In the coming days, there will be fewer, or no, posts on this blog.
Don’t worry, in about fourteen days’ time the normal blogging frequency will resume. And I will have unusual blog posts, about a subject new for this blog.
Islamabad reiterated its opposition on Monday to Washington’s illegal drone assassination campaign in Pakistan, branding it “unlawful, counterproductive and unacceptable”: here.
The CIA’s drone campaign in Pakistan has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to help rescue victims or were attending funerals, an investigation by the Bureau for the Sunday Times has revealed: here.
Relatives of children killed and injured by CIA drone strikes in Pakistan filed a complaint against the US government today at the United Nations in Geneva: here.
NATO attack forces Pakistan to recalibrate its ties with US: here.
Pakistan’s parliamentary commission on reviewing relations with the US said on Tuesday the superpower should end its illegal drone strikes in the country if it wants supply lines to its forces in Afghanistan reopened: here.
Drone-Strike Survivors Ask, “What Kind of Democracy Is America?” Kathy Kelly, Voices for Creative Nonviolence: “One question Fazillah cannot answer for her son is whether anyone asked the question at all of whether to kill his father. Forbes Magazine reports that the Air Force has sixty-five to seventy thousand analysts processing drone video surveillance; a Rand review states they actually need half again that number to properly handle the data. Asked to point to the human who actually made the decision to kill her husband, she can only point to another machine”: here.
Remotely Piloted War. How Drone War Became The American Way of Life: here.
Britain: Foreign Secretary Hague is being sued over the alleged UK policy of handing over GCHQ-sourced intelligence to the CIA to aid US drone attacks in Pakistan: here.
Lawyers have filed papers at the High Court accusing the British government of complicity in illegal US drone strikes: here.
British-French drones: here.
The legalization of drone flights inside the United States has ominous implications for democratic rights: here.
Predators on the Border, Hawks Across the Border and a Homeland of Drones. Tom Barry, Truthout: “Drones are proliferating. First, the Pentagon joined with military contractors to breed fleets of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), as airborne drones are formally called. Although major new drone species began emerging in the 1990s, the Bush administration’s war on terrorism after the 9/11 attacks sparked a major surge of drone production and deployment – not only for reconnaissance, but also for military strikes against targeted terrorists”: here.
Talking about Big Oil …
In 2011, Exxon‘s total profit was $41.06 billion or $1300 every second: here.
$41B in Exxon’s profits came from middle class pockets at the pump, while Exxon betters itself: here.
Exxon Mobil dispute deepens Arab-Kurd split in Iraq: here.
The great Arctic oil race begins: here.
BP tries to seal testimony, strike evidence in upcoming oil spill litigation: here.
POLL: 65% of Americans support the “Buffett Rule” to require millionaires to pay at least a 30% tax rate: here.
Translated from Ecomare museum on Texel island, the Netherlands:
New caddisfly on Texel – 01/12/29
Another new species for Texel. After the Megachile ligniseca bee which a few weeks ago was in the news, there is now a new discovery, a caddisfly. The newcomer was found in the Ploeglanden, part of the National Park Dunes of Texel. …
The new caddisfly has been found in the summer of 2011, however, this week it was announced that it is a new species for Texel, Leptocerus tineiformis. In the Netherlands there are 180 different species of caddisflies, 31 of those are now confirmed to live on Texel. The discoverer, researcher David Tempelman, expects that in the dunes of Texel still some more species may be found.
See also here.
By Dorian Griscom:
Composer Gustav Mahler: A centennial appreciation
31 January 2012
Composer Gustav Mahler is remembered for his nine symphonies and equally for his famous song cycles, including Das Lied von der Erde (“The Song of the Earth”), Rückert Lieder, Kindertotenlieder (“Songs on the Death of Children”), Des Knaben Wunderhorn (“The Youth’s Magic Horn”) and Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (“Songs of a Wayfarer”). He also left behind a draft for a tenth symphony.
Mahler is known today almost entirely for his large-scale compositions, and these works were by and large rejected during his lifetime by a public that regarded him first and foremost as a conductor. Mahler held major conducting posts across Europe—in Prague, Leipzig, Budapest, Hamburg and most notably Vienna, and he also appeared in Berlin, Amsterdam, London and Paris. Toward the end of his life he came to the United States, where he directed both the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera.
Mahler’s music was not widely heard in concert halls and on recordings until the middle of the 20th century, about 40 years after his death. Today, however, he is among the most widely listened to of 19th and 20th century classical composers. Last year, which marked the 100th anniversary of Mahler’s death in Vienna on May 18, 1911, witnessed concerts, new recordings, lectures and exhibitions around the world celebrating his life and music.
His work speaks to a very wide audience, while his life and career remain the subject of intense scholarly interest. …
Vienna at the turn of the 20th century was a city of profound contradictions. While home to a vibrant cultural life that witnessed intense ferment in the arts and sciences, it was also the heart of the decaying Austro-Hungarian Empire, in the center of a continent on the brink of war and catastrophe.
Vienna was headquarters of the large and influential Social Democratic Party, a leading section of the Second International. Still nominally a revolutionary party, the Austrian SPD generally followed its more famous German counterpart in gradually abandoning Marxism in favor of parliamentarism and narrow trade union politics, a process that culminated in the Austrian party’s support for its own bourgeoisie at the outbreak of the First World War.
Despite its ultimately fatal political flaws, it is also true that the Austrian party played an enormous role in the political and cultural life of the country and especially of Vienna. Its newspaper, the Arbeiter-Zeitung, enjoyed a mass circulation. Lectures, meetings and mass demonstrations were a constant presence in the city’s life. Mahler, though by no means politically active, voted for the party in a number of elections. …
It was also during his Vienna period that Mahler met and married the young and beautiful Alma Schindler. They met in November 1901 and were engaged to be married roughly a month later. Though Alma herself was a composer of considerable talent, Mahler forbade her to compose. This devastated Alma, but she instead devoted her musical gifts to supporting Mahler’s career, copying out parts and writing transcriptions of his compositions. Nevertheless, Mahler’s domineering manner, on this and other matters, took its toll on their relationship.
Alma was known as a femme fatale. Mahler’s junior by nearly 20 years, she later had an affair with the architect Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus, whom she would marry after Mahler’s death. The affair, towards the end of Mahler’s life, shattered the composer and led him to consult with Freud. The problems of their complicated relationship aside, Alma and Gustav Mahler’s partnership was a profound one that deeply affected the composer’s musical life.
Mahler’s life in Vienna was stormy on other than personal grounds. Anti-Semitism had wide support and was encouraged, as elsewhere, as a means of weakening the workers’ movement. The notorious anti-Semite and leader of the Christian Social Party, Karl Lueger, became mayor of Vienna in 1897.
The composer, who had converted to Catholicism largely to shield himself from official anti-Semitism in his quest for the position of director of the Hofoper, encountered opposition from the anti-Semitic press even before arriving in Vienna. The Reichspost, an anti-Semitic daily, wrote on April 14, 1897: “The Jews’ press will see whether the panegyrics with which they plaster their new idol at present do not become washed away by the rain of reality as soon as Herr Mahler starts his Jew-boy antics at the podium.”
While Mahler clashed with many of the musically conservative elements as he fought to remake the Vienna Opera into what he thought was required, he also faced continuous sniping on religious and political grounds. He was ultimately driven from his post by a venomous press campaign in 1907 that alleged “mismanagement” of the Opera on Mahler’s part.
Translated from the Dutch RAVON ichthyologists:
Rare burbot breaks record
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
In National Park Weerribben-Wieden a burbot has been caught of 71 centimeter long; that means a new Dutch record length. The largest recorded specimen to date in the Netherlands had a length of 70 centimeter and was caught in 1894 in the Frisian Terkaple.
The burbot (Lota lota) has become very rare in the Netherlands and they are seldom longer than 65 centimeter.
By Niall Green in the USA:
Occupy DC protesters ordered to end camps
31 January 2012
Occupy DC protesters were ordered to end their months-old encampments in the US capital on Monday. Federal government officials gave notice last week that protesters had to remove all camping equipment from two sites they have occupied in downtown Washington, DC.
As of this posting, the protesters remained in a standoff with Parks Police, who had ordered the the camps to be cleared out by noon.
The parks, McPherson Square and Freedom Plaza, are owned and policed by the National Parks Service, an agency of the US Department of the Interior responsible for much of the open space in the center of Washington. Parks Police warned Occupy protesters that they would start to enforce an established prohibition on overnight camping, which officials had waived since protesters set up the encampments October 1.
The Occupy DC camps are part of the US and worldwide protests, begun in New York City under the banner Occupy Wall Street, against social inequality and the domination of political power by a financial oligarchy.
The change in attitude toward the Occupy demonstrators by the Parks Service appears to have been prompted by the actions of Congressional Republicans in the nearby US Capitol, who last week questioned why protesters were being permitted to camp on federal land.
The head of the Parks Service, Jonathan Jarvis, responded to the Republican effort with a statement that protesters had a right to be in the parks and could not be evicted, but that sleeping there would be discouraged.
Occupy DC organizers answered the change in policy toward them by pointing out that the Parks Service has long taken a very selective view on when to apply the no camping rule on federal property, allowing several other protest groups to camp on National Parks’ land in Washington, including during the Civil Rights demonstrations of the 1960s.
By Iqra Qalam in South Africa:
Forty arrested at Cape Town Occupy
31 January 2012
Forty people were arrested on Friday 26 January as they prepared to launch an Occupy Rondebosch Common demonstration in Cape Town. The three-day “People’s Jobs, Land & Housing Summit”, organised by community organisations include Passop, Proudly Manenberg, Gugulethu Anti-Eviction Campaign, South African NGO Coalition and the South African Council of Churches, was broken up with brutal police repression.
The mayor of Cape Town, Patricia De Lille, justified the police brutality, declaring in a speech to the City Council: “There are those who would sooner see this city destroyed, driven in two by violence and aggression, than be a part of a shared destiny. I tell this council now, those agents of division will not win.”
She said that she would not allow “these agents of destruction to use their misguided, naive and brutal misunderstandings of the politics of race to divide this city.”
In the 1980s, Patricia De Lille was a trade union official and rose to the leadership of the Pan African Congress (PAC), a group which had split from the now ruling African National Congress (ANC) in 1959. After leaving the PAC she formed the Independent Democrats (ID) before merging with the right-wing Democratic Alliance.
De Lille unleashed the repression against the peaceful demonstrators for attempting to hold a gathering in Rondebosch Common, which under Apartheid was an area from which non-whites were banned and is today surrounded by wealthy suburbs and golf courses. Her reactionary response was emblematic of the evolution of a whole layer of former advocates of the “liberation struggle” in the ANC and PAC, who have since become ferocious defenders of wealth and privilege.
The Mayor’s Communication Department of the City of Cape Town issued a hypocritical statement on January 27 further justifying continued and deepening social inequality as an inevitable feature of “nation building” and defending the imminent crackdown. “Occupations, illegal actions, invasions, these are all side-paths, so much more tempting for those who are weary,” it stated. “But they lead nowhere.
“All that remains at the end of these short diversions is more pain, suffering, conflict and violence. And when we descend there, we will forget where we were going, forever.”
In reality, however, it was the city administration and the police that violated the law and trampled on the rights of the demonstrators. The brutality was driven in no small measure because many of those protesting had come from poorer townships.
The U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI have opened an investigation into the “facts and circumstances” surrounding the killing of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed teenager shot and killed last month by a neighborhood watch captain in an Orlando suburb: here.
This video from the USA is called Bahraini Human Rights Activists Report on Crackdown on Dissent by U.S.-Backed Bahrain Govt. 1 of 2.
And here is Part 2.
From Amnesty International in the USA:
U.S. Arms Sales to Bahrain: 4 Questions for the Obama Administration
Posted by: Sanjeev Bery, January 30, 2012 at 10:04 AM
As I wrote on Saturday, the Obama Administration has authorized a new U.S. arms sale to the Bahraini monarchy. This comes just months after a Congressional and public outcry that led the administration to suspend a prior $53 million arms sale to Bahrain.
Members of Congress, journalists, and Amnesty International were all outraged over the last proposed arms sale. That’s because Bahraini protesters continue to be tear gassed, beaten, and even killed while exercising their human rights of free speech and association – rights that include the freedom to criticize one’s government.
Regarding this new arms sale, here are the top four questions that the Obama administration must answer immediately:
1. Why was the arms sale kept secret from the public?
Josh Rogin at Foreign Policy leaked the news of the arms sale on Friday. He also reported that U.S. arms sales under $1 million don’t have to be publicly disclosed. So the Obama administration didn’t publicly mention it. But why? At a time when the Bahraini government continues to crack down on protesters, why did the Obama administration keep the contents of this arms sale — or multiple arms sales – secret?
2. What is in the arms sale?
U.S. State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said that the arms sale “includes spare parts,” arms for Bahrain’s “external defense”, and that “none of these items can be used against protesters.” But the last time the U.S. State Department said that arms were being sold to Bahrain for “external defense” – the arms package contained humvees. This came after the Bahraini government had already used tanks to surround a hospital where wounded protestors had been treated. The public needs to know what the Obama administration is selling to Bahrain. Ammunition? Replacement parts for ships? Vehicles to transport soldiers? Landing gear for cargo planes? Tanks?
3. How many secret arms sales are there?
In his above mentioned piece, Rogin implied that the Obama administration could hypothetically turn the suspended $53 million arms sale into 53 or more separate arms sales under $1 million each — and that none of them would have to be reported. Is that what is happening? How many unreported U.S. arms sales to Bahrain are happening now — or are slated to happen in the future?
4. How does this secret arms sale square with the President’s State of the Union address?
In his State of the Union address last week, President Obama referred to the “wave of change” in the Middle East. He also described what U.S. foreign policy would be: “We will stand against violence and intimidation. We will stand for the rights and dignity of all human beings –- men and women; Christians, Muslims and Jews.”
It remains to be seen what is in this latest arms sale (or sales) to Bahrain. But at a time when Bahrainis are experiencing human rights violations at home, it doesn’t look good to be handing their government additional military equipment.
See also here.
Bahrain Security Forces Crush Protests After Funeral of Slain Teenager: here.
The Bahraini authorities must release the first woman activist to be convicted over her involvement in last year’s pro-reform demonstrations, Amnesty International said today after a court rejected her appeal and upheld her prison sentence: here.
Bahrain to criminalize protester assault on police officers: here.
From daily The Morning Star in Britain:
Belgian workers take action against cuts plans
Monday 30 January 2012
by Our Foreign Desk
Belgian workers struck against austerity today and called on European Union leaders meeting in Brussels to tax financial transactions and pool eurozone debt.
Belgium’s three main unions – the socialist FGBT, the Christian democratic CSC and the liberal CGSLB – called the strike to warn the government not to go ahead with its €12 billion (£10bn) cuts plan.
The cuts include a pension “reform” that forces people to work longer for less.
The strike closed one of the country’s airports and disrupted flights in and out of Brussels.
Trains and public transport systems were paralysed and many schools shut.
Factories and businesses stood idle, while the ports of Ostend, Zeebrugge, Ghent and Antwerp were at a standstill.
The three unions last staged a general strike in 1993.
Trade union leaders converged at the EU summit for a small demonstration, demanding a government plan to kick-start the economy and a better deal for workers.
FGTB general secretary Anne Demelenne said: “Austerity is not the solution, it is the problem.”
She called on EU chiefs to tax financial transactions, regulate financial markets, and co-ordinate corporate taxation.
And union leaders delivered a symbolic “eurobond” as part of their call for eurozone states to pool their debt.
That would help struggling countries such as Greece, Portugal and Ireland but it is opposed by relatively well-off Germany.
Ms Demelenne said issuing eurobonds would rein in money market speculators and help countries “revive an economy that serves the workers.”
CSC leader Marc Leemans agreed: “What we need is growth. Growth creates jobs. And you don’t get growth when you suck the oxygen out of the economy by austerity, austerity, and then some.
“There should be more solidarity between member states. Eurobonds are a good solution.”
Photos of the strike in Antwerp today are here.
Reform of Portugal’s labour laws and the right-wing coalition government’s austerity measures are provoking mass opposition: here.
The Dutch natural history society KNNV, Wageningen town branch, reports that recent pro wildlife measures in nature reserve Bovenste Polder near Wageningen are working.
This is a bluethroat video.
Translated from the report:
443 plant species were found. Of those, thirteen are on the red list of species endangered in the Netherlands, including the rare milk parsley and the awl-leaf mudwort, only five centimeter in size. There were 109 fungi species found, five of which are on the red list. Mycena pseudocorticola, very rare in the Netherlands was even common in the area.
808 breeding territories
In 2010, sixty-six breeding birds species were found to have nested in the area, forty percent more than in 1982. All breeding birds together had 808 territories. Compared to thirty years ago, almost a fourfold increase. The results show how interventions in the area such as the digging of the secondary channel, but also the nature of the management have had positive effects. A total of 13 endangered breeding bird species were observed. Notable species included European penduline tit, great reed warbler, snipe [see also here], little ringed plover, water rail [see also here], grasshopper warbler [see also here], bluethroat and stonechat.
