First, the bus passes through Serrekunda, the biggest city in Gambia. Pied crows sitting on billboards and buildings. Black (and/or yellow-billed?) kites and hooded vultures flying.
As I wrote, we arrived at the building of the Gambian Birdwatchers Association.
Birds of prey flying around. Are they black kites, or yellow-billed kites? That is not an easy question, as both species look similar. Both have yellow bills. Completely yellow in yellow-billed kites; yellow with a black end in black kites; but one cannot always see that.
However, we saw a kite flying with a twig in its bill. Unmistakably, that bird was saying: “I am a yellow-billed kite, an all-year African resident. I am building my nest here. Unlike black kites, who will migrate back to Europe in spring.”
On the wall, and on trees, lizards. They are rainbow agamas.
Honduras: The prisoners whose scorched bodies were carried out piece by piece this morning from a charred Honduran prison had been locked inside an overcrowded facility where most inmates had never been charged, let alone convicted: here.
Mark Engler, Dissent Magazine: “Honduras has become a human rights disaster. The country now has the world’s highest murder rate. And impunity for political violence is the norm. For all this, the United States deserves a good deal of the blame…. Lest anyone in this country think that things in Honduras have settled into a peaceable, post-coup normality, [due to a] chain of events – a coup that the United States didn’t stop, a fraudulent election that it accepted – [that] has now allowed corruption to mushroom”: here.
Poverty and crime bring Honduras to its knees: here.
A female union leader has won a prestigious award for her struggle to support workers in Honduras supplying bananas to British shops for as little as £5 a day: here.
Free speech advocates demanded an international investigation into attacks on journalists in Honduras on Monday after a radio host was killed by machete blows: here.
WASHINGTON, DC (March 12, 2012) – Today Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and 93 fellow House members sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to raise the alarm over human rights violations in Honduras where human rights defenders, journalists, community leaders and opposition activists are subject to death threats, attacks and extrajudicial executions. Today also marks the 18th fatal attack on a member of the news media in the past two years after a Honduran journalist was killed by an unknown attacker wielding a machete: here.
The constitutional chamber of the Honduras Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that privately run cities would be unconstitutional, threatening a project to build “model cities” with their own police, laws, government and tax systems: here.
Lauren Carasik, Boston Review: The United States should carry out an independent review of the joint U.S.-Honduras drug enforcement operation that went terribly awry, killing four Honduran civilians: here.
In the two years since the ICC opened its preliminary investigation, Honduras has become the murder capital of the world and among the most dangerous countries in which to be a reporter. It is time for the Court to intervene: here.
An Ottawa man who was arrested in Bahrain and allegedly tortured in prison has won his court case, but says he won’t feel safe returning to the airport for a flight out of the country without a representative from Canada at his side: here.
#Anonymous target Bahrain, US munitions manufacturer
Anonymous has affixed its digital crosshairs on Jamestown, PN based chemical munitions manufacturer Combined Tactical Systems on the anniversary of Bahrain’s protest movement that began one year ago.
“From the streets of Oakland to Tahrir Square, to Palestine, Greece, Bahrain and Syria, your sinister instruments of torture and brutality have been used by the vile swine enforcers of the rich ruling classes to repress our revolutionary movements,” read the statement.
The chemical munitions stamped with “Made in USA” connected violent crackdowns to US policy for many protesters.
Bahrain: Tweeting the Revolution’s First Anniversary: here.
Bahrain blocks return to Martyrs’ Square on revolt anniversary: here.
This video is called Activists with Witness Bahrain being arrested.
This video is called Update from Bahrain: Police Arrest Protesters, Beat Women.
Authorities in Bahrain on Sunday arrested a prominent female activist and deported two US citizens as clashes between police and pro-reform protesters continued ahead of the first anniversary of the February 14th revolution: here.
International Media Shut Out of Bahrain as Anniversary Approaches: here.
Bahrain Continues to Crackdown on Peaceful Protest: here.
A Tense Bahrain Awaits Anniversary of Uprising (Video): here.
Isn’t it time we backed Bahrain’s revolution? Here.
Formula One: British lawmakers ask FIA to reconsider Bahrain race, putting 2012 and 2013 events in jeopardy: here.
Why this year’s Bahrain Grand Prix should not be taking place: here.
Bahrain Grand Prix must be cancelled says group of prominent British peers: here.
Football: Made a pariah in his native Bahrain for taking part in pro-democracy demonstrations, Brisbane defender Mohamed Adnan tells Phil Lutton of his incredible road to the Roar and why he still yearns to represent the country that cast him aside: here.
Bahrain continues mistreatment of handball referees: here.
Bahrain King Unironically Slams Assad for Not Listening to Protesters: here.
I caught a banded mining-bee in April on a flower rich grassland along the Roggesloot at Dorpzicht. This is the third sighting of this species on the island. Earlier (in 2004) I saw a female at Ottersaat and Menno Reemer saw one in Spang. Presumably, this species is present on Texel in small numbers, scattered over the island.
An Abyssianian roller, sitting sometimes on a wire, sometimes on the roof of a shed. Again and again, it dives from the shed roof to the ground, catching a mouse or an insect.
In a marsh, about ten cattle egrets and a black egret. Black egrets are famous for their way of catching their prey: they spread their wings like an umbrella, thus making a shadow over the water which attracts fish. However, our first Gambian black egret is not doing that now.
Holes in the mangrove forest soil, made by fiddler crabs. Gambian environmentalists are trying to make this beautiful area a nature reserve, but so far they have not succeeded.
