Dutch war crime in Indonesia

This video from Indonesia says about itself:

Rawagede Victim’s widow gathered in the Netherlands embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia.

From Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad of today; translation from the Dutch language edition by me; as the English language section, which the NRC Handelsblad web site has since a few days, has no translation of this frontpage article:

[Headline, only in the paper edition: War crimes

Indonesians, after 61 years, demand apology from the Netherlands]

‘Then, they started a countdown…’

Published: 17 september 2008 15:26 | Edited: 17 september 2008 15:32

By our correspondent Elske Schouten

Ten survivors of the bloodbath in the Indonesian village Rawagede (1947) still say the Netherlands should acknowledge its responsibility for it. They demand money and an apology.

Balongsari, 17 sept. „I had never thought that they were going to murder us, as we were common people”, Saih tells. „I only started realizing it when they started a countdown.” In Dutch, he counts „Eén, twee, drie… [One, two, three]”. Three soldiers started firing at the men from behind.

According to the counting by the village, they shot and killed nearly all male villagers, 431 people. During executions without trial, as they were running away or were hiding in the river.

Saih, now far over eighty years old, is one of ten survivors and family members who, 61 years after this, ask for an apology and compensation for the bloodbath which Dutch soldiers caused on 9 December 1947 in Rawagede.

More about the Rawagede bloodbath, in Dutch, here.

UPDATE: Dutch state found liable for 1947 Indonesia massacre: here.

Creationist Sarah Palin and dinosaurs

This comedian’s video from the USA is called On Bush, Bible, Fossils, Evolution, and Reality.

From Laelaps blog in the USA:

Palin & dinosaurs

Over the past few weeks a number of visitors have made it to this blog by searching the web for information about Sarah Palin & dinosaurs. Previously there wasn’t much to say beyond a 2006 quote, but now new evidence has appeared that suggests that Palin indeed tried to get creationism into the classroom despite her public comments that she desired no such thing.

According to a little muckraking done by David Talbot for Salon.com, Palin may very well be a young earth creationist who tried to sneak fundamentalist religion into public schools:

“Another valley activist, Philip Munger, says that Palin also helped push the evangelical drive to take over the Mat-Su Borough school board. “She wanted to get people who believed in creationism on the board,” said Munger, a music composer and teacher. “I bumped into her once after my band played at a graduation ceremony at the Assembly of God. I said, ‘Sarah, how can you believe in creationism — your father’s a science teacher.’ And she said, ‘We don’t have to agree on everything.’

“I pushed her on the earth’s creation, whether it was really less than 7,000 years old and whether dinosaurs and humans walked the earth at the same time. And she said yes, she’d seen images somewhere of dinosaur fossils with human footprints in them.”"

While this is secondhand stuff, it is consistent with just about everything else we do know about Palin, and whether she believes humans and dinosaurs lived together in the last 10,000 has quickly become a running gag. Matt Damon has recently expressed concern about Palin’s YEC beliefs, and questions over Palin’s anti-science perspective have provided fodder for satire on Saturday Night Live, as well.

The scary thing is that there are many people in this country who probably see Palin’s belief in coconut-munching tyrannosaurs to be a good thing. We might all have a few laughs at her expense, but it is truly a frightening prospect that someone so dictated by fundamentalist religion might end up in the White House. For now, though, I will be very interested to see if the issue is breached in the upcoming VP debate, an event that may very well be a spectacle given the tenacity of both Biden & Palin.

Apparently, Sarah Palin does not know the difference between Fred Flintstone comics, with Dino as a “dog” in a “Stone Age” house; and science.

Like she also does not know the difference between war and peace.

See also this McCain-Palin-Flintstones cartoon. And this.

Palin and energy: here.

Naomi Wolf on Palin: here.

Behind the creationism controversy at Britain’s Royal Society: here.

Afghanistan torture film on US TV

This video from the USA is called Moazzam Begg Speaks; former Bagram and Guantánamo detainee.

From Jennifer’s Documentaries Blog in the USA:

Taxi To The Dark Side Airs On HBO September 29

Wednesday September 17, 2008

Director Alex Gibney’s Taxi To The Dark Side is a shocking expose about the American military’s use of torture to get confessions–not always truthful ones–from prisoners suspected of terrorism. Check the HBO schedule for broadcast times and read my interview with Alex Gibney about the film.

AFGHANISTAN: Self-immolation on the rise among women: here.

Jesse Jackson on Wall Street, Obama, Afghanistan

This video from the USA is about Jesse Jackson and the 2008 Wall Street crash.

From Democracy Now! in the USA:

Rev. Jesse Jackson on the Wall Street Crisis, Escalation of War in Afghanistan and Obama’s Historic Nomination

Stock prices are continuing to fall sharply across the globe today, following the collapse of Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, two of the world’s largest investment banks. On Monday, the Dow Jones index fell 504 points. It was the Dow’s sixth-largest point drop ever. We speak with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who heads up the Wall Street Project, about the crisis, as well as about Barack Obama’s historic Democratic presidential nomination and his pledge to escalate the war in Afghanistan. [includes rush transcript]

Icelandic wildlife and climate change

This video from the USA is

Footage of Common and Arctic Terns by Project Puffin, off the coast of Maine.

From CBC in Canada:

Warming climate changing Iceland wildlife, land: researchers

Last Updated: Tuesday, September 16, 2008 | 5:59 PM ET

Environmental scientists in Iceland say the changing climate is having a big impact on that country’s wildlife and is eroding land on the Arctic island.

Iceland has seen record-breaking warm temperatures in recent years, which has affected some bird and fish species, said Gudrun Palmadottir, an environmental researcher working in west Iceland.

“We have seen it in many species of birds and fish and algae and plants. There are new species, and the species that are here are struggling, like the puffin and the Arctic tern,” she told CBC News.

“There is something missing from their food chain,” she added. “It’s being studied, but [there] was a dramatic death in chicks this year and past years also with the puffin, and it’s thought to be because the sea is warming.”

Palmadottir said some cold-water fish species have moved out of their traditional fishing grounds. That’s a big concern to the country’s fishery, she added.

As well, Icelanders are dealing with severe erosion caused by centuries of grazing and forest clear-cutting.

“About 40 per cent of Iceland is suffering from severe erosion … that means about 40,000 square kilometres,” said Magnus Johannsson of Iceland’s Soil Conservation Service.

Johannsson said that on top of the clear-cutting and grazing, warm and dry summers in the past couple of years have led to dry, loose volcanic soil blowing over vegetated areas.

WITH a hibernation period of up to 100 million years, bacteria discovered on the Arctic sea floor may have longest life cycle of any known organism: here.

New Fijian iguana species discovered

This video is called Fiji banded iguana.

From Australian National University:

New iguana species discovered

Wednesday, 17 September 2008

A team of Australian and US researchers have discovered a new species of iguana in the central regions of Fiji, which makes three living Pacific iguana species including one that is critically endangered. The study suggests that the ancestors of the Pacific iguanas arrived up to 13 million years ago after an 8000 kilometer rafting trip from the New World.

Detailed genetic and morphological analyses show that there are three living kinds of Brachylophus iguanas, not two as indicated in current taxonomy. Scientists named the newly revealed iguana species Brachylophus bulabula. The scientific name bulabula is a doubling of bula, the Fijian word for ‘hello,’ thus signifying an even more enthusiastic greeting.

“The iconic Fijian iguanas are famous for their beauty and also their unusual occurrence in the middle of the Pacific Ocean because all of their closest relatives are in the Americas”, said Scott Keogh, an Associate Professor at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia, and lead author of the study. …

The highest islands of Fiji have been above sea level for at least the last 16 million years, and the current study’s findings suggest that the Pacific iguanas, both extinct and living, were likely on the islands much of that time, following a long-distance rafting trip from the New World.

The Pacific iguanas have been adversely affected by human presence. Two species were eaten to extinction after people arrived nearly 3,000 years ago. The three living Brachylophus iguanas face threats from habitat loss and modification, and from feral cats, mongooses and goats.

The Fiji crested iguana, Brachylophus vitiensis, is now listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List. An important study finding regarding conservation of the genetic diversity in these iguanas is that, with only one exception, every island for which there were samples was represented by at least one distinct iguana lineage. The new discovery was published in a special themed edition of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, which pays tribute to Charles Darwin’s contribution to the Pacific region.

See also here. And here.

Banded mongooses: here.

Bailout of American International Group insurance

This Associated Press video is called Government to Provide $85 Billion Loan for AIG.

By Bill Van Auken in the USA:

US Federal Reserve announces $85 billion bailout of insurance giant AIG

17 September 2008

Following emergency consultations between the Federal Reserve, the US Treasury and the Democratic leaders of both houses of Congress, the Federal Reserve on Tuesday night announced a bailout of the Wall Street insurance giant American International Group (AIG).

According to reports posted by the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, under the emergency plan the Fed will provide the failing firm with an $85 billion loan in exchange for 80 percent of its assets.

The reported bailout is a reversal of the policy adopted by the federal government just last weekend, when it failed to intervene to stop the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the country’s fourth largest investment bank. According to the Journal, government officials believed “it would be ‘catastrophic’ to allow AIG to fail.”

See also here. And here.