This video is about a Lord Howe Island stick insect hatching.
On Vimeo, they say about it:
In a world first, zookeeper Rohan Cleave captured the amazing hatching process of a critically endangered Lord Howe Island Stick Insect at Melbourne Zoo. The eggs incubate for over 6 months and until now the hatching process has never been witnessed. If you didn’t see it you wouldn’t believe it could fit in that egg!
After two other milestones, today my blog reached another milestone as my 300th follower subscribed.
It is natycalinescu, with a blog of poetry in Romanian and English of her own.
Welcome!
This video from Ireland is called Medic Dr Nada Dhaif who was tortured in Bahrain speaks out in Dublin 7th June 2012.
From Amnesty International:
Bahraini activist’s testimony: ‘I escaped the most oppressive regime in the world’
We’re speaking to Ali whose full name we have withheld to protect his identity; Ali is a refugee from Bahrain. He escaped the brutal crackdown in Manama (Bahrain) two weeks ago that is sponsored by Gulf oil monarchies. Ali had been sleep deprived for weeks on end as Saudi Arabian forces tortured him and his family.
Ali retold refugee counsellors, who belong to Amnesty international, how the Saudi troops were ordered to leave the room and the Bahraini Prince Nasser bin Hamad Al Khalifa entered the room to torture him personally.
His Royal Highness Prince Nasser bin Hamad Al Khalifa is also a big cheese in the Bahraini Olympic Committee. As such, one of this prince’s hobbies is to torture Bahraini athletes personally.
“It was the cruellest ordeal I have ever imagined possible and I passed out multiple times only for Khalifa, god damn his soul, to beat me back into consciousness.”
We could hardly keep in our tears while Ali told us his miraculous escape. In his own words that were spoken to us in perfect English: “A miracle befell me as Khalifa assumed I was dead, giving me a chance to crawl away into a nearby infirmary. There, a family friend facilitated my escape from the country.”
Ali’s story is only one of thousands; he recalled how a family friend, Sheikh Ali Salman, was shot in the back with rubber bullets at close range by regime forces.
Bahrain and the disputed Saudi area of Qatif, once a part of Bahrain, have been undergoing a “silent crackdown” as the world’s attention is turned away from the Gulf monarchies, who have been historically repressive and devoid of any democratic system. Stories out of Qatif have been far and few [between], mainly because of the difficulty of accessing any wounded activists or any of their family members due to Saudi security forces. We managed to smuggle a satellite phone to an activist connected to the cleric Nimer al Nimer. Sheikh Nimer had been shot and arrested by Saudi forces following a peaceful protest.
“He is in bad shape”, the activist who prefers to go by M, told us. M has been collecting evidence of the house of Saud’s brutality that he hopes will eventually be passed on to the international criminal court (ICC). “The world is silent as our blood flows like a river”, he told us with an unforgettably tense expression. His wife had been kidnapped a few days earlier, he suspects, as a reprisal for his activism. M fears that she is “being raped in a gulag as we speak”, a pattern followed by the Kingdom in order to rein in its people.
We have gathered as much information as is safe to publish at this time and it will appear in our monthly report. Activists in the Gulf region should rest assured that Amnesty International will not turn its back on their suffering and will intensify its coverage, as well as utilizing its vast networking with other NGOs and bodies such as the UNHRC, to bring them justice.
This is a video about the Polders bij Poelgeest nature reserve in the Netherlands.
After last week, I went there again today.
In a canal near the entrance, a great crested grebe and a great crested cormorant swim and dive.
Gadwall, coot, moorhen.
A common tern flying.
Teal in the southern lake.
A group of goldfinches, mostly juveniles, feeding on thistles.
In the northern lake, two lesser black-backed gulls. Black-headed gulls. Two lapwings. Two adult spoonbills.
A bit further, a juvenile tufted duck.
Near the northern canal, two Egyptian parents with two goslings about half their size.
Shoveler ducks.
A bit later, three spoonbills near the northern lake island.
On a muddy southern lake islet, a snipe resting.
Snipe photos: here.
This video from the USA is called Protest For Bahrain – Washington DC – Maryam Al-Khawaja – 4/15/2011.
From the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (Cairo, Egypt):
Egypt – the Banning of ‘Maryam Al-Khawaja’ to Enter Egypt Is Not By Our Name, the Lists of the Department of the State Security Must Be Removed
27 August 2012
Press release
ANHRI denounced what was done by the security authorities at Cairo International Airport yesterday, corresponding to August 27, of the repressive and unjustified act, of detaining and preventing the Bahraini activist “Mariam El-Khawaja“, from entering Egypt due to allegation that she is on the list of persons banned from entering, with exposure to many harassments during her presence at the airport before being deported to Copenhagen.
The security authorities at Cairo airport had detained the Bahraini activist “Mariam El-Khawaja” yesterday evening upon arrival on a flight of Egypt Air coming from Beirut, during a regular visit to Egypt on her way to South Africa and having examined the papers she was told that she is banned from entering the country in accordance with the instructions of the security and without reasons, then they asked her to leave the country upon her own discrete, instead of being deported to Bahrain, despite entering the country on a Danish passport as a Danish citizen as well as the security authorities’ attempt to sign a document (declaration) she does not know its content.
During her presence at the airport she was harassed many times by the airport security as she reported on her own “Twitter”, where someone told her, “We do not have demonstrations in Egypt” in a way of making fun of her work related to rights.
On April 2012 she was banned from entering the country before a number of civil society organizations organized a protest in front of the airport, then she was allowed to enter the country as a result of pressure that has been practiced on the authorities and that after few days before the detention and banning of the human rights activist “Nabeel Rajab” who was deported from the country after some failed attempts by the activists and lawyers to let him enter the country.
ANHRI said that “Banning her from entering the country in such policized way, brings us back to the days of the ousted era, SCAF and harms the image of the Egyptian revolution, … hostile to the Arab activists.”
ANHRI wonders “Is there any offense related to her in order to be banned from entering Egypt? Will her defending freedoms in her country be a reason to add her to the list of persons banned from entering Egypt?! These repressive practices are totally unacceptable and confirms that the approach of the state security department is still going on”.
Bahrain Rights Activist Denied Entry to Egypt: here.
Bahrain: UPDATE – Human rights defender Mr Nabeel Rajab acquitted of libel charges but remains in detention: here.
The green heron from North America, using bread as bait to catch fish, mentioned in another blog post here, is not unique.
This is a video of another green heron using bread to catch fish.
And green herons are not the only heron species doing such things. And you don’t have to go to Africa to see a black heron doing its umbrella trick either.
Translated from Vogeldagboek.nl in the Netherlands:
Grey heron uses ants as bait
Marlene van Soest sent this remarkable message on a grey heron fishing with bait.
“Our garden with a pond is just outside the center of Leiden.
When disturbed the fish hide under a rock plateau.Sometimes we feed the fish. They then go to their hideaway first and will emerge later.
During the holidays there was a grey heron, with a special way of fishing, unfortunately a successful way.
With its bill, the bird grabbed some ants who were about to fly away and dropped them into the pond.
When a few fish wanted to eat that tidbit, they were eaten themselves … “
Marlene van Soest had to span a net over the pond to save the fish.
In an earlier Vogeldagboek Dr. J. T. Lumeij (Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Utrecht University), said, in response to a question by me, that it was not known whether bitterns used bait.
“Other herons do so though, like striated herons with pieces of bread or insects.
Herons use different techniques to catch prey.”
That turned out to be very true in Leiden!
Translated from Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad of today:
Local authorities want to remove biggest election sign of the Netherlands
by Lex Boon
The Party for the Animals in any case has already won the battle for the biggest election sign of the Netherlands, with a banner of 150 square meters in a meadow along the A4 highway. At least, they thought so. The local authorities of Haarlemmermeer wants the party sign, along with another big sign next to the A4, to be removed, or else a fine of ten thousand euros per day.
The signs are in a meadow along the A4 near the exit Nieuw-Vennep near Schiphol airport. In 2010, the municipality wanted the campaign signs to be removed as well. Then Haarlemmermeer local authorities said that the signs were on land which a farmer had leased from the municipality. The lease contract was supposed not to allow placement of the signs.
This year’s campaign signs were posted on a farmer’s own land. Now the local authorities talk about zoning regulations.
Lieke Keller, campaign leader of the Party for the Animals, is surprised by the summation by the local authorities. She says to news agency Novum:
“It seems easier to place mega stalls in rural areas than mega billboards against this policy. I can not remember that this ever occurred with earlier, massively present, signs of the CDA and VVD parties on grazing land here”.
The CDA and VVD parties are in the Haarlemmermeer local government.
“Especially in campaign time, the freedom of expression can not be restricted by local regulations imposing certain conditions when public order or security is not threatened. The municipality of Haarlemmermeer with its impossible deadline and disproportionate fine disrupts a national election campaign in a dishonest way.”
The Party for the Animals opposes the removal of campaign signs. If this objection will not be accepted, then the party will ask for ‘political asylum’ for the signs in another municipality.
Yesterday, this blog got a new record of visits during one day: 673.
The week which ended yesterday also was the week with the most visits since my blog started here on WordPress in December last year.
I owe this mainly to my blog post on the dinosaur discovery in France.
Atsinganosaurus velauciensis died 75 million years ago. But after all that time, it still helped me. Thank you 
Visitor numbers to this blog on WordPress have gradually gone up. However, they are usually still below my visitor numbers when I still blogged at Blogsome. I think that is maybe because in my older blog posts, internal links still point to my Blogsome URLs which do not exist any more. And Google seems to punish sites with non-working links by putting them lower in search results.
I will only be able to solve this problem gradually, as repairing all those links in my old blog posts is a lot of work.
This music video is called Sixto Rodriguez – I Wonder.
By James Brewer in the USA:
Searching for Sugar Man: Detroit musician connects with mass audience in South Africa
27 August 2012
Directed by Malik Bendejelloul
The documentary Searching for Sugar Man uncovers musical connections spanning two continents and more than 8,000 miles. The recordings of a Detroit singer-songwriter, Sixto Diaz Rodriguez (born 1942), who virtually no one ever heard of in the US, unknowingly achieved platinum album status (by the UK standard) in faraway South Africa.
Although a documentary, the film tells a story so incredible that it feels like a work of fiction. Searching for Sugar Man has been described as a fairy tale. To its credit, Malik Bendejelloul’s work raises numerous questions, some more profound than others, about music, global politics and money.
Stephen Segerman, a white South African eventually instrumental in tracking down the artist known only by his last name, Rodriguez, opens the story. He describes Rodriguez’s music as “the soundtrack to our lives,” speaking of his generation of Afrikaner youth who came into opposition against the apartheid system and police-state strictures aimed at repressing all independent thought.
The music is compared to Bob Dylan’s, but in South Africa, according to Segerman, “Cold Fact,” Rodriguez’s first album, became so popular that it was one of three albums to be found in the record collection of virtually every white liberal household, along with the Beatles’ “Abbey Road” and Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Waters.” While his music is unmistakably influenced by Dylan, Rodriguez’s lyrics express more directly the experience of more oppressed layers of the population.
“Sugar Man,” the tune that inspired the film’s title, is a plea for drugs to escape from reality. Unlike Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man,” the tune doesn’t play up the ecstasy of a drug-induced psychedelia, but rather evokes a desperate inability in the face of a brutal world to find an “answer that makes my questions disappear.”
Another song from “Cold Fact,” entitled “This is Not a Song, It’s an Outburst: Or the Establishment Blues,” became an anthem to thousands of South African youth who defied the police and state forces. It evokes another Dylan song, “It’s All Right, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),” but again it more explicitly criticizes the existing state of society. The last line cited below is the source of the album’s title:
Garbage ain’t collected, women ain’t protected
Politicians using, people they’re abusing
The mafia’s getting bigger, like pollution in the river
And you tell me that this is where it’s atWoke up this morning with an ache in my head
I splashed on my clothes as I spilled out of bed
I opened the window to listen to the news
But all I heard was the Establishment’s BluesGun sales are soaring, housewives find life boring
Divorce the only answer smoking causes cancer
This system’s gonna fall soon, to an angry young tune
And that’s a concrete cold factAdmirers in South Africa, where his recordings had become so popular, knew nothing about Rodriguez—where he came from, what inspired his music, not even his full name. It was believed that Rodriguez had killed himself onstage during a performance. There were conflicting rumors about his death—one said he poured gasoline over himself and ignited it; another story had it that he shot himself in the head with a handgun.
On the sugarman.org web site, Segerman (who ironically was also known as “Sugarman” or just “Sugar”) explains that in 1991 a chance conversation sent him searching for the second Rodriguez album, “Coming From Reality,” which was released in South Africa, but which he had never seen or heard.
Commissioned along with another writer to produce liner notes for the first CD release of that album, “we pondered the whereabouts of Rodriguez and asked if there were ‘any Musicologist detectives out there’ willing to help find this elusive man. Up in Johannesburg a journalist called Craig Bartholomew (Strydom) read those words, contacted me, and we met a while later in Cape Town and agreed to launch a joint search to find Rodriguez.”
Eventually, through a web site set up by Bartholomew-Strydom called “The Great Rodriguez Hunt,” the South Africans made contact with the producers of “Cold Fact” in Detroit.
They also found out that Rodriguez was still alive.
The search for Rodriguez, the enigmatic singer who found South African fame: here.
Millions of American workers who lost their jobs after the 2008 Wall Street crash have failed to find work, while millions more have taken jobs at much lower wages: here.
This video from the USA is called Congress Gets Richer Since Crash.
US “Fifty Wealthiest Lawmakers” list: A Congress of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich: here.
And Congress’ Rich Get Richer. Net Worth of Lawmakers Up 25 Percent in Two Years, Analysis Demonstrates: here.
The Legal Services Corporation (LSC), the nation’s provider of civil legal assistance for the poor, announced on August 15, that funding cuts will leave it no choice this year but to lay off about 8 percent of its lawyers and support staff, close branch offices and narrow the types of services they provide. Congressional cuts and funding losses will result in the layoff of 750 employees, including 350 attorneys: here.
The 10 Percent: Gap Between Rich and Poor Grows in Germany: here.
