Italian women want Berlusconi to follow Mubarak’s example

This music video is called Earth & Fire – Ruby is the One.

After Berlusconi’s friend Mubarak is gone … from ANSA news agency in Italy:

Italian women to stage anti-Berlusconi rallies …

Rome, February 11 – Women will take to the streets of Italy’s cities on Sunday calling on Premier Silvio Berlusconi to resign after prosecutors this week requested he be sent to trial for allegedly using an underage prostitute.

The protesters say evidence leaked from the probe into Berlusconi allegedly paying for sex with a then-17 Moroccan belly dancer called Ruby show the 74-year-old premier has little respect for female dignity.

They say wiretaps published in the media suggest he surrounded himself at parties at his home with starlets and other women hoping to use their looks to gain positions in politics or at Berlusconi’s Mediaset TV empire.

”The Ruby case has revealed a system of political selection based on an exchange of sex and power,” said Iaia Caputo of the organising committee of the protests, entitled ”If Not Now, When?”, also the title of a famous Primo Levi novel.

”If we accept this as normal, we risk prejudicing the free choice of women.

”We want to send a message to the country and to the parties that do not see themselves a part of what has happened over the last few weeks – it’s possible to change route”.

Berlusconi’s cabinet features a former show girl, Equal Opportunities Minister Mara Carfagna.

One of the people under investigation in the Ruby probe, the premier’s former dental hygienist Nicole Minetti – another showgirl who allegedly procured prostitutes for parties at Berlusconi’s home – is a Lombardy regional councilor for his People of Freedom (PdL) party. …

One of the biggest ”If Not Now, When?” events will take place in Milan, where comedienne Paola Cortellesi, actress Franca Rame and publisher Inge Feltrinelli are set to join in.

Men will not be excluded from the protests.

There will also be other protests for and against Berlusconi in various parts of Italy all weekend. A preliminary hearings judge is not expected to announce before Monday or Tuesday whether she has granted the prosecutors’ request to send the Ruby case to trial. If approved, the trial would start around Easter, legal experts say.

US spied on NATO boss

This video from the USA is called Blackwater‘s Erik Prince outed as CIA spy.

From Associated Press:

WikiLeaks: US spied on NATO’s top official

By SLOBODAN LEKIC

Posted: 02/11/2011 11:20:29 AM MST

BRUSSELS—Leaked U.S. diplomatic cables appear to show that the United States has been snooping on NATO’s top official using secret sources on his own staff.

Confidential cables from the U.S. mission to NATO released Friday by WikiLeaks, the site that has published many secret government memos, said American diplomats received information on the private conversations of Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen from “a member of the NATO international staff.”

Instead of the staffer’s name, the phrase “strictly protect” was inserted in a cable dated Sept. 10, 2009. The cable dealt with Fogh Rasmussen’s proposal to improve ties with Russia by establishing contacts with the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Russia-dominated security alliance.

The cable was signed off by U.S. ambassador Ivo Daalder.

NATO’s 28 member nations, and a number of partner countries including Russia, maintain diplomatic offices inside the alliance’s sprawling compound on the outskirts of Brussels. While their envoys regularly monitor developments within the alliance, there has been no known case in the past of a nation spying on the secretary-general.

Afghan war goes on

Private Contractor Deaths Surpass US Military Losses in Iraq and Afghanistan: here.

This video is called OPERATION LEAKSPIN: Kunduz Air-Strike 09BERLIN1108.

Afghanistan: German Chancellor Angela Merkel needs to explain secrecy concerning a deadly attack ordered by NATO commanders, opposition leaders say: here.

Afghans fear return of the warlords as anti-Taliban militias clash: here.

Australia: Abbott’s callous ‘shit happens’ retort over the death of an Australian soldier in Afghanistan and Labor defence minister Stephen Smith’s rush to defend him reveals a lot about the attitude of the pro-war parties. They treat infantry soldiers as expendable cannon fodder. Millions of soldiers who survived the bloodbaths of the last two world wars and the Vietnam War drew this conclusion: here.

Exactly one year ago, on February 13, 2010, the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan launched the first major military operations enabled by President Obama’s 30,000 troop increase. President Obama and the high priests of counterinsurgency warfare, Generals David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal, made two major assertions about the escalation, that it would a) enable coalition forces to reverse the insurgents’ momentum and b) increase security for the Afghan people. After a year of fighting, neither of those things happened. The escalation is a failure, and it’s time to bring our troops home: here.

US sacrifices truth for war on Taliban: here.

USA: 2012 Department of Defense budget request is the largest EVER: here.

Young Americans For Freedom Purges Rep. Ron Paul From Board Over ‘Treason’ Of Opposing War: here.

What Stanley McChrystal Did to Pat Tillman’s Family: here.

East Timor Ice Age rock art discovery

This video says about itself:

Giant Rat discovered – Lost Land of the Volcano – BBC One

An international team of scientists, cavers and wildlife filmmakers venture deep into the heart of the remote tropical island of New Guinea to explore a giant extinct volcano – Mount Bosavi. The team live deep in the rainforest and search for the rare and endangered creatures that hide in these forests.

From Science Centric:

Giant rats lead scientists to ancient face carvings

11 February 2011 16:24 GMT

Ancient stone faces carved into the walls of a well-known limestone cave in East Timor have been discovered by a team searching for fossils of extinct giant rats.

The team of archaeologists and palaeontologists were working in Lene Hara Cave on the northeast tip of East Timor.

‘Looking up from the cave floor at a colleague sitting on a ledge, my head torch shone on what seemed to be a weathered carving,’ CSIRO‘s Dr Ken Aplin said.

‘I shone the torch around and saw a whole panel of engraved prehistoric human faces on the wall of the cave.

‘The local landowners with whom we were working were stunned by the findings. They said the faces had chosen that day to reveal themselves because they were pleased by the field work we were doing.’

The Lene Hara carvings, or petroglyphs, are frontal, stylised faces each with eyes, a nose and a mouth. One has a circular headdress with rays that frame the face.

Uranium isotope dating by colleagues at the University of Queensland revealed the ‘sun ray’ face to be around 10,000 to 12,000 years old, placing it in the late Pleistocene. The other faces could not be dated but are likely to be equally ancient.

Lene Hara cave has been visited by archaeologists and rock art specialists since the early 1960s to study its rock paintings, which include hand stencils, boats, animals, human figures and linear decorative motifs. The age of the pigment art in Lene Hara is currently unknown but a fragment of limestone with traces of embedded red ochre was dated previously by Professor Sue O’Connor of The Australian National University to over 30,000 years ago.

Although stylised engravings of faces occur throughout Melanesia, Australia and the Pacific, the Lene Hara petroglyphs are the only examples that have been dated to the Pleistocene. No other petroglyphs of faces are known to exist anywhere on the island of Timor.

‘Recording and dating the rock art of Timor should be a priority for future research, because of its cultural significance and value in understanding the development of art in our past,’ Professor O’Connor said.

Fossil footprints of early modern humans found in Tanzania: here.

Celebrate overthrow of dictator Mubarak

This music video from the USA is called The Bangles Walk Like An Egyptian.

Comment on YouTube:

The Bangles should record a new version of this song in honor of the Egyptian people!

Map: how Twitter is reacting to resignation of Hosni Mubarak: here.

Missed the 30secs that ended the 30 years of Mubaraks rule? Watch it again here.

Watch interviews with activists, like novelist Adhaf Souheif reporting from Tahrir Square on rabbletv: here.

Solidarity campaigners will descend on London’s Trafalgar Square from noon today [Saturday?] to congratulate Egyptians in toppling president Hosni Mubarak after he announced his resignation today: here.

Mubarak assets frozen by Swiss government: here.

OF COURSE Mubarak’s presidential boat is named FREEDOM. And financed with US aid: here.

Bye Bye Mubarak! Here.

As Mubarak Resigns, Ex-Guantanamo Prisoner Mamdouh Habib on How Omar Suleiman Tortured him in Egypt: here.

This is a Dutch TV video about Egyptians in Amsterdam hearing about Mubarak’s fall.

Egyptian artist Ganzeer has created a series of anti-Mubarak protest artworks, including this graphic.

Related articles

• Egypt’s ousted Hosni Mubarak slips in prison, hits head (vancouversun.com)
• Egyptian news agency: Mubarak hurt in prison bath fall (edition.cnn.com)
• Mubarak in hospital after ‘falling in prison bathroom’ (itv.com)
• Cassation court to decide Mubarak’s fate (dailynewsegypt.com)
• Mubarak assets worth millions seized in Spain (euronews.com)
• Spanish police seize Marbella properties owned by deposed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak (theolivepress.es)
• Mubarak slips, hits his head in prison (timesofisrael.com)

Mubarak down, more dictators to go

The dictator of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, has resigned.

Tweet from Egypt: Hossam عمو حسام: We got rid of Mubarak. Now it’s time to get rid of Mubarak’s regime. Long live the Egyptian people. Long live the revolution.

Okay, one down. Suleiman? You need a vacation. Here.

Who is Omar Suleiman? A look at his connection to the United States, CIA & torture: here.

In the midst of victory, take a look back at some moments from Egypt’s popular revolution: here.

After Ben Ali of Tunisia, another dictator bites the dust. Who will be the next dictator to fall, in Yemen, Sudan, Albania, Jordan, Gabon or elsewhere?

Nicholas Shaxson, Palgrave Macmillan: “He allowed his country, through its oil industry, to become the African linchpin of the gigantic, secret Elf system – a vast, spooky web of global corruption secretly connecting the oil industries of former French African colonies with mainstream politics in metropolitan France, via Switzerland, Luxembourg, and other tax havens. Parts of Gabon’s oil industry, Joly discovered as she dug deeper and deeper in Paris, had been serving as a giant slush fund: a pot of secret money outside the reach of French judicial authorities in which hundreds of millions of dollars were made available for the use of French elites”: here.

Greenfinches and parakeets

Today in the botanical garden.

Great tits, and an Eurasian collared dove. A magpie.

In the rose garden, a male and a female greenfinch.

This is a greenfinch video.

Though it is still winter, some flowers already. Including Dutch yellow crocus and snowdrops. And many yellow winter aconite flowers on lawns; some even among footpath pebbles.

Two ring-necked parakeets eating buds in a tree. Chaffinches. Blackbirds.

On the other side of the canal, a moorhen and three herring gulls, trying to catch worms by trampling on the grassy ground.

A great crested grebe and coots swimming.

Egyptian anti-dictatorship movement continues

This video is called Worldwide Solidarity with Egypt.

Global solidarity with Egypt – Demonstrations around the world: here.

Mubarak Flees Cairo for Sharm el-Sheikh: here. And here.

US national parks and historical monuments in danger

Olympic National Park & Rain Forrest, Washington, USA from Christian Schafleitner on Vimeo.

By Janel Flechsig in the USA:

Obama’s proposed budget to slash funding for historic preservation, National Park Service

11 February 2011

The Obama administration’s proposed 2011 budget, currently under review by the House Appropriations Committee, calls for sweeping austerity measures for social programs and infrastructure.

Among the bill’s proposals are massive cuts to historic preservation funding including the elimination of the Save America’s Treasures and Preserve America programs. These cuts total $25 million dollars, with the Historic Preservation Fund (HPF) receiving a mere $54.5 million in 2011, down from the already inadequate $79.5 million it received in 2010.

The White House is also proposing cuts to the National Park Service’s construction budget, which oversees the maintenance of historic structures within the parks, as well as reductions in battlefield preservation grants, Native American Graves Protection Act grants, and Heritage Area funds for the National Park Service.

Obama’s budget includes the total elimination of the Challenge Cost Share account, which provides matching funds for National Park Service projects and Bureau of Land Management academic fieldwork on archaeology, historical site assessments, and surveys. Even before taking these latter changes into account, however, the elimination of Save America’s Treasures and Preserve America represent the largest reduction in historic preservation funding since cuts made by the Reagan administration in the 1980s.

From Costa Rica to Vermont, habitat fragmentation creates hazards for wildlife: here.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 21, 2011) — A new study by Baylor University geology researchers shows that Native Americans’ land use nearly a century ago produced a widespread impact on the eastern North American landscape and floodplain development several hundred years prior to the arrival of major European settlements: here.

Egyptian, other pro-democracy movements continue

With his speech on Thursday night, Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak threw down the gauntlet to the mass protests and growing strike wave that have rocked his regime for nearly three weeks: here.

Since demonstrations and strikes erupted against the Mubarak regime on January 25, the Egyptian military has arrested, tortured and “disappeared” thousands of people: here.

On Tuesday, French Prime Minister François Fillon admitted that he had spent his Christmas holiday with his family in Egypt, paid for by President Hosni Mubarak’s regime. Egypt has been rocked for three weeks by a mass uprising: here.

The right-wing Israeli government of Minister Benyamin Netanyahu has been staggered by the massive demonstrations and strike wave engulfing Egypt, its critical Arab ally in the region, and the simultaneous emergence of social opposition in Israel itself: here.

Protesters have taken to the streets in recent weeks in the African nation of Gabon, demanding that President Ali Ben Bongo resign. The protests took place following a January 25 declaration by opposition leader Ander Obame that he was the rightful president: here.