Last year UK ringers caught over 230 Nightjars to try and find out more about their fantastic migration and demography. This species is believed to winter in tropical and South Africa. So far we have received recoveries from various countries including The Netherlands, Spain, France, Morocco and Algeria but there is much more we don’t know yet.
Red-necked Nightjar sound-recorded in Belgium last summer: here. 1st for Belgium.
North American whip-poor-will: here. North American nightjar species: here.
June 2011. Capturing birds using mist nets to study behaviour, movement or the demographics of a species is one of the most common research techniques in ornithology, yet until now there have been no large scale studies into the risks mist nets pose to birds. Writing in the British Ecological Society’s Methods in Ecology and Evolution researchers from California used a dataset of over 345,000 records to evaluate the risks of mist netting: here.
WASHINGTON — Federal authorities are suing the Fox News Network for allegedly retaliating against a reporter after she complained about unequal pay and job conditions based on her gender and age.
Fox found no evidence of bias, but the EEOC says the network later included language in Herridge’s employment contract intended to stop her from making any more complaints.
Herridge refused to sign the contract. The network agreed to remove the language after she complained to the EEOC.
The EEOC seeks unspecified monetary damages and a court order enjoining Fox from retaliating against other employees.
Rupert Murdoch-owned BSkyB open to abuse of power, says BBC boss: here.
British media scrambles to prevent Rupert Murdoch takeover of Sky Broadcasting: here.
Germany Shocked by ‘Disproportionate’ Police Action in Stuttgart
A hardline police operation against demonstrators protesting against a new railway station project in Stuttgart has shocked Germany, after more than 100 people were injured by tear gas and water cannon. German commentators argue that the police went overboard and warn of more violence to come.
Around 600 police used water cannon, tear gas, pepper spray and batons in an operation against over 1,000 demonstrators in the southwestern city of Stuttgart on Thursday. The activists had tried to use a sit-down protest to prevent the city’s Schlossgarten park from being cleared so that work could begin on felling trees in the park as part of construction work on the new station. Thursday’s protests were attended by a broad cross-section of society, including pensioners and children.
The protest‘s organizers said in a statement that more than 400 protestors had suffered eye irritation as a result of the police’s operation, with some suffering from lacerations or broken noses.
The German Red Cross said on Friday morning that 114 demonstrators had been treated on site, and a further 16 were taken to hospitals. Among the injured were school children who had been taking part in an officially registered demonstration.
Images of people bleeding from the eye after being hit by water cannon featured on German television and newspapers Friday. One 22-year-old protestor suffered a serious eye injury after being hit in the right eye by a water cannon jet, a Stuttgart doctor told the news agency DPA, adding that the man might lose his sight in that eye as a result.
The Stuttgart 21 project involves moving the city’s main railway station underground and turning it from a terminus into a through station. The project is controversial partly because of its price tag — it is slated to cost €4.1 billion ($5.38 billion) — and because of the trees that will be cut down in the Schlossgarten park. There is also criticism that the project does not make sense from a transport point of view, as few main lines go through the city.
There has been a heated reaction to the police’s use of force, which was condemned by members of the center-left Social Democrats, Green Party and the far-left Left Party, which are all in opposition on the national level. Jan Korte of the Left Party said that it was not acceptable that that kind of police action was used against pensioners and school students. The Green Party filed a motion to have the issue debated in the German parliament, the Bundestag, on Friday, but it was rejected.
Several politicians criticized Heribert Rech, the interior minister for the state of Baden-Württemberg, where Stuttgart is located, for allowing the operation to go ahead. National Green Party co-leader Cem Özdemir, who is also from the state, said Rech was “confusing Germany with Putin’s Russia.” It was disproportionate that “pepper gas was sprayed in the eyes of grandmothers and children at close range,” he said. “We are in Germany. Such methods do not exist here.” …
The escalation is likely to cause political problems for the state government, a coalition of Merkel‘s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the business-friendly Free Democratic Union. State elections will be held next March, and the Stuttgart 21 project is already a key campaign issue. The CDU has been in government in Baden-Württemberg for 57 years. If it were to lose the election, it would be a blow to the chancellor and her national government.
Construction work continued on the site on Friday under massive police protection, and the first trees in the park have now been cut down. But the next wave of conflict is not far off: Some 100,000 people are expected to take part in the next mass demonstration, which is planned for Friday evening.
On Friday, German commentators take [sic; took] a look at the police operation, with all agreeing it was disproportionate. …
The conservative Die Welt writes:
“Deploying heavily armored riot police against students is reminiscent of the old days and old attitudes which are not exactly popular in Germany’s liberal southwest.’ …
The left-leaning Die Tageszeitung writes:
“Bizzare images and sounds were transmitted live via a mobile webcam out of Stuttgart’s Schlossgarten park on Thursday and beamed onto thousands of computer screens all over Germany. At first glance the images seemed familiar from … anti-nuclear protests in the past: Demonstrators sitting in the path of a police vehicle, police emerging dressed in absurdly war-like armour, wanting to clear the way for their colleagues and finally resorting to water cannons to do so. But (the images) didn’t fit with what came out of the headphones. Not only were a considerable number of the demonstrators chanting ‘Wir sind das Volk’ (‘We are the people,’ a slogan associated with pro-democracy protesters in East Germany) but they also began singing the German national anthem — further evidence for the presence of a core conservative element in the protest movement. After all, what is at stake is the kind of thing that conservatives like to preserve: almost 300 trees — some of which are very old — and a city park threatened with being turned into a construction site.
“The otherwise respectable citizens, who react to water cannons by singing the national anthem, see themselves as legitimate representatives of the nation and are in the process denying this role to those (authorities) who sent police into the park. Germany’s conservatives no longer feel represented by local and national government.”
The World from Berlin: ‘The Demonstrations Against Stuttgart 21 Will Go On’: here.
Germany’s lower house voted today to extend the use of the country’s 17 nuclear plants by an average of 12 years – but opposition parties vowed to challenge the decision: here.
Large numbers of anti-nuclear activists have turned out during the past five days to protest against the transport of radioactive waste through France and Germany: here.
Germany’s Green Party in Hamburg announced on Sunday that they will quit the coalition state government with the conservative Christian Democrats: here.
The end of the conservative-Green alliance in Hamburg: here.
October 2010: An extensive, two-year survey of moths in England’s protected woodlands has revealed the extraordinary range of threatened moth species living in our tree tops.
Painstaking identification of 22,500 separate records revealed that more than 1,000 different moth species – including nearly 100 of England’s rarest – were living in the canopies of woodland Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs), including the common fanfoot, heart moth and light crimson underwing.
An incredible 348 moth species were found at Roudsea Wood & Mosses SSSI in Cumbria, while Langley Wood SSSI in Wiltshire – not previously known as an important site for moth habitat – supported no less than 15 of our most rare and threatened moth species. …
The results of the two year’s sampling are as follows:
* 180 sampling sessions took place at 45 SSSIs
* 22,557 records were collected of 1083 moth species
* 98 Red Data Book/Nationally Notable moth species were recorded: 16 Red Data Book, ten Nationally Notable A, 72 Nationally Notable B
* Ten UK BAP Priority species were recorded: Anania funebris, chalk carpet (two sites), drab looper, concolorous, heart moth, white-spotted pinion, light crimson underwing, dark crimson underwing, common fanfoot (five sites) and clay fanfoot (three sites)
* Three former UK BAP Priority (1999 to 2007) species were recorded: waved carpet, square-spotted clay (two sites) and white-lined snout (three sites) together with a new site for buttoned snout found while travelling between sites.
* Greatest diversity of moth species recorded: 348 at Roudsea Wood & Mosses SSSI
* Highest number Red Data Book/Notable moths recorded: 15 at Langley Wood SSSI
Also from England: October 2010: Ecologists from the Natural History Museum are taking a snapshot of wildlife and environment of the New Forest. Funded by public donations and supported by the New Forest National Park Authority the first team has already started collating the forest inventory which will make it possible to map changes over the next ten years. The project is focussing on some of the less glamorous ecological features – such as lichen and soils – and using them as indicators of the health of the area: here.
But it is also a reminder why all the Saakashvili regime’s attempts to re-engineer Georgian unity – by bullet and fist or by persuasion and incentive – have so far failed and are likely to go on failing.
Alan Khachirov, Alan Khugaev and Soltan Pliev are three Georgians who happen to be ethnic Ossetians. who were, say the Council of Europe, detained by Georgian police on 13 October 2008.
Some time after that date they were tortured and the torture was videoed – at least in part.
The video is almost certainly genuine – though [it] may have been altered in some way – as the Council of Europe report[s]:
Four Georgian soldiers -Col. Ramaz Gogiashvili, Sergeant Davit Tsetskhladze, Corporal Giorgi Kolkhitashvili and Corporal Nugzar Kalandadze- were killed during performing the peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan.
Yeah right …. “peacekeeping mission“. George Orwell already in his novel 1984 said cynically: “War is peace”.
The Georgian soldiers exploded on the mine in the Helmand province of Afghanistan, the Georgian Defense Ministry told Trend. The soldiers were on patrol when the explosion occurred.
…
The Georgian contingent of 900 people has been performing the peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan in since late summer. During this period, one officer was killed and one corporal was wounded.
In Georgia says Islamic radical fighters from Afghanistan are now active in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge. The revelation increases the pressure on the Georgian government to reestablish its authority in the crime-ridden region. The disclosure also indicates that the United States is laying the groundwork for possible anti-terrorism operations in the Caucasian republic: here.
As of Thursday, Sept. 30, 2010, at least 1,207 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to an Associated Press count.
USA: Report: Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan wars could top $4 trillion: here.
The authors of the book “The $3 Trillion War” noted in a conference call on Wednesday that when they first released their findings two years ago, the estimates were widely criticized as being too high. Now, the researchers believe they may have been too low: here.
UK defence chiefs silent on Afghan civilian deaths revealed by WikiLeaks. Freedom of information request into 21 incidents where UK forces shot Afghan civilians rejected by MoD officials: here.
Ecuador army frees President Correa from hospital siege
Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa has been rescued from a hospital in the capital, Quito, where he had been trapped for several hours in an uprising by disaffected police.
Widespread gunfire was heard as the army moved in to free the president, who was there for treatment after being attacked by police with tear gas.
Mr Correa went on to address supporters outside the presidential palace.
Two people died and dozens were injured in the unrest, officials said.
The president and his supporters said the police revolt over a new law cutting benefits for public servants amounted to an an attempted coup.
Mr Correa, a 47-year-old US-trained economist, took power in 2007 and was elected for a second term in 2009, despite a decision to default on $3.2bn of global bonds causing widespread fiscal problems for the government.
‘Kill the president’
Mr Correa had been holed up in the police hospital, where he was treated after being hit by tear gas in a confrontation.
Hundreds of police, angry over a law that would cut their benefits, appeared to have prevented him from leaving the clinic.
The sight of two key state institutions, the national police force and the military, exchanging gunfire will be one which worries many ordinary Ecuadoreans, and reminds them of the past.
Ecuador’s history is peppered with violent street uprisings which often ended with the removal of the head of state. In this instance, there was to be no such outcome, but it was a sign of how polarised life in Ecuador has become in recent years, with Mr Correa dividing opinion across the country.
The initial reason for the protests -austerity measures – was almost lost among the high drama of the presidential siege. But that, and other issues such as an impending decision on whether to dissolve parliament and call an early general election, are facing Mr Correa when he recovers from what was, without doubt, his toughest day since taking office.
Under cover of darkness Mr Correa was reportedly smuggled out of the hospital in a wheelchair as a gun battle between troops and police raged.
Speaking to his supporters outside the presidential palace, Mr Correa said he hoped the events of the day would serve “as an example to those who want to bring a change and stop the citizens’ revolution without going through the polls”.
“I give so much thanks to those heroes who accompanied me through this hard journey,” the Reuters news agency reported him saying.
“Despite the danger, being surrounded, ministers and politicians came, to die if necessary. With that bravery, with that loyalty, nothing can defeat us.”
The commander of Ecuador’s police force has resigned, a police spokesman said on Friday.
The drama began on Thursday morning when members of the armed forces and police angry at the austerity measures occupied several barracks and set up road blocks across the country.
TV stations showed images of police setting tyres on fire in the streets of Quito, Guayaquil and other cities. The National Assembly building was also occupied.
Police also took control of Quito’s international airport for several hours.
Looting was reported in the capital and Ecuador’s largest city, Guayaquil. Banks were robbed and schools and businesses closed. …
Mr Correa has blamed the Patriotic Society Party (PSP), led by Lucio Gutierrez, for fomenting the unrest, and said “bad elements” in the police force would “be removed”.
Police reportedly talked of killing Ecuador president in last week’s protest: here.
An Ecuador court upheld the jailing of 12 police officers and a police colonel on Thursday, pending an investigation into last week’s police uprising that resulted in five deaths: here.
It is not difficult to see that the events in Ecuador on September 30 amounted to an attempted right-wing coup d’etat. But those few hours highlighted, again, the deep dangers facing those fighting for progressive change in Latin America and the Caribbean. Remarkably, the first task is to re-assert that it was a coup attempt. In the wake of its failure, many commentators tried to minimise what happened: here.
Even the Rain and the need for dealing with complexity
1 October 2010
This is the third of a series of articles devoted to the recent Toronto film festival (September 9-19). Part 1 was published on September 23 and Part 2 on September 28 .
Even the Rain (Tambien la lluvia), from director Icíar Bollaín (Spain) and screenwriter Paul Laverty (Britain), was one of the most serious and complicated films screened at the Toronto film festival. It takes on significant questions of history and contemporary social life, as well as artistic and human responsibility.
The effective opening scene sets the stage. The production, at the behest of the youthful director, Sebastián (Gael García Bernal), has blithely advertised an “open casting” and hundreds of local people have lined up, waiting in some cases for hours. When the filmmakers, having chosen the people they need, try and dismiss the rest of the crowd, trouble erupts. One “ringleader” in particular insists, “You have to see us!” The director gives in, and eventually casts the troublemaker, Daniel (Juan Carlos Aduviri), as a leader of the indigenous resistance to Columbus, despite the misgivings of the hard-bitten producer, Costa (Luis Tosar).
The company has chosen Bolivia, the poorest country in South America, although the indigenous people are the “wrong” ones from the historical point of view, for economic reasons. Extras earn only $2 a day here, Costa boasts over the telephone to one of the film’s financial backers in the US.
Sebastián has ambitious plans. He centers his film on Bartolome de las Casas (Carlos Santos), a Dominican priest horrified by the Spaniards’ treatment of the native peoples, and Dominican friar Antonio de Montesinos (Raúl Arévalo), the first to denounce the practices openly, in 1511. Montesinos declared in a sermon delivered on Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic and Haiti) that the Spanish on the island were “all in mortal sin and live and die in it, because of the cruelty and tyranny they practice among these innocent peoples.”
The production within the production as well involves shooting complicated scenes of confrontation and brutality, including the crucifixion of Indian rebels, set deep in the jungle.
Difficulties arise in filming the Columbus movie, and some sequences prove impossible. More threatening to the crew, however, is the outbreak of social protest in the area, as the local people oppose the privatizing of their water supply and price increases of 300 percent. “They steal, sell everything…even the rain.” Daniel becomes a leader of the protests. The filmmakers beg and try to bribe him to remain out of the demonstrations, which involve battles with the police, until the shooting is completed. He apparently agrees, but his commitment leads him to get arrested. In an effort to release him, Sebastián and Costa negotiate with the cops.
The situation in the area, popular blockades and police-military violence, leading to bitter street fighting in Cochabamba, makes going on with the film almost impossible. The backers are jumping ship. Most of the actors want to leave. Sebastián implores them to continue, arguing that protests come and go, but his film, with its demystification of history, will endure forever. His Columbus (Karra Elejalde), a middle-aged actor who drinks too much and has been a constant critic of the director and his hubris, is one of the few who sticks with it. The cynical Costa has a difficult decision to make when Daniel’s wife begs him to help her daughter, wounded in the police attacks.
Christopher Columbus did not spread syphilis: here.
Neoliberal policies “which have fed the growing political disaffection of Bolivia’s majority poor, have helped fuel the country’s rolling ‘social revolution.’” This was how a May 6, 2006, US embassy cable from La Paz recently released by WikiLeaks viewed the powerful wave of struggle that led to the election of Bolivia’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales, in 2005: here.
One of the most popular products exported from New Zealand has been the atmospheric Lord of the Rings films. They invoke images of a far off land called Middle Earth complete with massive mountains, panoramic landscapes, and furry wee Hobbits fighting the evil Dark Lord. The next film based in the same fantasy world, The Hobbit, is to be shot in NZ next year. NZ Actors Equity, the union for actors in NZ, has called upon international actors unions to black the film production. Blacking is a refusal by workers to work on a particular project, in this case a film. The International Federation of Actors have agreed, and so unions like the Canadian Actors Equity, US Actors Equity, the Screen Actors Guild, UK Actors Equity, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA, Australia) and the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio have boycotted the film: here.
Christopher Columbus didn’t know where he was going when he set out and he didn’t know where he had been when he got back. But was Amerigo Vespucci, who died 500 years ago today and after whom America was named, any better informed? Here.
Columbus May Not Have Been First to America: here.
