Italian austerity damages science

This video is called Italian lawyers strike over austerity measures.

From ScienceInsider:

Italy‘s Science Minister Is Betting on Europe

by Marta Paterlini on 17 August 2012, 11:40 AM

ROME—Last month, the Italian government angered many scientists by announcing a series of deep cuts in the budgets of state institutes as part of a broader austerity package. ScienceInsider talked to Francesco Profumo,

Profumo indeed. That reminds me of another minister of that name, John Profumo. British, not Italian. Not a minister of education, universities, and research; but a Secretary of State for War (then, in the early 1960s, they were still honest enough to call it war, not “defense” yet).

John Profumo had to resign because of the Profumo scandal.

It is to be hoped that Francesco Profumo, and the whole Italian austerity-mongering government, will follow that example soon.

who, as minister of education, universities, and research in Italy’s ‘technocratic’ government, will have to implement those cuts.

… Before accepting the appointment as minister, he served as the president of the National Research Council for 3 months. Questions and answers have been translated from Italian and edited for clarity and brevity.

Q: The budget cuts announced last month will hit 12 state-funded institutes hard and have caused a great deal of commotion. Won’t they harm Italian science?

F.P.: First of all, let’s stop calling them cuts. I prefer to use the term “spending reviews!”

Yeah, right, Mr Profumo.

Probably, you want to stop people from calling rape rape. You think they should call it love instead.

And freedom is slavery.

And war is peace.

There is a word for the euphemisms of people like Mr Profumo. It is called Newspeak.

Ireland’s economy remains deep in crisis, with all signs pointing to a further downturn as the European Union enters recession: here.

Saudi princess’ cruel revenge on Egyptian woman

This video from 2010 shows Egyptian workers singing against the Mubarak dictatorship then.

While in Bahrain, not only at least one prince of the royal family personally tortures athletes, and at least one princess personally tortures poetesses … in Saudi Arabia, I have not heard yet about an exaxt equivalent of that.

Though it now seems that at least one Saudi royal princess hands at least one Egyptian woman over to torturers.

From Al-Masry Al-Youm daily in Egypt:

Saudi princess threatened to keep daughter in prison, says family

Sat, 18/08/2012 – 12:12

The family of Nagla Wafa, an Egyptian woman in prison in Saudi Arabia, said they were threatened that Wafa would be held in prison for life if they reported the matter to the media. Wafa had been sentenced to five years in prison and 500 lashes following a dispute in a business partnership with a Saudi princess.

Wafa, who has been in prison since 2009, already received 300 lashes, her family says.

Her mother, Nashwa al-Saeedy, refused to disclose the name of the princess, but said she is a relative of the first degree to the king. She also said the princess’s lawyer exploited his connections with the dissolved State Security Service.

Her father, Yehya Wafa, a professor of orthopedic surgery at the University of Tanta, said the Foreign Ministry and the Egyptian Embassy in Saudi Arabia did not respond to his pleas.

“My daughter was imprisoned for a year and eight months before they investigated,” he said. “She was brought to a district court in Saudi Arabia although it was a commercial issue.”

Wafa appealed to President Mohamed Morsy and King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz to intervene to release her daughter.

On Pastebin, a site often used by hackers to anonymously lay claim to attacks, the Arab Youth Group claimed they had “targeted administrable structures and substructures of Aramco, and also the Stock Exchange of Saudi Arabia. This action has been done in order to warn the Saudi rulers”: here.

Nicholas Gilby’s blog post: Why it is high time the Saudi Armed Forces Project Office is held to account: here.

Egypt: EOHR Calls for the Urgent Interference of the Government to Release 61 Detained Nationals in Jeddah: here.

Bahraini teenager, killed by regime, buried

This video from Bahrain shows the family of teenager Husam al-Hadad, killed by regime forces, during the cleansing of his corpse, before being buried in his final resting place.

See also this video.

Teenager Killed in “Barbaric” Attack By Bahraini Police: here.

Bahrain Special: The Killing of Hussam AlHaddad and the Unanswered Questions: here.

Bahrain Interview: The Life and Death of 16-Year-Old Hussam AlHaddad: here.

Nabeel Rajab, a prominent activist, will be sent to jail, but governments in the West could be ignoring atrocities in Bahrain for political reasons: here.

Bahrain Interview: Activist Said Yousif on His Beating and Detention: here.

This video is called ‘Real Arab Spring in Bahrain which West ignores’.

Velociraptor spider discovered in American cave

From mongabay.com:

Velociraptor spider discovered in Oregon cave (pictures)

Jeremy Hance

August 17, 2012

Scouring the caves of Southwest Oregon, scientists have made the incredible discovery of a fearsome apex predator with massive, sickle claws. No, it’s not the Velociraptor from Jurassic Park: it’s a large spider that is so unique scientists were forced to create a new taxonomic family for it.

“This is something completely new,” lead author of a paper on the species, Charles Griswold with the California Academy of Sciences, told SFGate. “It’s a historic event.”

The discoverers, who published their description paper in the open-access journal Zoo Keys have named the new species Trogloraptor, which translates loosely to “cave robber,” and they have dubbed a new spider family—Trogloraptoridae—to accommodate what they believe is a primitive spider. The full species name is Trogloraptor marchingtoni after one of its discoverers.

See also here. And here. And here.

Elusive cave spider found at one of the UK’s most popular nature reserves: here.

Related articles

• Bizarre Insectlike Creatures Found in Spanish Cave (news.discovery.com)
• Velociraptor: Facts about the ‘Speedy Thief’ (livescience.com)
• The Velociraptor Was Actually Nothing Like Its Hollywood Depiction (businessinsider.com)
• Shadows and Spiders: A Secret Cave in California (science.kqed.org)
• Pro-tip: Don’t use brass knuckles to kill a spider. (w/ video clip) [Dumbass] (fark.com)
• Three New Species of Springtails Discovered in Spanish Cave (natureworldnews.com)
• The Raptors in Jurassic Park Were So Big Because They Were Humans (motherboard.vice.com)
• Three new arthropod species have been found in the Maestrazgo Caves in Teruel (esciencenews.com)

‘Czech Breivik’ arrested

This video says about itself:

BREIVIK tribute, Hungary – Magyar Sziget festival

Reporter infiltrates international Nazi festival in remote Hungarian village.

BNP (British National Party) – Chris Hurst hailing with crowd while Saga sings Breivik (Norwegian mass murderer)’s favorite song Tomorrow belongs to me – Skrewdriver.

From the BBC:

18 August 2012 Last updated at 12:28 GMT

Czech ‘Breivik imitator‘ arrested in Ostrava

A man suspected of planning attacks similar to those carried out in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik has been arrested in the Czech Republic, according to police.

Police said an assault rifle, explosives, ammunition and police clothing were found in his apartment.

The 29-year-old old man was detained in the eastern city of Ostrava a week ago.

Breivik, dressed as a police officer, shot dead 69 people on an island after setting off a bomb in Oslo last year.

The BBC’s Rob Cameron in Prague says police in Ostrava were alerted to the suspect because he used the name of Breivik in email correspondence.

Police searched the apartment on 10 August, but have only now disclosed details of what was found.

Our correspondent says police raided the property after being tipped off that he was planning to detonate a large explosive device crafted from an aircraft bomb.

The man was carrying a remote controlled detonator when he was arrested, he says.

At a news conference, police said they did not know the suspect’s intended target, but said the explosives, weapons and ammunition were all functional.

On 22 July 2011, Breivik, a right-wing militant, killed eight people in a bomb attack in Oslo before gunning down another 69 in a youth camp on the island of Utoeya.

Judges are set to decide next week whether he is sane or insane, and therefore whether he will be given a long prison sentence or be sent to a secure psychiatric ward.

Thai women in Bahraini forced prostitution

This video is called WikiLeaks: Sex slavery of young girls in Saudi Arabia.

From The Nation in Thailand:

Thai women in Bahrain calls for rescue from forced prostitution: 191 police

August 17, 2012 1:59 pm

The spokesman of 191 emergency police said Friday that the division has received an urgent call from a Thai woman who claimed to be detained in Bahrain along with nine others to be forced to prostitution.

Pol Col Sanpisit Yaemkesorn said an operator of the 191 division received a phone call from a woman who said she was detained in a house opposite from the French embassy in Bahrain.

The woman said they would be forced into prostitution at the end of Ramadan and called for an emergency rescue.

Sanpisit said the 191 police checked and found that the woman had real identy so the 191 had contacted other government agencies concerned to stage a rescue operation.

Sanpisit said the 191 division received a phone call from the same woman, saying her group had not been rescued yet.

The woman expressed fear that the woman trafficking gang had an infiltrator in the Thai embassy in Bahrain and she feared that they would be moved elsewhere soon.

Save Tasmania’s old forests

This video from Australia says about itself:

Green Left TV interviewed tree-sit protester Miranda Gibson. Miranda is in the eighth month (as of August 2012) of her indefinite campaign to have Tasmania‘s old growth forests protected from logging.

Follow Miranda at her blog observertree.org

Two new mines are being assessed within the Tarkine rainforest in north-west Tasmania. The Tarkine is well known for the public battles to save it from logging, and was given emergency National Heritage listing in 2009: here.

August 2012. The “sustainability roadmap” issued recently by controversial Indonesia deforester Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) dramatically backtracks on a series of promises it has made – and broken – previously, an analysis by the Riau NGO coalition Eyes on the Forest has found: here.

Ellsberg support Ecuador’s asylum for Wikileaks’ Assange

This video from the USA says about itself:

Daniel Ellsberg, the most famous whistleblower in the United States, praises Ecuador for granting political asylum to Julian Assange to avoid extradition to Sweden for questioning over sex crime accusations. “I congratulate Ecuador of course for standing up to the British Empire here, for insisting that they are not a British colony, and acting as a sovereign state ought to act,” said Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, the secret history of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. On Thursday, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Assange would be arrested if he left the embassy, saying Britain is “under a binding obligation to extradite him to Sweden. “[Assange] has every reason to be wary that the real intent here is to whisk him away to America where it really hasn’t been made clear what might be waiting for him.”

See also here.

‘US intends to chase Assange, cables show’: here.

Julian Assange row: Americas ministers to meet: here.

Freedom loving people say thanks to #Ecuador! New posters for embassies here.

Ecuador received powerful backing from regional allies at the weekend as they warned Britain of “grave consequences” if it breached diplomatic security at Ecuador’s embassy in London: here.

Russian Pussy Riot punks jailed

This music video is called Pussy Riot-Punk Prayer.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Pussy Riot jailed for two years

Friday 17 August 2012

by Our Foreign Editor

A Russian judge today sentenced three members of Pussy Riot to two years each in prison on hooliganism charges.

The judge said the three band members, who have already been detained for five months, committed hooliganism driven by religious hatred and offending religious believers.

The women smiled sadly at the testimony of prosecution witnesses accusing them of sacrilege and “devilish dances” in church.

They remained calm after the judge announced the sentence and someone in the courtroom shouted: “Shame!”

The charges carried a maximum penalty of seven years in prison, although prosecutors had asked for a three-year sentence.

The Pussy Riot members were arrested in March after a guerilla performance in Moscow’s main cathedral calling for the Virgin Mary to protect Russia against Vladimir Putin.

The case has attracted international attention, highlighting the vast influence of the Russian Orthodox church. Although church and state are formally separate, the church identifies itself as the heart of Russian national identity.

Amnesty International strongly condemned the court’s ruling, calling it a “bitter blow” for freedom of expression in Russia.

Outside the courtroom hundreds of Pussy Riot supporters chanted: “Russia without Putin” amid a heavy police presence.

Protests were also held in more than three dozen cities worldwide, including in Russia, Germany, Belgium, France, Ukraine, Britain and even Israel.

Protesters in Paris’s Igor Stravinsky Square near the Pompidou Centre modern art museum, echoed those outside the Moscow courthouse, chanting “Svoboda Svoboda” or “Freedom Freedom.”

In Ukraine, four feminist activists used a chainsaw to hack down a wooden cross in Kiev’s central square in a show of support.

“A cross is a symbol of the repressive religious prejudice that supports dictatorship.

“Now people who worship the cross want to jail the innocent,” said Anna Gutsol, leader of the group that chopped down the 18-foot-tall cross put into place during Ukraine’s so-called Orange Revolution.

In Sofia, Bulgaria, supporters of Pussy Riot dressed statues on a Soviet-era monument in colourful balaclavas similar to those worn by demonstrators in Moscow.

About 150 people demonstrated outside the Russian embassy in Berlin.

One sign showed a photo of German Chancellor Angela Merkel embracing Mr Putin with the message: “He hasn’t earned it.”

See also here.

Mosocw criticised for Pussy Riot prison term: here.

Reactions to the verdict in the Netherlands: here.

Treasure discovery on Dutch Terschelling island

This is a video about a horse and cart excursion to the Boschplaat nature reserve on Terschelling island in the Netherlands.

Translated from Jikke Zijlstra in the Netherlands:

Treasure beached on Terschelling

Saturday, August 18, 2012, 07:23

On Terschelling a wrecked ship has washed ashore with a special treasure in it: about 300 kilogram of copper bars, thousands of beads, over forty copper pans, pot and bottle shards.

Presumably, the objects are from the eighteenth century, says curator and museum director Frans Schot of museum Het Behouden Huis

the official (old Dutch) spelling of the museum’s name is ‘t Behouden Huys

on Terschelling. According to curator Schot wrecks beach often, but hardly ever with such a cargo on board.

A voluntary bird warden of the Forestry Department found the remains of a wooden boat two weeks ago near the tide line, when he and his wife were walking in the Boschplaat, a nature reserve on the island. He found among the sand on the bottom of the boat thousands of beads. Some are made of glass, others probably of bone. Together with his wife he took the beads out of the sand.

Hoist

He could not get the rest of the load out of the wreck by hand. A few days later he did manage that, with the help of colleagues and a car with a big hoist. The cargo was transferred to Het Behouden Huis, the wreck has disappeared into the sea.

Because many curators are on vacation, there is still no definitive ruling on the origins of the wreck and the cargo. But according to Schot one may suspect at least some things. He has submitted the beads to beads experts. They say that the beads probably were made in the eighteenth century in Venice or in Amsterdam, ​​and were used as currency by the West India Company and others. They took slaves from Africa and then brought them to Suriname.

See also here. And here.

A photo is here. A beads photo is here.