New film on Chilean Pinochet dictatorship

This video is the trailer of the film Nostalgia for the Light, about the legacy of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile.

By Jeff Sawtell in Britain:

Nostalgia For The Light (12A)

Directed by Patricio Guzman

Thursday 12 July 2012

Awesome. Nostalgia For the Light should be required viewing for misanthropists everywhere, especially those who supported Pinochet’s regime in Chile.

Opening with the wheels of a telescope being positioned and images of the pockmarked moon, film-maker Patricio Guzman narrates his fascination for studying the stars.

It’s nothing to do with astrology but about looking for the origins of the universal material forces that created our species, since we live by the light of long dead stars.

Then the camera looks back to Earth to see Chile’s Atacama desert, a place without humidity and no natural animal life

not completely true. See here.

except astronomers and archeologists.

The first study stars and meteorites and the second search for fossils and neolithic art, reminding us that the native Amerindians have become the “unmentionables.”

Many died as slaves building the 19th-century railways, their work huts providing Pinochet in the 1970s with an ideal site for concentration camps that disposed of those called the “disappeared.”

People search for traces of their loved ones so they can rest the ghosts in their mind while reminding the so-called civilised world that they collaborated with massacring millions.

An architect shows how he paced out the measurements of the camps, then drew them on paper which he destroyed and then redrew them again from memory while living in Denmark.

The history is still raw. Every day the survivors walk the same streets as the unpunished perpetrators, providing a testimony of a time that too many would like to keep us in the dark about.

Every scrap of evidence is bagged and tagged, while others recall the tremendous courage and ingenuity employed by the living to become “transmitters of history.”

Guzman stresses the value of memory. “Those who have a memory are able to live in the fragile present moments. Those who have none don’t live anywhere,” he states.

A damning indictment of systematic genocide, the film illustrates that humanity has the resilience and imagination to learn from the past to make a better future.

It’s the common cause.

Related articles

• Chilean singer Jara’s murderers arrested (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Indigenous Chileans Continue To Oppose Pinochet-Era Highway Project (eurasiareview.com)
• Chile: Victor Jara widow asks for US extradition (miamiherald.com)
• Chile arrests suspects over Jara killing in ’73 (morningstaronline.co.uk)
• Chile seeks arrests in 1973 death (bigpondnews.com)
• Chile makes arrests in Jara case (bbc.co.uk)
• Former Chilean military officials held in singer’s 1973 slaying (updatednews.ca)

G4s mercenaries mess up London Olympics

This music video from England is called Steve Ignorant (Crass) Securicor, Banned from the Roxy.

Securicor is another name for G4S mercenary corporation; and for GSL. Lyrics of the Crass song Securicor are here.

By Rory MacKinnon, Corporate Affairs Reporter in London, England:

Olympic mess helps sink police sell-off

Thursday 12 July 2012

Unions piled onto Olympic security bunglers G4S today as its Herculean screw-ups helped scupper a £1.5 billion police privatisation plan.

Despite handing G4S £284 million to safeguard the Games with 14,000 security guards the company has just 4,000 ready to go and 20,000 in training.

Manic ministers have had to call in another 3,500 soldiers to cope – just two weeks before the opening ceremony.

And now West Midlands and Surrey police chiefs have put in doubt the future of the £1.5bn contract to do vital police work, which G4S had hoped to sink its teeth into.

Surrey Police said today it had changed its mind and was pulling out of the whole thing.

And the West Midlands Police Authority said it would carry on but leave any decision to the new police and crime commisioner set to be elected in November.

The original tender carried extra weight thanks to dozens of other forces signalling their interest but “without any obligation” to join the sell-off.

Originally revealed in March, the document states the forces want to hand privateers all services that “can legally be delegated to the private sector.”

Dozens of Unite and Unison union members representing police staff rallied outside the West Midlands police headquarters in Birmingham today, where West Mids and Surrey chiefs were meeting.

Unison national officer Ben Priestley said Surrey’s decision to stop showed it had “seen the light.”

And Unite general secretary Len McCluskey condemned the West Mids’ decision to press on in any way, especially after the Olympic security “fiasco.”

He said: “Yet again a public service – this time the army – is forced to mop up after a failing private contractor, at considerable cost to the taxpayer and damage to the reputation of London’s Olympics.

“If G4S can cut corners with the Olympics then it doesn’t bear thinking about what they will do to essential police services like 999 call handling or forensics.

“It beggars belief that these private companies can be seriously considered as providers of essential public services like policing,” he said.

The West Midlands Police Federation’s chairman Ian Edwards said: “This is shambolic – we’ve known the Olympics were coming to London for seven years.”

G4S has already made major inroads into Britain’s public sector. It runs six private prisons and three immigration detention centres, and in April won a 10-year, £200m contract to design, build and run a set of police cells near Lincolnshire’s police headquarters at Nettleham.

Olympic security chaos: depth of G4S security crisis revealed: here.

Olympic missiles: here.

Eyebrows were raised as it emerged today that four MPs so far have been handed free corporate tickets allowing them to see the most sought-after Olympic event – the men’s 100m final: here.

Rail union RMT called off a strike ballot over Olympic payments on First Great Western today after hammering out a new agreement ensuring that all workers throughout the service will secure additional benefits: here.

Stop pseudo-scientific whaling

This video says about itself:

MS Expedition Antarctic Whales!

The passengers of the M/S Expedition ooh and ah as two Humpback Whales play around the ship.

Warning: people of a delicate disposition may want to turn the sound off

Humpback Whale Close Encounter Off California Coast Captured By Photographer (PHOTOS): here.

By Peter Frost:

Frosty’s Ramblings: Rise of the whale hunt

Thursday 12 July 2012

South Korea said this week it may “reconsider” its plan to start hunting whales again.

That’s good news, though it’s not a battle won and those who wish to preserve these magnificent animals will need to keep up the pressure.

I’ve long been fond of whales. Each spring thousands of them head south down the east coast of Australia. Last year my wife Ann and I were lucky enough to spend a holiday following them in a campervan.

These enormous and highly intelligent creatures had spent the winter giving birth to their calves in the tropical waters off northern Australia. They were now heading for the rich krill-feeding ground that is the Antarctic in summer.

On the way south we spotted many playful family groups from beaches and headlands along the coast.

Most were humpbacks, some up to 50 feet long and weighing 35 tons – that’s heavier than three double-decker buses.

Even larger were the southern right whales, cynically named by the early whalers because it was the “right” whale to catch – they often floated when killed.

Most spectacular but less common on the route were the 60-foot sperm whales, the biggest predators on the planet.

We’ve been lucky enough to see whales all over the world – New England and New Zealand, California, Norway, Iceland and the Faroe Islands.

Nearer home we actually reckon you can’t beat Shetland and Britain’s other northern isles to see whales and other cetacean species.

On one occasion we had just loaded our campervan on the Sunday lunchtime ferry between Shetland’s mainland and the island of Yell. Five minutes out the captain made a curious announcement.

“Can I ask if anyone is in a hurry?” his voice crackled over the speaker, “because I’ve just seen a pod of orcas and if nobody is in a rush I think we should take a closer look.”

Much later we docked on Yell. It is normally only a 20-minute trip but we had spent over an hour with six amazing killer whales.

That’s why I was really angry earlier this month when South Korea announced it was to resume hunting whales under regulations permitting scientific research.

South Korea is using the same dubious excuse as Japan.

Once a small so-called scientific sample of the whale has been taken the remaining tons of expensive meat and blubber are on their way to posh sushi restaurants.

South Korea will join the small but distasteful club of nations who ignore world opinion and the global moratorium on the bloody slaughter which reached its peak in 1962 with 66,000 kills. The biggest remaining whaling fleets are from Norway, Iceland and Japan.

Seoul announced its plans at the 64th annual International Whaling Commission (IWC) held in Panama.

The commission is increasingly being accused of being toothless by more militant campaigners for sea mammals.

The 89-member IWC is only concerned with larger species of whale. And future commission meetings will only be held every two years.

In Panama Japan scuppered widely supported international plans for a whale sanctuary in the south Atlantic and an attempt to get the United Nations to debate the hunting of all cetaceans (whales, dolphins, porpoises and so on).

Japan pays the IWC subscriptions for small whaling states – which include the IWC’s new chairwoman Jeannine Compton-Antoine’s St Lucia – to get the 25 per cent vote it needs for these vetoes.

…

Today catching whales “accidentally” in fishing nets is already common in South Korea. Whale meat is easily found in markets and restaurants.

South Korea was one of the first countries to use the scientific whaling excuse after the 1986 IWC global whaling moratorium.

International pressure and protest stopped them then. It can again.

South Korea drops scientific whaling plan: here.

Seoul’s proposed intelligence-sharing agreement with Tokyo provoked a political crisis for the South Korean government: here.

South Korea: Dictator’s daughter announces presidential bid: here.

The chairman of one of South Korea’s largest industrial conglomerates was sentenced to four years in prison and fined 5.1 billion won (£2.9m) for embezzlement today: here.

Atlantic right whales are in danger—help us protect them today! Here.

CanadaL Whale watchers off Newfoundland call them Mutt and Jeff, and for two seasons now, this rare pair of humpback whales of remarkably similar size, behaviour and friendliness has left locals and tourists awestruck: here.

A sperm whale that was rescued and returned to sea after being stranded for four days in shallow waters off the coast of West Java in Indonesia has died, a rescuer said Monday: here.

August 2012. One of the largest recorded sightings of Blue whales off the coast of San Diego has been spotted by veteran aerial photographer and marine biologist Eddie Kisfaludy: here.

Saudi anti-dictatorship struggle continues

This video is about protests and clashes in Saudi Arabia.

DUBAI (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia has deployed more troops in the oil-rich Eastern Province and cancelled some military leave amid worries of fresh unrest by Shi’ite Muslims in the kingdom and regional tensions, Saudi government sources and diplomats said on Thursday: here.

Saudi Shia protesters mourned by ‘thousands’. Huge crowds throng funerals for two Shia demonstrators killed by security forces in rallies following arrest of cleric: here.

Is this the beginning of the Arab Spring in Saudi or just Shia unrest? Here.

Dinosaur eggs discovery and bird evolution

This video is called Dinosaur Eggs & Babies.

From the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in Spain:

Fossil Egg Discovered in Lleida (Spain) Links Dinosaurs to Modern Birds

12 July 2012

Researchers from the Complutense University of Madrid and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona identified in Lleida a series of dinosaur eggs with a unique characteristic: they are oval in shape. The discovery represents proof in favour of the hypothesis that birds and non avian theropods, dinosaurs from the Cretaceous Period, could have a common ancestor.

Before her death in December 2010, Nieves López Martínez, palaeontologist of the Complutense University of Madrid, was working on the research of dinosaur eggs with a very peculiar characteristic: an ovoid, asymmetrical shape. Together with Enric Vicens, palaeontologist of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, the two scientists conducted an exhaustive analysis of their discovery, recently published in the journal Palaeontology.

The new type of dinosaur egg has been given the scientific name of Sankofa pyrenaica. The eggs were discovered in the Montsec area of Lleida, in two sites located on either side of the Terradets pass.

The South Pyrenean area is rich in dinosaur egg sites, most of which correspond to sauropod eggs from the upper Cretaceous, dating back more than 70 million years ago. During that period, the area was a coastal area full of beaches and deltas which won land from the sea through sediment accumulation. Sand and mud from that period gave way, millions of years later, to the sandstone and marl where dinosaur remains now can be found. On the beach ridges and flat coastal lands is where a large group of dinosaurs laid their eggs.

The sites where the discoveries were made correspond to the upper Cretaceous, between the Campanian and Maastrichtian periods, some 70 to 83 million years ago. The fossils found belong to small eggs measuring some 7 centimetres tall and 4 cm wide, while the eggshell was on average 0.27mm thick. Most of the eggs found were broken in small fragments, but scientists also discovered more or less complete eggs, which can be easily studied in sections. The eggs found at the sites all belong to the same species. The main difference when compared to other eggs from the same period is their asymmetrical shape, similar to that of chicken eggs. The more complete samples clearly show an oval form rarely seen in eggs from the upper Cretaceous period and similar to modern day eggs.

Their shape is a unique characteristic of theropod eggs from the upper Cretaceous period and suggests a connection with bird eggs. Non avian dinosaur eggs are symmetrical and elongated. Asymmetry in bird eggs is associated to the physiology of birds: they take on this shape given the existence of only one oviduct which can form only one egg at a time. In this case the isthmus, the region in the oviduct creating the eggshell membrane, is what gives the egg its asymmetrical shape. Thanks to this shape, the wider end contains a bag of air which allows the bird to breathe in the last stages of its development. This evolutionary step was still relatively underdeveloped in dinosaurs.

Thus, the egg discovered by UCM and UAB researchers in certain manners represents the missing link between dinosaurs and birds. Only one other egg, discovered in Argentina and corresponding to a primitive bird from the same period, has similar characteristics. The discover represents proof in favour of the hypothesis that non avian theropods, the dinosaurs of the Cretaceous period, and birds could have had a common ancestor.

The article about the discovery, in Palaeontology, is here.

Rare Caribbean coral discovery

This video from the USA is called Coral Restoration Foundation mini-Documentary.

By Julian Smith:

Navassa: Strangest island in the Caribbean may be a sanctuary for critically endangered elkhorn coral

12 Jul 2012 12:47:48 GMT

Don’t feel bad if you haven’t heard of Navassa Island, even though it’s actually part of the U.S. according to the Guano Islands Act of 1856. This uninhabited speck between Haiti and Jamaica, barely bigger than New York City’s Central Park, has a bizarre and bloody history – and may be a crucial refuge for endangered coral in the Caribbean.

Navassa has been underwhelming visitors since 1504, when crewmen sent by Columbus arrived and promptly died from drinking contaminated water. An American sea captain claimed the mesa-shaped islet for the U.S. in 1857 for its rich deposits of bird excrement, used to make fertilizer and gunpowder. Over the next three decades, African-American workers living in virtual slavery mined over a million tons of fossilized guano by hand (which the Navassa Phosphate Company of Baltimore shipped out on the S.S. Romance). In 1889, the workers rose up and killed five supervisors, sparking a legal battle over possession of the island that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The island and its animal inhabitants – mostly lizards and feral dogs today – were abandoned in 1898 after the Spanish-American War.

Haiti still claims Navassa in its constitution, but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared it a National Wildlife Refuge in 1999. Only researchers can drop anchor there today, but the interesting part is underwater anyway. This March and April, scientists with the Global Reef Expedition, a 5-year worldwide coral survey sponsored by the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, made 212 data-gathering dives on Navassa’s reefs. They found a surprisingly rich coral ecosystem that has escaped much of the damage that overfishing, pollution and climate change have wrought on other reefs in the region.

While Navassa’s reefs have suffered from mass bleaching events and outbreaks of disease over the past decade, the team found virtually no evidence of either during their surveys, says Andrew Bruckner, the foundation’s chief scientist. “The overall condition of the remaining coral colonies was very good,” he says, “and there has been an increase of some types of faster-growing corals.”

There was still come cause for concern: macroalgae (seaweed), which can crowd out growing coral, was plentiful, while large colonies of living coral were still rare. Large, ecologically important fish were rare, likely due to pressure from impoverished Haitian fishermen, and the researchers saw lionfish, a voracious and quickly spreading invasive species, on almost every dive. Overall, though, Navassa’s coral cover has increased since the last survey in 2008, and many of the coral colonies that were affected by bleaching and disease have started to grow back.

The most encouraging discovery was an abundance of endangered elkhorn coral (Acropora palmata), whose populations have collapsed by as much as 98% throughout its range since 1980. The shallow-water coral typically grows in stands with treelike trunks and branches up to 6 feet long (hence the name). At Navassa, though, elkhorn has adapted to the island’s near-vertical underwater walls by growing in an unusual encrusting form that clings to cliffs and ledges.

ScienceDaily (July 12, 2012) — Coral reefs in the Indo-Pacific region, including the Great Barrier Reef, recover faster from major stresses than their Caribbean counterparts, leading marine scientists have said: here.

Parrotfishes and surgeonfishes—two iconic groups of fishes found in coral reefs—are largely doing OK, according to a recent paper co-authored by Academy curator Luiz Rocha. Assessing 179 species for extinction threats, the authors found that only three species are threatened globally (due to fishing pressure). However, many species are threatened locally—for example, in the Philippines and Indonesia. Read the paper in PLoS ONE here. See also here.

Economic crisis, but not for Washington bosses

This video from the USA is called CEO Pay and the Great Recession.

By Nikolai Barrickman in the USA:

Massive growth of executive pay in nation’s capital

12 July 2012

A recent report by the Washington Post shows the massive growth of executive pay in the Washington, DC area as part of their attempts to skirt the regulatory measures passed by the Obama administration in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.

In a related story, it was reported that corporate CEOs have managed to increase their pay by over 20 percent since 2010 by means of transferring their pay from direct salary compensation to indirect means such as stock options, which are tied to company performance, revenue, and profit gain. “Giving long-term awards is more reflective of the scope of decision-making,” Charlie Tharp, a representative of the Center for Executive Compensation, told the Post.

As a result, despite the “slowing” of direct executive compensation, overall median executive pay was able to climb 41 percent and 22 percent in the last two years, reaching a median pay level of $3.1 million in 2011.

EagleBank nearly quadrupled the pay package of chief executive Ronald D. Paul last year after repaying the Troubled Asset Relief Program [paid by taxpayers], which placed constraints on executive compensation: here.

Murdoch-Blair-Thatcher connections

This video from the USA is called Rupert Murdoch Pressured Tony Blair Over Iraq.

From daily News Line in Britain:

Thursday, 12 July 2012

MURDOCH-THATCHER WAPPING DEAL

Rupert Murdoch sought assurances from prime minister Thatcher in the 1980s about policing of print union strikes, the Leveson Inquiry has been told.

In a written statement, ex-Sunday Times editor Andrew Neil disputed Murdoch’s claim to Leveson that he had ‘never asked a prime minister for anything’.

Neil also wrote that former prime minister Blair and Murdoch had reached ‘an understanding’.

That ‘relationship became closer, more extensive and deeper than anything . . . during the Thatcher years’, Neil claimed.

‘There was at least one time . . . when Mr Murdoch’s support for Mrs Thatcher paid business dividends and undermines the accuracy of his claim to the Inquiry that he has never asked politicians for anything,’ wrote Neil.

‘In the run-up to the Wapping dispute he made it clear to me one night in late 1985 in my office that he had gone to Mrs Thatcher to get her assurance – to “square Thatcher” in his words – that enough police would be made available to allow him to get his papers out past the massed pickets at Wapping once the dispute got underway.’

Murdoch received assurances from Thatcher, Neil said, ‘on the grounds that she was doing no more than upholding the right of his company to go about its lawful business’.

In his statement, Neil suggested that the ‘seminal development in relations between British politicians and the media’ during his career had been the Murdoch papers’ vicious treatment of Labour leader Neil Kinnock in the 80s and 90s.

‘This seared into the minds of a future generation of Labour leaders, especially Tony Blair and those closest to him, what could happen if they ended up on the wrong side of the Murdoch press.’

The result was New Labour’s desire to come to an arrangement with the newspaper group for mutual interest, Neil said.

Neil claimed that in 1996, a year before Labour was elected, Blair told him: ‘How we treat Rupert Murdoch’s media interests when in power will depend on how his newspapers treat the Labour party in the run-up to the election.’

As it turned out, Neil said, Labour enjoyed more than a decade’s support from the News International papers, while the media group in turn benefited from relaxed media ownership rules.

‘This was something Mr Murdoch’s people lobbied hard for, with his support, and they had unique and extensive access to the levers of power at the heart of the Blair government to make this lobbying effective,’ Neil wrote.

‘When Mr Murdoch testified before this Inquiry that he had never asked government for anything, it gave me cause to wonder if he had forgotten this – or forgotten he was testifying under oath.’

See also here.

Two Ex-Editors for Murdoch to Be Charged for Phone Hacking: here.

Disgraced media baron Rupert Murdoch has been hobnobbing with the Tories yet again: here.

The Church of England said today that it has sold its shares in the Murdoch-owned News Corporation over concerns about the company’s response to the phone-hacking scandal: here.

Observers were neither shocked nor horrified when Rupert Murdoch’s tattered media empire News Corporation – under fire in a massive phone-hacking scandal – broke news of a £1 billion loss today: here.

The News of the World journos accused of hacking more than 600 people’s voicemails were silent today as they appeared before a London courtroom: here.

Paedophilia and the Thatcher administration: here.

Virginia plantation video

The makers of this video from the USA write about it:

This is Belle Grove Plantation in Virginia. We are working to open this plantation as a Historic Bed and Breakfast. As you will hear in the video, this plantation has some very important history attached to it. It is the birthplace of James Madison and was part of the trail that John Wilkes Booth and David Harold crossed as they made their way across the river and on to Garrett’s Farm. It was also the plantation that the Detachment of Union soldiers that were pursuing them stopped to rest and eat.

They also write about it:

See what it looks like as you drive up to the Manor today. Watch for our resident osprey to fly over the house as you approach the front door. See the grounds as they are today, before we start the landscaping. Get a close look at the Summer Kitchen, Ice House and Smokehouse.

Smallest Pluto moon discovered

From NASA in the USA:

Hubble Discovers a Fifth Moon Orbiting Pluto

07.11.12

A team of astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is reporting the discovery of another moon orbiting the icy dwarf planet Pluto.

The moon is estimated to be irregular in shape and 6 to 15 miles across. It is in a 58,000-mile-diameter circular orbit around Pluto that is assumed to be co-planar with the other satellites in the system.

“The moons form a series of neatly nested orbits, a bit like Russian dolls,” said team lead Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif.

The discovery increases the number of known moons orbiting Pluto to five.

The Pluto team is intrigued that such a small planet can have such a complex collection of satellites. The new discovery provides additional clues for unraveling how the Pluto system formed and evolved. The favored theory is that all the moons are relics of a collision between Pluto and another large Kuiper belt object billions of years ago.

The new detection will help scientists navigate NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft through the Pluto system in 2015, when it makes an historic and long-awaited high-speed flyby of the distant world.

See also here.

Pluto’s P4 moon was discovered in July 2011. Also by the Hubble telescope.

It is good that the plans of the George W Bush administration in the USA to kill the Hubble telescope did not go ahead.