This video is called 30,000-strong flock of Barnacle Geese, Netherlands, February 2010.
On 21 August, I reported about a new Internet site with data about rare birds in the Netherlands, ever since 1800.
Meanwhile that new site is working.
It is here. It is called Dutch Avifauna.
Many things on the site are not working yet (including the English language parts which I expect will be working soon).
Officially, the site will start on 25 August.
See also here.
This video from the USA says about itself:
Civilian Deaths from US Drone Attacks Much Higher than Reported
Aug 21, 2012 by The Real News
Gareth Porter: New investigative work shows that civilian deaths in Pakistan, including from second wave attacks, [are] higher than [the] Pentagon reports.
On January 3 2010 school teacher Sadiq Noor and his nine-year-old son were blown to pieces in Pakistan by two missiles fired by a US drone into their home: here.
US drone attacks escalate inside Pakistan: here.
Pakistan Drone Study Finds ‘Damaging And Counterproductive’ Consequences From U.S. Policy; here.
Robert Naiman, Truthout: “If people have to confront the actual reality of the Pakistan drone strike policy – the reality in which its impact is mostly about killing and terrorizing civilians and alienating Pakistani public opinion from the United States as opposed to the fairy tale in which it is all about wasting top-level ‘bad guys’ – the political story will fall apart”: here.
This music video from Japan is by Japanese punk rock band Scrap, consisting of victims of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, with the song FUCK TEPCO!!
From Asahi Shimbun daily in Japan:
Radiation 258 times legal limit found in fish off Fukushima
August 22, 2012
Fish containing 258 times the legal limit of radioactive cesium have been found in waters off the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., said on Aug. 21.
The reading for two rock trout, caught about 20 kilometers to the north of the plant, showed 25,800 becquerels per kilogram, the highest yet detected in surveys conducted after last year’s nuclear accident.
Consuming 200 grams of the fish would amount to an internal radiation exposure of 0.08 millisievert for a human. The annual safety limit for radiation exposure from food products is 1 millisievert per person.
Fishermen currently do not fish in the waters in question, however, and no rock trout from the area have been distributed to the market.
Tetsu Nozaki, who heads the Fukushima Prefectural Federation of Fisheries Co-operative Associations, expressed concern about the finding.
“The reading was way beyond the levels recorded before,” he said. “It is worrying.”
The finding came after the federation resumed catches of some octopus and shellfish in waters off Soma, in the northern part of the prefecture, between June and early August on a trial basis. Those fish were distributed to markets, including Tokyo.
Nozaki said the federation will make a formal request for TEPCO to find out why such high levels of contamination were detected in the rock trout.
“We operate on the assumption that no additional contaminated water was leaked into the sea from the plant,” he said.
TEPCO officials said there could be so-called “hot spots” at the bottom of the sea where cesium is concentrated because rock trout usually live near the seabed. The company plans to study cesium levels of the crabs and the shrimp that rock trout feed on.
In a survey conducted in April last year, 14,400 becquerels per kilogram was detected for sand eel caught off the coast of the prefecture.
In March, landlocked salmon in the Niidagawa river near Iitate, a village to the northwest of the plant, measured 18,700 becquerels per kilogram.
See also here.
Greenpeace says Fukushima radiation monitoring seriously flawed: here.
From DISCOVER Magazine:
Newly discovered rat that can’t gnaw or chew
If you only looked at mammals, you could reasonably believe that the chisellers have inherited the earth. Of all the various species of mammals, forty percent are rodents. Rats, mice, squirrels, guinea pigs… all of them have the same modus operandi. They gnaw their way into their food with self-sharpening chisel-like teeth.
Whether tiny gerbil or huge capybara, rodents eat with the same special teeth. The upper and lower jaws each have a single pair of incisors that grow continuously through their lives. The front of each tooth is made from hard enamel, while the back is made of soft dentine. As the rodent gnaws, the incisors scrape at each other, and the dentine wears away faster than the enamel. This creates a permanently sharp edge, useful for cracking into wood, nuts and flesh alike. Once gnawed, the rodent passes its food to the back of their mouths to be chewed by grinding molars.
But on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, Jacob Esselstyn has discovered a new species of rodent that radically departs from this universal body plan: a “shrew-rat” that he calls Paucidentomys vermidax.Its name –a mash-up of Latin and Greek—gives a clue to its lifestyle. It means “worm-devouring, few-toothed mouse”.
The shrew-rat is just a few inches long, with small eyes, large ears, and a soft coat. Its most distinctive feature, however, is its long snout, reminiscent of the distantly related shrews that it is named after. At the end of the snout, the lower jaw has the usual flat-edged incisors, but the upper jaw has a pair of bicuspids (like the ones next to your pointed canines). And that’s it. Unlike every other rodent, this one has no molars—just four incisors, nothing else.
There are other shrew-rats in Indonesia and the Philippines, and while all of them have lost the ability to gnaw, none have features quite as extreme as Esselstyn’s new find. (All of them, for example, have molars.) They’re an odd group, united by their common long-snouted appearance rather than by any evolutionary similarities. Rather than forming one unified branch of the rodent family tree, the shrew-rats represent twigs on separate branches. They evolved their odd shapes independently.
Shrew-rats typically eat earthworms and other soft-bodied creatures that don’t require gnawing teeth. That’s exactly what Esselstyn’s new species does. He collected two of the animals in March 2011, and when he examined the stomach contents of one, he found earthworms and nothing else.
Esselstyn thinks that the shrew-rat has lost the ability to chew and gnaw because it only eats soft prey. It only needs teeth for capturing food rather than processing it. As such, it has lost everything except for two front incisors, used to snag worms and cut them into easy-to-swallow pieces. Like the lost limbs of snakes and whales, the missing teeth of the shrew-rat are a reminder that evolution disposes of body parts that are no longer useful, and that those same losses can open up new opportunities.
Reference: Esselstyn, Achmadi & Rowe. 2012. Evolutionary novelty in a rat with no molars. Biology Letters. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2012.0574
From DISCOVER Magazine:
After 32,000 Years, an Ice Age Flower Blooms Again
Permafrost is like nature’s freezer.
by Eric A. Powell
Deep in the frozen tundra of northeastern Siberia, a squirrel buried fruits some 32,000 years ago from a plant that bore white flowers. This winter a team of Russian scientists announced that they had unearthed the fruit and brought tissue from it back to life. The fruits are about 30,000 years older than the Israeli date palm seed that previously held the record as the oldest tissue to give life to healthy plants.
The researchers were studying ancient soil composition in an exposed Siberian riverbank in 1995 when they discovered the first of 70 fossilized Ice Age squirrel burrows, some of which stored up to 800,000 seeds and fruits. Permafrost had preserved tissue from one species—a narrow-leafed campion plant—exceptionally well, so researchers at the Russian Academy of Sciences recently decided to culture the cells to see if they would grow. Team leader Svetlana Yashina re-created Siberian conditions in the lab and watched as the refrigerated tissue sprouted buds that developed into 36 flowering plants within weeks.
This summer Yashina’s team plans to revisit the tundra to search for even older burrows and seeds.
The flowering plant of this article is Silene stenophylla.
This video is about Polders bij Poelgeest nature reserve in the Netherlands and the birds which live there.
Today, I went there again.
Gadwall ducks in the canal near the entrance.
Someone tells me that recently an adult and a juvenile spotted crake have been seen. I did not see any spotted crake myself today.
Spotteed crake photos: here.
I do see a great crested grebe in the next canal.
One canal further: teal.
In the southern lake: coots. A common tern flying. A Canada goose. A grey heron. A shoveler duck swimming.
Edible frog sound.
On a muddy islet, a moorhen passes a snipe.
Then, the northern lake. Four spoonbills resting on the biggest island.
On a smaller muddy island a lesser-black-backed gull, six black-headed gulls, and a common tern.
Two greenshanks standing in the water. Will their autumn migration bring them to Portugal? To the Gambia?
In the canal near the railroad: two adult great crested grebes with a youngster, about half their size.
A grey lag goose along the footpath.
A bit further, a blue-tailed damselfly sitting on grass along the path.
Meanwhile, three of the spoonbills are searching for food in the water together. The fourth one is still on the island, cleaning its feathers.
In the trees just past the northern bench, a twittering group of goldfinches, mostly juveniles. Over twenty of them.
Along the big canal, Egyptian geese.
As I walk back, a lapwing on a muddy southern lake island.
This video from the USA is called Can We Stop A War With Iran?
From the Israeli peace movement:
[Prime Minister] Bibi [Netanyahu] and [Defense Minister Ehud] Barak now inform us that they intend to launch an attack in the fall. The military leadership is opposed to it, civilians will be killed, the Iranian nuclear program will not be stopped, and a political solution will be even further away from achievement. We must not sit back and let this happen!
Tomorrow, Thursday, Aug. 23, 2012 at 6:30 pm, we will gather in front of the Defense Ministry (Kaplan Street, Tel Aviv) to hold the Demonstration of the Shrouds.
Parallel demonstrations will be held in Haifa (7.00 at Merkaz HaCarmel), Jerusalem (6:00 in front of the Prime Minister’s residence) as well as at Hiroshima (!), where an international conference of anti-nuclear groups is being held.
This time we must get out of our homes!
Please bring white or light-coloured sheets.
From the Defence Minstry we will go to join the daily demonstration at Barak’s home (Ibn Gabirol St., corner of Shaul Hamelech Balvd.) at 8:00 pm.
A protest vigil takes place at that location every weekday at this hour, already for the second week.
———————————————————————
Netanyahu and Barak are leading the people of Israel and the peoples of the entire region to a war whose hazards and severity might prove utterly unprecedented.
Netanyahu and Barak break all records of political and military adventurism, placing Israeli citizens, Jews and Arabs alike, at risk of destruction.
The danger is indeed terrible – but it is far from inevitable. It is essential – and still possible – to avert this war. At this crucial time we call upon opposition parties, political figures, intellectuals, academics and journalists, movements and groupings in the Israeli society, and even upon the sane elements within the political and military establishment, to act together against the preparations to war. All should act to create a broad mobilization of public action against the war.
We call on Left and other progressive forces, in the region and throughout the world, to raise a strong voice of opposition to this war. Mass protests should be initiated in order to mobilize public opinion and governments worldwide against the war that Netanyahu and Barak are planning to wage on Iran.
It is not aggression or horrifying wars of annihilation that would ensure the future of the peoples of the region, including the citizens of Israel. Quite the opposite, our secure future depends on a comprehensive and stable peace in the Middle East, whose core would be an Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Contact:
Sharon Dolev +972-(0)52-8480543
Uri Weltman +972-(0)52-8330046
Based on Facebook messages:
http://www.facebook.com/events/443821408995593
http://www.facebook.com/events/369875243082110
http://www.facebook.com/events/382961058436947/permalink/387920461274340
In Israel, Opposition to Attacking Iran Gains Upper Hand: here.
Elizabeth Murray, Consortium News: “As Israel threatens to bomb Iran, U.S. pundits are again pontificating about the necessity of war and opining about military tactics. Left out of their frame is the certainty of mass human suffering, a reality forgotten since the days of the Vietnam War”: here.
In the latest evidence that bad news for everyone else can often be good news for military contractors, defense investors are perking up as rumors spread that Israel might attack Iran’s nuclear complex in the Autumn: here.
This video is a German nazi propaganda newsreel from 1944.
YouTube says about it:
The Fuehrer Adolf Hitler and The Duce Benito Mussolini‘s last meeting 1944, Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Göring, Rodolfo Graziani.
By Marianne Arens:
Italian right wing honours fascist war criminal
22 August 2012
On August 11, an ominous ceremony was held with great pomp in the small town of Affile, east of Rome. The ceremony commemorated the erection of a mausoleum for fascist war criminal Field Marshal Rodolfo Graziani (1882-1955) in the town’s Radimonte Park.
About 100 participants took part, led by the priest Don Ennio Innocenti Sakrarium,
I think the name of that priest is just Don Ennio Innocenti. A priest already notorious in the 1990s for pro-fascism and pseudo-history.
who consecrated the mausoleum. Alongside giant Italian tricolours hung flags from Giovine Italia, the youth organisation of the People of Freedom (PDL) of former Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi.
The mayor of Affile, Ercole Viri (PDL), declared that the monument, engraved with the words “fatherland” and “honour”, was “of national importance”. The regional transport minister, Francesco Lollobridgida (also PDL), praised Graziani: “We have always loved him.”
The construction of the mausoleum and the expansion of the park cost no less than 180 million euros—the monument alone cost €127 million—monies paid by the taxpayers of a region marked by unemployment and poverty.
Who is Rodolfo Graziani?
Graziani is a legally convicted war criminal. On behalf of the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, he commanded Italy’s wars of conquest in North and East Africa, in which nearly half a million people were killed.
Fascist Italy sought to brutally subjugate the African colonies of Cyrenaica and Tripolitania (now Libya), as well as Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) and Somaliland. Libya had already been conquered by Italy in the Italian-Turkish War of 1911.
Mussolini gave the generals a free hand for crimes of genocidal proportions. The Italian air force bombed the civilian population, dropped poison gas over oases and vital water supplies, and shot columns of refugees from the air. Italian ground forces launched raids, massacres and executions to force the surrender of Libyan resistance fighters and their leader, Omar al-Mukhtar. Graziani was the commander of the Italian troops and governor of Cyrenaica.
In the summer of 1930, Graziani resettled hundreds of thousands of inhabitants of Cyrenaica to the desert where they were exposed to the scorching sun, thirst, starvation, exhaustion and disease. Half of these people died within three years. In Fezzan, a desert region in southern Libya, he personally ordered the murder of Omar al-Mukhtar by hanging, earning the nickname “the Butcher of Fezzan”.
His crimes were compounded in Abyssinia, now Ethiopia. Italian troops invaded the country on October 3, 1935. Graziani led the invasion along with Marshal Pietro Badoglio, and in May 1936 was appointed viceroy of Italian East Africa. For the first time in modern history, Italian troops systematically employed weapons of mass destruction, including bombs and chemical weapons, against civilians.
Following persistent resistance and an assassination attempt against him, Graziani personally gave the order on February 19, 1937, for a wave of bloody repression that went down in history as “Yekatit 12,” based on the date in the Ethiopian calendar. During the pogroms, Italian troops massacred up to 30,000 civilian residents of Addis Ababa. Graziani laid waste to entire villages and dispatched large numbers of victims to concentration camps. His notorious dictum from this period was “The Duce will get Ethiopia, with or without the Ethiopians.”
During World War II, the Italian army under Graziani was defeated in North Africa by British troops, and Graziani was relieved of his duties. As the end of the war neared, he took over command of forces of the fascist “Social Republic of Salò”, Mussolini’s last territory in northern Italy. Together with the German general Kesselring, Graziani led the fascist “final battle” until forced to capitulate in 1945.
In 1948, he was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to 19 years in prison. He was released after just 2 years. Although fascism was officially banned in post-war Italy, the neo-fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI) named him its honorary chairman. He died in Rome in 1955.
This latest, macabre ceremony by prominent leaders of the PDL in Affile left many political observers dumbstruck. David Willey, Italian correspondent of the BBC, expressed his surprise to find “that the cult surrounding Fascist heroes has been kept alive in some parts of Italy, even though the fascist party was banned by the country’s post war constitution.”
In fact, the ceremony in honour of Graziani is by no means unique. Just a few months ago, the same local community erected a bronze bust of Giorgio Almirante, founder and leader of the neo-fascist post-war MSI. Almirante was editor in fascist Italy of the racist, anti-Semitic paper Difesa della Razza (Defense of the Breed [or: Race]).
In his 2010 book “Viva Mussolini!”—the rise of fascism in Berlusconi’s Italy, author Aram Mattioli cites numerous examples of the “trivialisation of fascism by centre-right circles”.
In 1994, media mogul Silvio Berlusconi became prime minister, following a wave of corruption scandals (“Tangentopoli”) involving all the republic’s major post-war parties. One of his first acts was to appoint former MSI leader Gianfranco Fini as minister. For the first time since the end of World War II, a neo-fascist minister sat in the cabinet of a European government.
Since then, the Italian right has systematically worked to rehabilitate “good fascists”, arguing that their activities in the war were on a par with those of members of the Resistance.
At the same time, research into Italy’s fascist past is systematically boycotted. The film Omar Mukhtar—Lion of the Desert (1979), starring Anthony Quinn in the title role and Rod Steiger as Mussolini, was denied a distribution licence until the visit to Italy of former Libyan leader Gaddafi in 2009. The BBC documentary “Fascist Legacy” (1989) by Ken Kirby has still not been shown on television in Italy, although an Italian version has existeed since 1992.
In his book, Mattioli concludes: “In less than twenty years, Silvio Berlusconi changed Italy so drastically that the founding fathers of the post-war republic would have hardly recognised the country.” He warns of the “political and ideological abuse of history” which “is a threat to civilised coexistence.”
How is it possible for fascist thugs in Italy to be honoured with impunity in such a way? …
The second reason is the global economic crisis and the massive programmes of cuts introduced by the Italian government aimed at destroying all the post-war social gains of working people.
Such a social counter-revolution cannot be imposed with democratic methods. Mario Monti, the unelected prime minister and former Goldman Sachs consultant, recently declared in a Spiegel interview that European governments had “a duty to educate parliament”. He was admitting that maintaining the euro and the European Union is incompatible with democracy.
Against this background, the public acknowledgment of Graziani, a man implicated in the worst war crimes of the Mussolini dictatorship, is a clear warning to the working class.
Some of Berlusconi’s political rivals have expressed their criticism over the incident. Esterino Montini, head of the Democratic Party in Lazio, asked: “Is it possible that in 2012 one simply allows, tolerates or accepts that we commemorate the fascist General and Minister Rodolfo Graziani with a park and a museum”.
And Luigi Nieri, SEL leader in Latium, wrote: “It is inconceivable for a democratic country to celebrate such persons. Even worse is the fact that this is done with the money of citizens.” The SEL (Sinistra, Ecologia e Libertà) is a successor party of the PRC, led by the governor of Puglia, Nichi Vendola.
This video is called Elephant Family – Protecting Asian elephants and their habitat.
From Wildlife Extra:
Rescued elephants seen with wild herd in India’s Manas National Park
August 2012. Two orphaned wild elephant calves that underwent rehabilitation through the Assam Forest Department and IFAW-WTI run Centre for Wildlife Rehabilitation and Conservation (CWRC) have been seen ‘socialising’ with a wild herd in Manas National Park recently.
“This is the third direct evidence of the rehabilitated elephants with wild herds this year,” said Dr Bhaskar Chaudhury, Regional Head – Northeast, WTI, who leads the project. “This is a good sign and sure-shot evidence that orphaned wild elephant calves that end up in human care can be successfully returned to the wild. They deserve to live a free life in the wild as did their mothers.”
Congo forest elephants declining from logging roads, illegal ivory: here.
