow night.

Canadian soldiers fighting the Taliban are unwittingly promoting U.S. foreign policy, which is propping up a corrupt government, says Joya, who has garnered a legion of fans for her advocacy work on women’s rights. “This policy is a mockery of democracy and a mockery of the war on terror,” the youngest member of the Afghan Parliament said from Vancouver.

Canada must lend moral and material support to “freedom-loving democratic parties” that can’t even afford to print party literature, she said.

It is a bit typical for media in countries with governments allied to George W. Bush that Torstar news service should refer to Ms Joya, expelled from the Afghan parliament for standing up for women and against warmongers, as ‘controversial’. Has it ever refered to pro Afghan war politicians, in Canada, in the USA, or the “warlords, drug lords and criminals” in Afghanistan itself, as ‘controversial’?

See also here.

Update 6 April 2008: here.

South Korea to pull out troops from Afghanistan: here.

Anti Roma racism in Italy. Fini shows his real fascist colours

This video from Italy says about itself:

This revised edition video shows the opening moments of the Diaz raid at the end of the Genoa G8 in July of 2001. Over 300 police took part in the raid, expecting to find violent protesters.

What they found were 3 journalists and 90 environmentalists, social workers and pacifists. In what can only be described as a bloody massacre, 62 people were hospitalised. Some with life threatening injuries. …

Gianfranco Fini, the most dangerous and powerful fascist in Europe was the security minister at the Genoa G8. His party, Allianze Nationale have spent much money and thrown many challenges in front of the Diaz plaintiffs.

It is hoped by the plaintiffs that Fini be put on trial for human rights abuses.

From British daily The Guardian:

Italian right calls for repatriation of Roma

· All camps should be torn down, says leader
· Three Romanians knifed at encampment in suburb

John Hooper in Rome

Monday November 5, 2007

Rightwing leaders in Italy yesterday unleashed a flood of vitriolic anti-immigrant rhetoric and called for mass repatriation and the closing of the country’s frontiers, amid a growing backlash against foreign workers in the country.

Gianfranco Fini, the head of Italy’s “post-fascists”, led the way with an outburst against Gypsies [Roma]. Speaking three days after the arrest of a Romanian of Roma origin for the savage robbery and murder of an Italian woman, Mr Fini said Gypsies considered “theft to be virtually legitimate and not immoral” and felt the same way about “not working because it has to be the women who do so, often by prostituting themselves”.

In an interview with the daily Corriere della Sera, he claimed Roma “had no scruples about kidnapping children or having children [of their own] for the purposes of begging”. Mr Fini, the leader of the ultra-conservative National Alliance and until last year his country’s deputy prime minister, added: “To talk of integration with people with a “culture” of that sort is pointless.”

Though he did not say so in that interview, Mr Fini probably considers the lies about not only Roma; but also about Jews, supposedly stealing children “to use their blood for Jewish rituals” to be true.

After all, Mr Fini is on record as saying that Mussolini, under whom both Roma and Jews died in concentration camps, was ‘the greatest statesman of the twentieth century‘.

Mr Fini is a pal of new French President Sarkozy.

France: Immigration history museum opens without official inauguration. A sign of mounting opposition to Sarkozy’s policies: here.

British New Labour and racism: here.

Everyone Group in Italy asks for an end of the racist campaign against the Roma people: here.

Adopt Nazi methods, says Italian councillor: here.

Anti-Roma segregation is rife in schools in eastern Slovakia, says a report by Amnesty: here.

Immigration in Britain: here.

New Sarus crane reserve in Cambodia

This video is about sarus cranes in India. It says about itself:

The Sarus Crane (Grus antigone) is the world’s tallest flying bird. I shot this nesting pair at Sultanpur Bird Sanctuary in Haryana, India. The park, however, is plagued by feral dogs, which destroy nests, prey on chicks and even bring down large ungulates like Nilgai (Boselaphus tragocamelus). This video is an appeal to keep dogs out of Sultanpur.

From BirdLife:

Government of Cambodia declares Sarus Crane Reserve

05-11-2007

One of the most globally important sites for the South-east Asian race sharpii of Sarus Crane Grus antigone – the fastest declining of the three races of this Vulnerable species – has been declared a reserve after several years of active lobbying by the Wildlife Protection Office of the Forestry Administration in partnership with BirdLife International in Indochina.

The Council of Ministers of the Government of Cambodia has now approved a proposal to protect nearly 9,000 hectares, comprising 919 ha of core area and 8,305 ha in total, of seasonally inundated grassland in Takeo Province in south-eastern Cambodia. The process to complete the notification of the Boeung Prek Lapouv Sarus Crane Conservation Area was recently completed upon signing of a Prime Ministerial Decree by His Excellency Hun Sen.

The site is used by up to 300 Sarus Cranes, nearly 40% the global population of the race sharpii. The Sarus Cranes arrive in December and remain until February when the site dries-up. There are only three other sites regularly used by this sub-species during the non-breeding season. Of these two are in Cambodia and the third in Vietnam. All three of these sites are under conservation management but only two are currently protected by law. BirdLife and the Forestry Administration are now working to have the third Cambodian site at Kampong Trach, also protected by law.

01/19/2011 Government of Cambodia declares new Sarus Crane reserve: here.

Waterbirds in Cambodia: here.

Jewish Swiss author Charles Lewinsky on anti-Semitism and Islamophobia

Swiss author Charles Lewinsky has written the novel Melnitz.

The novel is on anti-Semitism in Switzerland, 1871-1933.

In an interview with Dutch daily Metro, paper edition, 5 November 2007, page 8, titled ‘Antisemieten hebben de joden nodig [Anti-Semites need the Jews]‘, the interviewer asked Lewinsky:

In your book, you mention the anti ritual slaughter law. That was really made [in Switzerland then].

[Lewinsky:] That law was very specifically intended to be against the Jews. However, it was not publicized that way. Supposedly, it was an animal welfare law, which made it more difficult to resist.

That proposal became law, because [in a referendum] the majority of the people got the possibility to vent their prejudices without explicitly speaking out about them.

Today, everywhere Islam is seen as suspect. Never ever it is an individual, always it supposedly is a group. In German , they call that “ein Generalverdacht” [a whole group made to look suspect].

Islamophobia in Switzerland: here.

Up to 8,000 people in the French-speaking part of Switzerland took to the streets on Tuesday evening to protest against the minaret ban. A march in Lausanne attracted up to 5,000 supporters, while a demonstration in Geneva was attended by more than 2,000 people, with smaller protests taking place in other towns: here.

Islamophobia in Australia: here.