13 February 2012 in Kotu, the Gambia.
After the crocodiles and kingfishers in the morning, to the golf course late in the afternoon.
A ring-necked parakeet flying in its native habitat.
A group of red-billed hornbills on the lawn.
A male and a female of a slightly bigger species, African grey hornbill, together in a treetop.
USA: WikiLeaks Exposes Department of Homeland Security Spying on Occupy Movement. Allison Kilkenny, In These Times: “[Department of Homeland Security] document appears to be more concerned with protecting the mechanisms of the financial sector than in ensuring the safety of citizens who are exercising their First Amendment rights. They talk about threats to ‘critical infrastructure’ and this fear that these protests are going to … make commerce difficult and people are going to start losing money. There is a kind of bottom line in analysis to what they’re talking about”: here.
Occupy Wall Street Rallies Monitored by Dow Chemical. Lee Fang, Republic Report: “Wikileaks revealed a massive trove of e-mails from the firm Stratfor. The e-mails show that the company, working on behalf of chemical giant Dow Chemical, closely monitored news coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Stratfor relayed the activities of people seeking redress for the 1984 Dow Chemical/Union Carbide gas disaster in Bhopal, India, which resulted in the death of thousands and lasting environmental damage”: here. And here.
13 February 2012 in the Gambia.
After the earlier owl and vultures, we continued to Kachikally crocodile pool.
Its waters house over eighty crocodiles, with healing capabilities according to local tradition. They attract many visitors, for healing and for tourism.
This is a video about the Kachikally crocodiles. Many of them are so tame that they allow people to pet them. Some of the crocodiles, however, especially females with babies, may be aggressive and dangerous.
They belong to the species Nile crocodile. Recent research seems to point out that Nile crocodiles are really two species: one more aggressive, one less aggressive. If so, the Kachikally crocodiles may belong to the less aggressive species.
Many of the crocodiles have green backs, as there is much duckweed in the pond. See the photo here.
There are also birds near the pond. Hamerkop.
Not far away, there was a smaller kingfisher species. The smallest kingfisher of the Gambia: the African pygmy kingfisher.
The African pygmy kingfisher sat near a place where dishes had been put to provide drinking water for birds during the dry season. The water attracted village weavers, common bulbuls, a Senegal coucal, and a female cut-throat finch.
We continued to the banks of a small brook, where African thrushes look for food.
A recent decline in ovenbirds (Seiurus aurocapilla), a ground-nesting migratory songbird, in forests in the northern Midwest United States is being linked by scientists to a seemingly unlikely culprit: earthworms: here.
Nicolea zostericola worms in the Dutch Oosterschelde: here.
Monday 13 February.
After yesterday, we are back in Kotu, on the west coast of the Gambia.
Also some house sparrows, whose ancestors, it seems, arrived in Gambia in the 1980s as ship “passengers”.
Senegal coucal. Little bee-eater.
We are going to Brufut Woods again.
A northern white-faced scops owl in a tree.
There is a rubbish dump in Brufut as well, attracting hooded vultures.
This video is about a solidarity demonstration with the struggle of Greek workers, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 18.12.2012
From daily The Morning Star in Britain:
Workers across EU rally against cuts
Wednesday 29 February 2012
by Our Foreign Desk
Trade unions staged protests against European Union austerity measures today in Belgium, Spain and Greece, a day before a key EU summit.
Massed in front of EU headquarters in Brussels, organised workers demanded a financial transaction tax, a clampdown on tax evasion and a pooling of debt through the use of eurobonds instead of cuts to public spending, welfare provision and workers’ rights.
Representatives of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) met EU President Herman Van Rompuy to push the workers’ demands.
“Enough is enough. Austerity measures do not work,” said ETUC leader Bernadette Segol at the demonstration.
“We have alternatives and Europe must work for employment and social justice. And we haven’t had that until now.”
After meeting leaders of the trade unions and employers federations in Brussels, EU Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso acknowledged that “sacrifices are being made on an unfair basis.”
Mr Barroso said he intends to take steps during the two-day summit to fight tax evasion and boost a financial transaction tax.
“We want to keep our social model, but there is a need to reform,” he said.
In addition to the rally outside EU headquarters, well over 1,000 Belgian union activists protested outside the national bank.
In Greece, unions held a three-hour work stoppage from noon and rallied in central Athens against a 22 per cent minimum wage cut as well as slashed benefits and pensions.
The minimum wage for workers under the age of 25 has been cut by 32 per cent.
The cuts were passed by MPs in a bid to secure a second package of loans from the EU, the European Central Bank and the IMF.
Doctors at public hospitals and some private practices also kicked off a 24-hour strike over health care spending cuts, while striking local government workers occupied town halls across Greece for four hours.
In Spain, thousands of high school and college students demonstrated in cities against cutbacks in education in a country with nearly 29 per cent unemployment.
Civil servants in Castilla La Mancha walked out to protest against wage cuts of up to 8 percent.
See also here.
Tens of thousands of students rallied across the Czech Republic today against the right-wing coalition government’s plans to slap them with university tuition fees: here.
12 February 2012 in the Gambia.
Here are photos from the beautiful pond we saw then.
This is half of an African jacana couple walking on the water-lily leaves with their chicks.
A black-headed heron catches a sizable frog.
After the downfall of Rupert Murdoch‘s underling Rebekah Brooks, now the downfall of Murdoch the Son. It is to be hoped that the complete downfall of Murdoch the Father is not far away.
By Jack Mirkinson in the USA:
James Murdoch Steps Down As Executive Chairman Of News International
The Huffington Post
02/29/12 09:15 AM ET
James Murdoch has stepped down as executive chairman of News International, the British arm of News Corp., the company announced Wednesday. Murdoch, who was once seen as the heir apparent to his father Rupert at the head of News Corp., has now lost a key position within the company.
News Corp. cast the move as stemming from James’ recent relocation to New York from London, and Rupert Murdoch said his son would “continue to assume a variety of essential corporate leadership mandates.” He will also remain as the deputy COO of News Corp. But the reshuffling will be widely seen as a reflection of James’ deeply diminished stature following wave after wave of damaging allegations about his complicity in News Corp.’s still-simmering phone hacking scandal.
James has long denied having any knowledge of the widespread nature of phone hacking within the News of the World tabloid. But a series of testimonies and released documents have put him ever-closer to a crucial 2008 meeting in which the former editor and legal director of the paper have sworn he was informed that criminality had been out of control within the organization. James was even sent a memo detailing the extent of phone hacking within the NOTW, but has stated he did not scroll down enough on his BlackBerry to read it.
As the allegations mounted against him, James’ stock within News Corp. plummeted. Whereas it had been assumed that he was the natural successor to his father, Rupert Murdoch began stressing the power and influence of his COO, Chase Carey. Independent shareholders also voted, by a large margin, to oust him from the News Corp. board.
James’ departure leaves News International — once the key building block in Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, and still a wing of his company he treasures deeply — without any member of the Murdoch family involved on its masthead. It also maintains News International’s status as the most troubled, and trouble-making, part of News Corp. In the last year, the subsidiary has become a gloomy focal point for the company, even as overall News Corp. revenues have hummed along.
Moreover, the misery shows no signs of stopping; just this week, dramatic new details about the levels of bribery at Murdoch’s Sun newspaper have rocked the British media.
Metropolitan Police officers arrested Sun defence editor Virginia Wheeler today in their Operation Elveden probe into bungs to coppers from journalists. Ms Wheeler, 32, was quizzed at a south London police station about evidence handed over by News International’s standards committee: here.
Cameron tries to close stable door after Rebekah Brooks horse story has bolted: here.
Rebekah Brooks borrowed her Scotland Yard horse after discussing
it over lunch with Britain’s top officer, an inquiry heard today. Former commissioner Lord Blair said he had been dining with the ex-News International chief executive before she called the force’s media chief to request the loan: here.
The Corporate Media Crisis: Everything Old Is New Again: here.
This video is about a mice catching great grey shrike.
Translated from Ecomare museum on Texel island, the Netherlands:
02/29/12
For the first time in years two great grey shrikes are wintering on Texel. They are in the Bleekersvallei and the Dune Park. Perhaps there is even a third bird, in the Muy. They eat large insects and small mammals such as mice. And there are plenty of those on the island, even in winter. They pierce their prey often on spines of bushes or on barbed wire to keep it for later.
12 February 2012 in the Gambia.
11:45: a yellow-billed oxpecker on the back of a white and red-brownish cow. After some minutes, the cow rose and walked away, the oxpecker still on its back.
