This is the weekend of the national garden bird count.
It was a windy, sometimes rainy day, which probably was a reason for many birds to hide away.
As during the half hour of the count, I saw, from the village window, just three birds: a male and a female blackbird, and a wood pigeon.
This is a blackbird video.
National count results are here.
By Sarah Sheffer:
Libyan women’s group rejects draft election law
21 January 2012
CAIRO: Libyan women’s group Women4Libya (W4L) has called for the modification of proposed draft election laws, citing shortcomings in the proposed law, which is set to be published on Sunday by the National Transitional Council’s (TNC) Electoral Commission.
Women in Libya, who were essential in the conflict that toppled the regime of former leader Muammar Ghaddafi earlier this fall, are concerned that their voices will not be heard in the formation of the country’s new government.
An initial 10 percent quota for women in the 200-seat General National Congress, a newly formed political body, has been omitted entirely in the pending electoral law.
The group had expressed too that even a 10 percent quota is “undeniably insulting, when more than half the population are female and participated equally in the revolution.”
In a press release, W4L expressed that they are “are shocked to discover that there is now no quota at all, leaving them at even greater risk of exclusion.”
“The drafting team of eight should have included women representatives and the whole process been more transparent,” said Sara Maziq, a founder of the group.
W4L proposed a minimum 40 percent quota for women in Congress.
“Libyan women, like men, aspire to a stable and democratic Libya with participation in all aspects of decision-making. The precedent for elections in post-conflict countries is minimum quotas for women of at least 30% – 40%. Even Iraq and Afghanistan had a minimum 25% quota for women,” she continued.
The group also called for the formation of clearly delineated electoral districts and the outlining of clear conditions for candidate qualification. They also called for more transparency and communication from within the TNC.
Abir Dajani Tuqan, another member of the women’s group, said that the proposed legislation “does not reflect the spirit of Islam.”
To combat the proposed election procedures, the W4L has circulated a petition that has accumulated more than 3,000 signatures against the bill.
Additionally, Libyan citizens are unhappy that voter eligibility excludes people who are living abroad.
“There is a risk now that those forced into exile during the regime will be ineligible to stand for office or vote just when Libya needs all the talent it can muster to rebuild a New Libya,” Sara Maziq of W4L explained.
See also here.
Libya‘s Nato-installed National Transitional Council was plunged into crisis on Sunday a day after hundreds of armed men forced leader Mustafa Abdul-Jalil to scuttle out of the back of its Benghazi HQ: here.
UN concerns over Libya militias and secret detention: here.
Several detainees have died after being subjected to torture in Libya in recent weeks and months amid widespread torture and ill-treatment of suspected pro-al-Gaddafi fighters and loyalists, Amnesty International said today: here.
Detainees from Libya’s war held by fighters continue to be subjected to torture, says UN human-rights chief: here.
Libya prisoners make new torture allegations | BBC: here.
Residents of Bani Walid in Libya appointed their own local government today after driving out loyalists of the new Nato-backed regime in an armed uprising: here.
Authorities in and around Misrata are preventing thousands of people from returning to the villages of Tomina and Kararim and have failed to stop local militias from looting and burning homes there, Human Rights Watch said today: here.
The Libyan government should urgently increase security for the roughly 12,000 displaced people from Tawergha in western Libya, Human Rights Watch said today. Nearly a month after militias raided a Tawergha camp in Janzur, shooting dead one man, three women, and three children, that camp and others still lack adequate protection, Human Rights Watch said: here.
Zuma criticizes UN over war on Libya. By Abayomi Azikiwe Editor, Pan-African News Wire: here.
Pro-Kadhafi Prisoners ‘Beaten With Chains’: here.
TORTURE! MURDER! & tens of thousands displaced in Cameron’s ‘free Libya’: here. And here.
Amnesty International demanded the release today of two British journalists and their Libyan colleagues held for over a week by a Misrata-based militia: here.
Two Libyans are to sue the former counter-terrorism director of British spy agency MI6, claiming he played a key role in their rendition to Moamer Kadhafi’s Libya, their lawyers said Tuesday: here.
Listen to BBC report on new legal action by Libyan rendition victims against ex-MI6 counter-terror chief Sir Mark Allen: here.
Authorities in and around Misrata are preventing thousands of people from returning to the villages of Tomina and Kararim and have failed to stop local militias from looting and burning homes there, Human Rights Watch said today: here.
The northeast Libyan town of Tawergha, formerly home to about 40,000 people, is now a “ghost town” after intense fighting last year ended in the city’s capture and the total displacement of its population: here.
More than 50 civilians have been killed in fighting between tribes this week in a remote region of southern Libya, witnesses reported on Tuesday: here.
Both pro- and anti-Qadhafi forces committed war crimes in Libya – UN panel: here.
Canada helped NATO enable ouster of Gadhafi from Libya: here.
On January 18, Justice Lindblom at the Royal Courts of Justice gave the go-ahead for the eviction of the Occupy London Stock Exchange protest: here.
Occupy Bristol, the largest tented demonstration outside London and part of the international movement against social inequality, has been served with an eviction notice: here.
By Will Morrow:
Yemen’s “unity” cabinet provides immunity for Saleh regime
21 January 2012
Yemen’s power-sharing “unity” cabinet, composed of the ruling General People’s Congress (GPC) and opposition Joint Meeting Parties (JMP) coalition, approved laws on January 8 to give sweeping legal immunity to President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s regime.
Rather than shielding Saleh’s family members as had been expected, the legislation protects Saleh and those who worked with him, including in civilian, military and security institutions, during his lengthy presidency. Since protests emerged in Yemen last January, the regime has killed hundreds of demonstrators.
Britain: Women’s rights protesters were celebrating on Friday after a Tory Bill demanding sexual abstinence classes for teenage girls mysteriously disappeared from parliamentary order papers: here.
By Patrick Martin in the USA:
Infighting in South Carolina presidential primary
21 January 2012
The campaign for the Republican presidential nomination reached a new low in this week’s campaigning in South Carolina. Rival right-wing candidates appealed to racism, anti-immigrant prejudice and religious bigotry in an increasingly vicious contest in the state, with the polls opening at 7 a.m. Saturday.
Only four candidates remain in the race with the withdrawal of former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman on Monday and Texas governor Rick Perry on Thursday. Huntsman endorsed former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, seen as the frontrunner nationally, while Perry endorsed former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who now holds a narrow lead in the polls of likely voters in South Carolina.
Besides Romney and Gingrich, the remaining candidates include former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum and Texas Congressman Ron Paul.
This week’s campaigning revolved around two debates, Monday night in Myrtle Beach with the four candidates plus Perry, who had not yet quit the race, and Thursday night in Charleston, with the field reduced to four.
The turning point in the South Carolina primary may turn out to have been the debate Thursday, when the first question put to the four candidates went to Gingrich. CNN host John King asked him about the impending ABC News broadcast of an interview with his second wife, Marianne, in which she denounced him for his marital infidelity in the 1990s.
Gingrich responded with a denunciation of both ABC for its broadcast and King for his question, which prompted a standing ovation from the audience.
There is vast irony in Gingrich’s purported outrage, as he declared, “I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office.” It was Gingrich who pioneered what came to be known as the “politics of personal destruction,” particularly in his role in spearheading the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1998-99.
As ABC News pointed out in its broadcast Thursday night, Gingrich was having an affair with a congressional aide, now his third wife, Callista, at the very point that he was declaring that Clinton had “less moral authority than any administration in history” after the exposure of Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.
There was, however, no discussion of the Clinton impeachment in either the Republican debates or the media coverage of the campaign. Gingrich’s personal conduct in the 1990s was raked up only to provide lurid television footage and headlines, while the critical political background—the right-wing effort to oust a twice-elected president through a sex scandal—was ignored.
Once again, sensationalized coverage of marital infidelity served to obscure the real political issues, both historical and contemporary. The result—a further degrading of the already abysmal level of political discussion in the corporate-controlled media and the election campaigns of the two big business parties.
While the media was devoting hours of coverage to Gingrich’s conduct towards his three wives, there was relatively little attention paid to the increasingly frenzied shift to the right by all the Republican candidates.
Gingrich openly appealed to racial bigotry during the first debate. Fox News panelist Juan Williams, who is black, asked about his repeated declarations that African-Americans should seek jobs instead of being satisfied with food stamps and his calling Obama a “food-stamp president.”
Gingrich clearly welcomed the criticism and received a standing ovation from the audience when he denounced “political correctness” and declared, “I’m going to continue to find ways to help poor people learn how to get a job”—as though mass unemployment were not an inescapable reality imposed by the capitalist system on millions of working people, black, white and Hispanic.
In campaign appearances and press statements in South Carolina, Gingrich also avowed that on his first day as president he would issue an executive order to defy Supreme Court rulings providing legal rights to prisoners at Guantanamo and other US facilities who were seized by the US military and the CIA overseas.
Gingrich Surges With Old, Familiar Ploy: Racist Attacks on Poor People: here.
Mitt Romney pays lower taxes than average American: here. And here.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney released his tax returns Tuesday morning, revealing that he collected income of $21.7 million in 2010 and $20.9 million in 2011, nearly $42.6 million over the two-year period. Not a penny of this income was from salary or wages reported on a W-2. Nearly all of it was investment income, including capital gains, dividends and interest: here.
Romney’s Tax Return Nightmare Worsens After Errors Found In Financial Disclosure Statements: here.
Who Is the GOP Nominee Going to Be – the Adulterer, the Flip Flopper, the Radical, or the Homophobe? Here.
Why Evangelicals Don’t Care When Rich White Conservatives Defile Marriage: here.
Rick Santorum Gets Glitter Bombed, Again: Protesters Shower GOP Candidate With Glitter Over Gay Rights: here.
Santorum Excommunicates 45 Million Christians: Mainline Protestants Are ‘Gone From The World Of Christianity’: here.
Kim Severson, The New York Times News Service: “Fed by antagonism toward President Obama, resentment toward changing racial demographics and the economic rift between rich and poor, the number of so-called hate groups and antigovernment organizations in the nation has continued to grow, according to a report released Wednesday by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The center, which has kept track of such groups for 30 years, recorded 1,018 hate groups operating last year”: here.
