How magnificent the war is!
How eager
and efficient!
Early in the morning,
it wakes up the sirens
and dispatches ambulances
to various places, swings corpses through the air,
rolls stretchers to the wounded,
summons rain
from the eyes of mothers,
digs into the earth
dislodging many things
from under the ruins . . .
Some are lifeless and glistening,
others are pale and still throbbing . . .
It produces the most questions
in the minds of children,
entertains the gods
by shooting fireworks and missiles
into the sky,
sows mines in the fields
and reaps punctures and blisters,
urges families to emigrate,
stands beside the clergymen
as they curse the devil
(poor devil, he remains
with one hand in the searing fire) . . .
The war continues working, day and night.
It inspires tyrants
to deliver long speeches,
awards medals to generals
and themes to poets.
It contributes to the industry
of artificial limbs,
provides food for flies,
adds pages to the history books,
achieves equality
between killer and killed,
teaches lovers to write letters,
accustoms young women to waiting,
fills the newspapers
with articles and pictures,
builds new houses
for the orphans,
invigorates the coffin makers,
gives grave diggers
a pat on the back
and paints a smile on the leader’s face.
The war works with unparalleled diligence!
Yet no one gives it
a word of praise.
The “failures of Vietnam” hampered the US in planning for the post-conflict reconstruction of Iraq, the [British] inquiry into the war has heard: here.
In simpler times, it was a hobby of mine to wander into the self-help section of the local bookshop, gape at the extraordinary titles and observe the customers browsing. Most of them wore the furtive look usually associated with the purchaser of pornographic magazines.
Judging by Ehrenreich‘s Smile Or Die, willingly subjecting oneself to the cult of positive thinking is a shameful act indeed.
The author of the excellent Nickel and Dimed, an expose of low-pay USA, Ehrenreich‘s first encounter with the baseless optimism industry came when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Her bemused navigation of a world of pink ribbons and teddy bears, websites full of inspirational quotes and books with titles such as The Gift Of Cancer: A Call To Awakening is crisply told and her destruction of the myth of the health benefits of positive thinking is absolute.
Armed with an incisive mind and a gift for a wry turn of phrase, Ehrenreich uses this as a jumping-off point into an entire industry of bullshit – one that exhorts you “to see the glass half-full, even when it lies shattered on the floor.”
She charts positive thinking’s rise from its 19th century roots as a reaction to the bleak self-examination of Calvinism and traces its roots back to one Phineas Parkhurst Quimby. He was a failed mesmerist-turned-healer who told his patients that the universe was on their side and that “they could leverage their own powers of mind to cure or ‘correct’ their ills.”
Ehrenreich then returns to the present-day US where everything can be fixed by not really thinking about all the things that could go wrong and gurus recommend a reprogramming of the mind to ensure that no destructive dark thoughts can ruin one’s chances of success.
In the motivation business incentives and team-building exercises are used to distract salespeople from noticing they have few actual rights. In the most extreme case a company in Utah waterboarded an employee as part of a motivational exercise.
‘”You saw how hard Chad fought for air right there,” the supervisor reportedly told the sales team. “I want you to go back inside and fight that hard to make sales.”
Ehrenreich describes a country that has lost its critical faculties, where top management executives go on shamanic healing journeys and believe in the market as a mystical force that will take care of itself – until the economy collapses.
Wholly unimpressed with this genie-in-a-bottle deity, Ehrenreich concludes that “positive theology ratifies and completes a world without beauty, transcendence or mercy.” If you get ill or poor, it’s your own fault for not trying hard enough to think yourself to health and success.
Yet Ehrenreich’s book is a concise and eminently readable debunking of a dangerous movement.
She ends with a call for “vigilant realism” and a return to ideas of collective responsibility – in essence, a wholesale rejection of Anglo-Saxon capitalism.
Hearing Held in Breast Cancer Gene Patent Lawsuit: here.
In Pink Ribbons Inc., breast cancer patients and patient advocates say that large nonprofits like the Susan B. Komen For The Cure Foundation, fritter away funds on spectacular events that don’t contribute to finding cures: here.
Barbara Ehrenreich’s Dancing In The Streets: here.
February 2010. As many as 130,000 Laysan Albatross chicks have been killed by lead paint flakes from 70 deadly lead paint-contaminated buildings since jurisdiction of Midway was transferred from the US Navy to the US Department of the Interior (DOI) in 1996.
“Curious Albatross chicks are ingesting the lead-based paint chips, which causes a variety of painful ailments and ultimately, a slow death,” said Dr. Jessica Hardesty Norris, Seabird Program Director for ABC.
Many of the chicks on Midway exhibit a condition called “droopwing”, which leaves them unable to lift their wings. Unable to fly, many die of starvation and dehydration.
10,000 birds die every year
The area encompassing Midway and its waters was included in President George Bush’s designation of the North-western Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument in 2006. Despite Midway’s designation as a National Wildlife Refuge and its location with the marine national monument, about 10,000 of these rare birds needlessly die there each year.
In a paper to be released in the scientific journal, Animal Conservation, Dr. Myra Finkelstein of the University of California-Santa Cruz and co-authors, including scientists and managers from the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, concluded that the death of Laysan Albatross chicks from lead exposure on Midway has long-term consequences for the nesting population of Laysan Albatrosses there. By 2060, there may be as many as 190,000 fewer albatrosses due to lead poisoning. By contrast, removing lead-based paint now could increase the population by up to 360,000 by 2060.
“The death of thousands of seabirds is contrary to the purpose of our National Wildlife Refuge System. We are preparing a letter to members of Congress to bring this matter again to their attention in the hopes that they can find a way to clean up Midway and stop the needless suffering of innocent birds,” said Marjorie Ziegler of the Conservation Council for Hawai’i.
70% world’s population of Laysan Albatross nest on Midway
About 70 percent of the world’s population of Laysan Albatrosses nests on Midway. The IUCN-World Conservation Union lists the species as globally vulnerable to extinction.
The DOI estimates that $5.6 million is needed to clean up the toxic lead paint on Midway Atoll. Approximately 70 of the federally-owned buildings must be stripped of all lead-based paint, and sand surrounding these old buildings needs to be thoroughly sifted to remove paint chips. DOI officials have stated that the current federal budget for the nation’s wildlife refuge system is insufficient to prevent the continued ingestion of lead paint by Laysan Albatross chicks.
“We strongly encourage Congress to pay close attention to the important scientific conclusions of today’s Animal Conservation paper on Laysan Albatrosses and enact a meaningful appropriation to address this severe and well documented wildlife hazard in Hawaii,” said John Harrison, President of Hawai’i Audubon Society.
February 2010. After a two year drought, The Nairobi National Park finally received some decent rain in December and early January and the effects have been dramatic. Before the rains came, every last blade of grass had been grazed to dust by the 6000 or so resident herbivores & a similar number of illegal cattle. However the surviving cattle have now moved away to grazing lands in Maasailand.
The Nairobi National is 120 kms2 teeming with game and contains almost everything you might see bigger more remote parks, except elephants. In fact it is the best place in Kenya, if not the whole of Africa, to see Black rhinos in the wild.
Seasonal wetlands provide excellent habitat for aquatic birds such as this Saddlebill stork.
All predators, including the Big Cats have done well during the drought, with virtually all wildlife in the Athi-Kapiti ecosystem north of the Namanga highway being contained in the park owing to the presence of water & grazing.
Bohor reedbuck are doing well (many of them are translocated from Western Kenya) & are easily visible in the new short grass.
Buffalos surprisingly survived the drought well: there are close to a thousand of these large bovines in the park now.
Kongoni (Coke’s hartebeest) are now confined to the park because of human activities in the dispersal area. They are increasing in numbers & provide food for the ever-hungry & ever increasing NNP lion population (which is estimated at between 35 & 40 individuals.)
Dikdik in the Silole Sanctuary abutting the park: I have never seen this species in the park itself. Could somebody suggest why this might be the case?
Southern White rhino continue to do well; we have 11 in the The Nairobi National Park.
I estimate that there are between 35 – 40 lions in NNP. They are all descended from the 7 that survived the drought of 2005 when so many were killed after cattle-killing outside the park.
This is way above the historical average of 30 lions established by the lion researcher Judith Rudnai in the 70′s & a reflection of the changing conditions in NNP during a prolonged dry cycle.
The NNP population of lions is very young, with all but 7 individuals being less than 5 years old & at least one more litter of young cubs recently observed.
February 2011: Just a year after relocating four Northern white rhinos from a zoo in the Czech Republic to Kenya, they are now mating: here.
While elephants may appear destructive when they pull down trees, tear up grasses or stir up soils, their impacts actually make space for the little guys: frogs and reptiles. The BBC reports that a new study in African Journal of Ecology finds that African bush elephants (Loxodonta Africana), facilitate herpetofauna (i.e. amphibians and reptiles) biodiversity when they act as ecosystem engineers: here.
South Africa: May 2011. The following images of leucistic buffalo calves were sent to us by Jim Thomson, owner of Jejane Private Nature Reserve near Hoedspruit. Amazingly, the buffalo herd on the reserve has produced not 1, but 2 leucistic calves this year: here.
Dr Gales, who heads the Australian Marine Mammal Centre, says that information gained from this trip will give greater insight into the little-known facts about how whales interact with sea ice and how they use their environment, providing critical information to assist in the future conservation of whales.
More than one hundred satellite tags will be deployed onto the whales to enable researchers to keep track of their movements over the coming months as they head north to their breeding grounds.
At the same time, other non-lethal methods such as biopsies, acoustics and hydrographic surveys will be employed.
In the meantime, it has been a busy time for the scientists – each, specialists in their field – preparing for the trip south. For the tight-knit group of whale specialists the voyage is the culmination of two years’ planning.
The voyage, aboard New Zealand’s RV Tangaroa, will return in mid-March.
Researchers have set sail from New Zealand to study whales off Antarctica without killing them, an open challenge to Japan‘s killing of up to 1,000 whales a year in the name of science: here.
The federal government isn’t ruling out support for an Australian Greens bill which would see anyone convicted of helping a whaling operation go to jail: here.
Scientists on Shetland believe they may have discovered a previously-unobserved technique being used by killer whales to catch herring: here.
April 2010. A new proposal announced by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) would, if adopted, for the first time in 25 years, endorse the killing of whales in their most precious feeding grounds, the Southern Ocean: here.
UK Paper’s Investigation Alleges Japan Offered Bribes, Hookers to Small Nations in Exchange for Blocking Whaling Ban: here.
World’s largest Humpback population threatened by Western Australia plan to create massive industrial zone in the Kimberley: here.
The calving of the Mertz Glacier tongue in February 2010 exposed a large section of the sea floor, about 80 km long and over 30 km wide, enabling access to an area where no information currently exists. Using an underwater camera, a team of scientists and technicians from Geoscience Australia and the Australian Antarctic Division collected the first images of the sea floor and the marine animals that live there: here.
American author J.D. Salinger, best known for his 1951 classic The Catcher in the Rye, died Wednesday, January 27. He was 91. See here. And here. And here.
Ten members of a Baptist-affiliated group from Idaho are accused of child trafficking for attempting to spirit 33 Haitian children out of the country, supposedly for adoption in the US. Several of the children said their parents are not dead: here.
Haitian Judge Expected to Rule Today in Child Trafficking Charges. Reporter Says She Warned the Americans They Could Be Stopped at Border: here.
The plight of the American missionaries awaiting trial in Haiti for kidnapping children has been reported pretty sympathetically so far — even though 22 of the 33 children they tried to take across the border into the Dominican Republic have parents, which is stretching the definition of “orphan” even beyond that in the dictionary Madonna evidently consults: here.
Hundreds of mourners have called for the return of ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide – at a gravel pit in Haiti where countless earthquake victims have been dumped: here.
It wasn’t the devil that hurt Haiti; it was Thomas Jefferson: here.
The aid arriving in Haiti by plane and boat is not reaching earthquake victims quickly enough to stem growing anger at President Rene Preval’s administration, relief workers have warned: here.
HAITI: Displaced Women Face Double Jeopardy: here.
Orphan Fever: The Evangelical Movement’s Adoption Obsession. When devout Christian families made it their mission to save children from war-torn countries, the match was often far from heavenly: here.
Four hundred labourers were lured from Thailand to the US and forced to work as virtual slaves in a crime described by the FBI on Thursday as the largest human-trafficking case ever in the US: here.
The Obama administration’s 2011 budget projects massive government deficits for the next decade, fueled by gargantuan military spending and by the economic crisis of US and world capitalism. The national debt is projected to more than double over the coming decade: here.
The US economy grew at an annualized rate of 5.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009, prompting claims that the downturn is abetting. But such triumphalism quickly gave way to concern, as more voices added warnings about the condition of the US economy: here.
A report from the special inspector general for the US bank bailout states that the fundamental problems in the financial system have yet to be addressed: here.
A new law requiring French Guianese shrimp fishers to use special devices that reduce unwanted fish catch will help better protect marine turtles and other vulnerable marine species in the region.
As of Jan. 1, the country’s fishing fleet under the new law now has to use a device called the Trash and Turtle Excluder Device, or TTED, to limit accidental capture of larger marine species.
Widespread use of this device, which took three years to develop, will greatly reduce bycatch among shrimp trawlers. In French Guiana, tropical shrimp fisheries represent a major source of undesired bycatch. Without a bycatch reduction device in place, shrimp represents only 10 to 30 percent of the total catch, meaning the rest is made up of other marine species.
Nearly half of the world’s recorded fish catch is unused, wasted or not accounted for, according to estimates in an April scientific paper co-authored by WWF. The paper, Defining and Estimating Global Marine Fisheries Bycatch, estimated that each year at least 38 million tonnes of fish, constituting at least 40 percent of what is taken from oceans by fishing activities, is unmanaged or unused and should be considered bycatch.
The TTED is an improvement of a previous device, the Turtle Excluder Device, that consists of a rigid grill inserted at a 45 degrees angle in the trawl with an opening toward the top or bottom. NOAA has documented in research a 97 percent reduction in marine turtle captures through using the device, and additional TED studies conducted internationally have shown a reduction in large marine organism bycatch of as much as 91 percent.
After three years of trials, a prototype combining the advantages of different systems was identified. This model, the TTED, offers numerous advantages, including a 25 to 40 percent reduction of fish bycatch.
In addition, the TTED reduces sorting time and risks of injury due to sharks and rays being caught. The new gear also improves the quality of shrimps, which are less likely to be crushed in the bottom of the trawl, and may also lead to a reduction in the amount of fuel consumed by the boats.
WWF will be talking about this successful project at the upcoming Seafood Summit in Paris, France, running from Jan. 31to Feb. 2.
The TTED is the culmination of years of research. With funding provided by the European Union and the DIREN (Regional Environmental Authorities), WWF commissioned a study from IFREMER (French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea) to determine which selective gear was the most adapted to fishing conditions in French Guiana. These initial trials, conducted under experimental conditions, were carried out on board a shrimp trawler.
Following this work, shrimp industry’s members expressed the need to continue these experiments and to become more involved in the project. In response, WWF and the French Guiana Regional Fishery and Ocean Farming Commission began working in close collaboration in order to determine the best gear for the French Guiana fleet.
With technical support from NOAA and IFREMER, the Commission carried out numerous at sea trials in close collaboration with French Guiana fleets. Specific parameters where tested such as the shape and spacing between the bars of the selective grid. These trials allowed the fleets and the crews onboard the shrimp trawlers to understand the advantages of a more selective fishing gear and the benefits of using it in French Guiana.
Based on the results and the captains’ recommendations, the Commission decided to make the use of this TTED system mandatory by January 2010, when the annual fishing licences are issued.
The TTED was developed with the assistance of IFREMER, NOAA, French Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Région Guyane, and the European Fund for Fisheries (FEP).
Good that at last something is done about this problem.
When I was in Baboensanti, in Suriname close to French Guiana, I saw sea turtles. I did not see them myself as victims of bycatch. What I did see as victims of bycatch were many dead crucifix sea catfish on the beach. It is to be hoped that these fish now will have a better future as well.
Oostduinkerke on the West Flanders coast is the only place in the world where you will still see the 500-year-old tradition of fishermen trawling for shrimp on horseback: here.
Gill net fishing in North Carolina may be coming to an end due to federal and environmental concerns about sea turtles, but commercial fishermen are not going down without a fight: here.
The Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Rescue and Rehabilitation Center filed suit in U.S. District Court Tuesday in its quest to halt gill net fishing in North Carolina: here.
Whales and dolphins worldwide threatened by bycatch & human activities: here.
“The five overseas French departments which are part of the EU are highly concerned with bird conservation, because they hold close to 900 bird species, a significant proportion of French species”, commented Bernard Deceuninck, Program coordinator at LPO. “Martinique, Guadeloupe and Reunion are also classified by BirdLife as Endemic Bird Areas. They have unique assemblages of breeding endemic birds which are not found anywhere else in the world”, concluded Mr Deceuninck: here.
