Kingfisher ringed in Bahrain

Fortunately, not all news from Bahrain is about the king harrasing Lebanese singers sexually, princes and princesses torturing imprisoned sports people or poetesses, peaceful demonstrators shot …

By Jem Babbington:

Common Kingfisher – Ringing at Alba Marshes (Bahrain)

17 October 2012

As mentioned in a previous post Nicole and I went to Alba Marsh at the weekend ringing without Brendan for the first time since he left to return home to Ireland. The first two birds we caught were two male Kingfishers (dark lower mandibles) which must have been chasing each other and ended up in the net.

We had seen two birds whilst setting up the nets and assumed the two we caught to be these birds. This may not have been the case however as we later caught two more birds one of which was a female (red base to lower mandible). This was a new ringing species for me and I had only seen one bird previously at the site so it was a welcome catch.

Nicole had ringed Common Kingfisher before in Turkey but it was a new site ringing bird for her as well. One comical thing about Common Kingfisher is when you come to weigh them if you place them on their backs they stay on the scales without flying off.

Kingfisher photo: here.

Related articles

• Bahrain regime keeps violating human rights (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Now, two Kingfishers. (parrotletsuk.typepad.com)
• Kingfishers flying in the rain. (parrotletsuk.typepad.com)
• Kingfisher Embroidery (waiyukkennedy.wordpress.com)

US mercenaries drunk, on drugs, in Afghanistan

About this video from the USA:

Cellphone video recorded earlier this year at an operations center of a U.S. security contractor in Kabul, Afghanistan appears to show key personnel staggeringly drunk or high on narcotics, in what former employees say was a pattern of outrageous behavior that put American lives at risk and went undetected by U.S. military officials who are supposed to oversee such contractors.

The video, provided to ABC News by two former employees, is scheduled to be broadcast in a report this evening on “ABC World News with Diane Sawyer” and “Nightline.”

Asked if a response to an attack by terrorists would have been possible during the events seen on the video, one of the former employees, Kenny Smith, told ABC News Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross, “No, sir.”

Questions posed by ABC News to the Pentagon have sparked a criminal investigation by the U.S. Army, a spokesman says.

The contractor, Virginia-based Jorge Scientific, has won almost $1 billion in U.S. government contracts.

…

The use of alcohol or illegal drugs by U.S. contractors in Afghanistan is prohibited by the military under what is known as General Order Number One.

Yet the former employees told ABC News they saw no evidence of oversight of the company by American military officials and that at least one U.S. Army major, a female, was a regular visitor to drunken parties at the facility, often using a room for sexual encounters.

The two former employees, John Melson and Kenny Smith, say the video documents allegations they have made in a lawsuit against Jorge Scientific.

“They endangered Jorge employees, the U.S. mission, and U.S. military personnel,” claims the lawsuit.

Melson and Smith worked as armed security officers for three and five months, respectively, in Kabul as part of a $47 million contract Jorge Scientific had under the U.S. Legacy Program to train the Afghan National Police in counter-insurgency efforts.

Both men say they quit the company in disgust and out of concern that their own safety was being compromised by the behavior they describe.

“It was going against everything that we were trying to do over there,” said Melson.

The video shows the security manager for the company staggering about the operations center late one evening after taking large gulps of vodka and then engaging another employee in a half-naked wrestling match.

“It was like a frat house for adults,” said Melson. “Some of them to the point where they were passing out, there’s firearms laying around, some of them still carrying the firearms on them.”

Another portion of the video shows the company’s medical officer with glassy eyes and unable to respond to a request for help after shooting up with a prescription anesthetic, Ketamine.

Told of the existence of the video, the medical officer, Kevin Carlson, admitted to ABC News that he frequently injected himself with narcotics.

“It was getting to be such a nightmare, just living in that place, I needed to get away,” said Carlson, who was among the employees dismissed by the company earlier this year.

Now living in Germany, Carlson said there was “massive drug and alcohol abuse” at that Jorge Scientific facility, involving executives, armed security personnel and himself.

“If I try to hide what I did, it doesn’t make me look very good anyway,” he said. “So I’d rather just be honest about what happened.”

The whistleblowers say the company’s senior on-site executive, Chris Sullivan, often organized and led the heavy drinking gatherings, with a loaded pistol tucked into his pants.

Smith says Sullivan pushed hard for everyone to join in the excessive drinking, and said those who would not were cowards. “He called us a bunch of pussies,” said Smith.

From KZRR 94Rock in New Mexico in the USA:

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

SHOCK VIDEO: US Security contractors get drunk and do drugs while in Afghanistan

Former employees say this pattern of outrageous behavior put American lives at risk

Cellphone video recorded earlier this year at an operations center of a U.S. security contractor in Kabul, Afghanistan appears to show key personnel staggeringly drunk or high on narcotics, in what former employees say was a pattern of outrageous behavior that put American lives at risk and went undetected by U.S. military officials who are supposed to oversee such contractors.

The video is here.

From the (conservative) Daily Mail in Britain today:

Shocking video ‘shows U.S. security contractors drunk and high in Afghanistan while on $47m contract to protect American lives against terror attacks’

Whistle blowers secretly taped key personnel injecting drugs, chugging vodka and wrestling each other

Said there is ‘no way’ staff would have been able to protect American lives from terrorist attack

The U.S. Army has launched a criminal investigation into the Virginia-based company

Use of alcohol or illegal drugs by U.S. contractors in Afghanistan is prohibited by the military, with the manual describing a ‘zero-tolerance’ policy

By Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED: 20:59 GMT, 17 October 2012 | UPDATED: 21:00 GMT, 17 October 2012

Shocking video allegedly showing U.S. Security contractors drunk, stoned and engaging in outlandish behavior while they were in Afghanistan protecting American lives has been leaked by two whistle blowers.

The footage is believed to have been recorded earlier this year at a Jorge Scientific operations center in Kabul.

So, a mercenary corporation calling itself “scientific”. Probably the scientific level of this New Zealand “defence” bureaucrat or this Israeli education bureaucrat.

It appears to show key personnel drunk or high on drugs, chugging drinks, semi-naked wrestling and injecting drugs.

The alleged behavior went undetected by U.S. military officials and put American lives at risk. The whistle blowers revealed that if a terrorist attack had been made at this time, then employees would have been too ‘out of it’ to respond.

Since U.S. Invasion 1 Million Dead From Afghan Heroin: here.

Over 120,000 Afghan women and 60,000 children admit to being addicted to drugs: here.

Related articles

• The Great Afghan Corruption Scam by Dilip Hiro (zcommunications.org)
• Video: U.S. Defense Contractors Drunk and Stoned on the Job (pogoblog.typepad.com)
• Afghan Ammo Dump (freebeacon.com)
• RT: ’1mn died’ from Afghan heroin; drug production ’40 times higher’ since NATO op (jhaines6.wordpress.com)
• We’ve Seen This Video Before: Drunk Security Contractors Gone Wild (pogoblog.typepad.com)
• Mercenaries of America? (ivoter.com)
• Leaving Afghanistan Is a $7 Billion Moving Task for U.S. (bloomberg.com)
• Afghan President Says CIA Payments to Continue – ABC News (abcnews.go.com)

Christine Lagarde, no honorary doctorate in Belgium!

From the AVAAZ site:

SIGN THIS PETITION

ENGLISH. We do not accept that the KU Leuven

the Roman Catholic university in Leuven, Belgium

awards a honorary doctorate to Christine Lagarde, head of the IMF, since she leads a huge austerity and privatization offensive, throwing tens of millions of people into misery. …

On October 29, the KU Leuven will award Christine Lagarde, head of the IMF, a honorary doctorate for “her outstanding and internationally recognised leadership during times of financial crisis”. The KU Leuven praises “her strong leadership, her exceptional legal and macroeconomic vision, and her lucid analyses”. Furthermore, she is “a shining example for our students of economics” (
http://alturl.com/jrd2p
).

This is an insult to and shows a complete lack of respect for the tens of millions of people who are thrown into misery by the IMF-led Troika. In Southern Europe, the continuous fire of austerity and privatization measures is causing a huge increase of unemployment, poverty, hunger, suicide, etc.

Moreover, this policy results in a shrinking market and, hence, in a further deepening of the crisis.

You can sign here.

Shakespeare and his times, new book

This video is called Video SparkNotes: Shakespeare’s King Lear summary.

Simon Basketter in Britain takes a look at a new book that cuts through the mysticism around Shakespeare:

Tue 16 Oct 2012

Objects that bear witness to Shakespeare’s restless times

The last thing the eyeball of Edward Oldcorne would have seen was the executioner walking to disembowel him.

That eyeball became a relic. And the crowds who watched his execution in the morning could then go to a Shakespeare play in the afternoon.

Neil MacGregor points out in his new book on William Shakespeare, “A stage is actually called a scaffold, and in Henry V the Chorus uses the word.

“So when Shakespeare stages the gouging out of Gloucester’s eyes in King Lear, it is for an audience who would have seen people being disembowelled and the severed heads on London Bridge.”

There is probably more mysticism about Shakespeare than any other writer. MacGregor, the director of the British Museum, cuts through this. He uses the method adopted in his A History Of The World In 100 Objects—looking at 20 things that give a glimpse into Shakespeare’s world.

They include an iron fork, a wooden model ship, designs for the Union flag, a clock, a pedlar’s trunk and Oldcorne’s preserved eyeball. They reveal much about the audience that watched Shakespeare’s plays, as well as about the works themselves.

Revolution

MacGregor reminds us of the grim economic and social realities of a society racked by wars and the threat of civil war and revolution. It is a society wrestling with new ideas about people’s position in the world.

Shakespeare reflected every aspect of these unsettled times. The model wooden boat is not a toy, but a religious offering—giving thanks for the safe return of James VI from his storm-hampered trip to meet his betrothed, Anne of Denmark.

The book links this to Macbeth’s witches and their power over tempests and sailing ships. Several women from North Berwick were accused of witchcraft, threatening the king’s boat. The wedding party had travelled to the castle at Elsinore—later to be the setting for Hamlet.

The book started as a BBC Radio 4 series, and occasionally it seems as if the transfer to print was a bit rushed. But it brings Shakespeare and his world to life, placing it in its historical context in a fascinating way.

MacGregor explains, “I feel I understand now why whenever there are revolutions Shakespeare is what people turn to. Because whenever a society is on the cusp, about to become something else, they find themselves in Shakespeare.”

Shakespeare’s Restless World by Neil MacGregor (Allen Lane, £25)

Egyptian woman worker interviewed

This video is called Egypt’s Workers Movement Strikes Back.

From Socialist Worker weekly in Britain:

Tue 16 Oct 2012

‘Egyptian trade unionists have broken the barrier of fear’

Trade union activist Hind Abd-al-Gawad looks at what the revolution in Egypt means to workers

I became active before the revolution, organising demonstrations and sit-ins at my workplace early in 2010.

We were fighting for better conditions, higher wages, health insurance and permanent contracts.

In Zaqaziq, where I live, as in Cairo, the revolution began with demonstrations on 25 January 2011. Activists responded to the call to take to the streets against the minister of the interior.

This was before a revolutionary situation had developed and people started to raise demands for the fall of the whole regime.

Colleagues from work joined these protests, but not organised officially from our workplace.

The fall of Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship meant bringing down a 30 year system of injustice and tyranny. The revolution came with slogans of bread, freedom and social justice, and opened the door to a hope that people could live with dignity.

But the only thing that has really changed is that we have broken the barrier of fear. We will resist any attempt in the future by the regime to control the people’s will. But the revolution’s main demands have not yet been achieved.

Activists in the independent trade unions face many challenges. The regime knows that if workers are able to form independent unions its control of the state will be under threat.

It’s putting up obstacles for workers. It rejected a law on trade union freedoms which was put before parliament for discussion and approval.

The regime has only accepted registration papers of independent unions now, under pressure. But it plans to impose a new version of the old, repressive trade union law.

They also want to organise union elections in the old state-run union federation. They aim to repress workers’ activism.

Hopes

The election of the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate Mohamed Mursi raised hopes that Egypt would be transformed. Many people hoped that a president who came from the revolution would implement the revolution’s goals.

They wanted justice for the martyrs, and social justice to save workers from the capitalist system which impoverished them.

But the situation is unstable. Prices are rising and the poor are getting poorer. Workers are being sacked and factories are shutting down. So we are seeing a workers’ uprising with increasing strikes in different sectors across the country.

The strikes are demanding a minimum and maximum wage and an end to corruption. Public transport workers, teachers, doctors and factory workers have all joined the strike wave.

International solidarity is very important—it raises our spirits in times of despair. Spreading news of our struggles around the globe puts pressure on the state.

Opinions are now divided about Mursi and his failure to deliver promises in his first 100 days. Some think we should give him longer—but others think he is only serving his own interests and those of the Muslim Brotherhood.

This is why the Brotherhood tried to take over the streets, mobilising against protests for “accountability” last Friday. They were forced to try and disrupt the protests and distract people from their performance in power.

We have seen huge rises in food prices and electricity bills. Egypt is now seeking an IMF loan. There have been crises in the supply of cooking gas and petrol. The price of a cylinder of gas is so high that Egyptians cannot afford to buy it with their low wages.

Hind Abd-al-Gawad is an activist in the Independent Union of Local Development Information Centre Workers in Egypt. She is speaking at the Unite the Resistance conference on 17 November. For more info go to menasolidaritynetwork.com

Greenshank migration and ringing

This video is called Greenshanks foraging on Norwegian mountain lake.

From the BTO Bird Ringing ‘Demog Blog’ in Britain, with photos there:

17 October 2012

A Greenshank fae Aiberdeen to Ireland to Spain

Raymond Duncan writes:

Over 250 Greenshank have been colour-ringed since 2005 in a joint Grampian/Tay RG project investigating the origins, site fidelity and onward movements of birds on autumn passage through the Ythan Estuary (near Aberdeen) and Montrose Basin, NE Scotland. Ten individuals have been resighted in Ireland and four in Spain.

Recent reports of juvenile ‘RL: Light green/blue LL: Blue/black’ have been particularly interesting not only because of the speed of travel but also because it is our first sighting that confirms some birds visit Ireland before re-orientating south to Spain and beyond for the winter. It was ringed as a juvenile on the Ythan Estuary on 11/09/12.

Dermot Breen then resighted and photographed it … 11 days later at Muckrush, Lough Corrib, County Galway, right over near the west coast of Ireland.

He prudently commented that he thought the bird was just passing through as Greenshank aren’t too common at this inland site. How correct he was. Five days later Daniel Lopez Velasco resighted and photographed it … at Ponteceso Estuary, A. Coruna, NW Spain.

Thanks very much to both for reporting these sightings. Please keep an eye out for colour-ringed Greenshank where ever you are. Holiday birders have reported colour-ringed birds in Morroco [sic; Morocco], the Nijer Delta and this regular spring visitor on the Cape Verde Islands.

“Nijer Delta” is probably a misspelling for the Niger Delta in Nigeria. I hope for the greenshanks that they won’t land there on soil polluted by Shell or other Big Oil corporations, killing them.

New threatened wildlife list

This video is about threatened wildlife.

From AFP news agency:

Hundreds of plants and animals added to ‘threatened’ list

October 17, 2012, 9:35 pm

HYDERABAD, India – An island-dwelling cockroach and a tiny snail were declared extinct Wednesday while 400 plants and animals were added to a threatened “Red List” as global environment ministers met in India.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) updated its authoritative study on the state of biodiversity on Earth, saying 20,219 species were at risk of dying out.

It added 402 species such as the Egyptian dab lizard and the Sichuan Taimen, a fresh water fish from China, to the “Red List”, which puts them in the threatened category.

Two invertebrates, a cockroach from the Seychelles last seen in 1905 and a freshwater snail called Little Flat-Top from the US state of Alabama, have moved into the extinct category since the last update of the bi-annual survey in June.

“These are species that do not occur anywhere else in the world,” the IUCN’s director of biodiversity conservation Jane Smart said at a UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) conference in Hyderabad, southern India.

The report also showed that 83 percent of Madagascar’s 192 palm species, which the poor rely on heavily for food and housing, are at risk of extinction.

They include the “Suicide Palm“, which grows up to 18 metres (60 feet) in height and dies a few months after flowering and producing seeds. Only 30 mature specimens are known to exist in the wild today.

A quarter of the world’s mammals, 13 percent of birds, 41 percent of amphibians and 33 percent of reef-building corals are at risk of extinction, according to the IUCN.

The report set alarm bells ringing as more than 70 environment ministers met for talks on halting the depletion of Earth’s natural resources, with pressure for them to match political pledges with hard cash.

There was also some happy news, however, with the IUCN saying eight species had moved out of the extinct category due to new sightings.

They include a Tanzanian tree, Erythrina schliebenii, five types of mollusc, a dwarf toad from Sri Lanka, and Holdridge’s Toad, a species from Costa Rica.

The gathering comes two years after UN countries approved a 20-point plan at a conference in Japan for reversing the worrying decline in plant and animal species that humans depend on for food, shelter and livelihoods.

Execution of the plan has been hamstrung by a lack of funding and the Hyderabad talks are being closely watched for new financial commitments.

Environmental economist Pavan Sukhdev said Wednesday that an expert panel had concluded that between $150-440 billion (115 to 330 billion euros) would be needed annually to meet the Japan goals, dubbed the Aichi biodiversity targets.

Current conservation spending is estimated at about $10 billion per year.

With a 2020 deadline, the targets include halving the rate of habitat loss, expanding conservation areas, preventing the extinction of species on the threatened list, and restoring at least 15 percent of degraded ecosystems.

“The cost of inaction is something that people have only just begun to appreciate,” UN Environment Programme executive director Achim Steiner warned.

“When you run out of water, when you run out of arable land… and your rivers run dry, when your lakes silt up, when your fisheries collapse, then it is often too late to start talking about the value of biodiversity ecosystems.”

The three-day ministers’ meeting comes at the end of two weeks of talks by senior officials from 184 parties to the conference — negotiations that delegates say have become stuck on the question of financing in a time of economic austerity.

The convention, to which 193 countries are signatories, marks its 20th anniversary this year.

It has already missed one key deadline when it failed to meet the target set to halt biodiversity loss by 2010.

The updated Red list, assessing 65,518 known species of animals and plants, lists 795 as extinct and 63 as surviving only in captivity.

German militarist propaganda film

This video from the USA is called Empire – Hollywood: The Pentagon calls the shots.

By Ernst Wolff in Germany:

Schutzengel (Guardian Angel): New film promotes German military

17 October 2012

Directed by Til Schweiger, written by Schweiger, Stephen Butchard and Paul Maurice

The Berlin premiere of the new film Schutzengel (Guardian Angel), directed by Til Schweiger, was attended not only by the usual array of celebrities, but also by a delegation from the German army [Bundeswehr] led by Defence Minister Thomas de Maizière. The presence of the military was no accident, but signified the public confirmation of a new alliance.

The main figures in the film are a 15-year-old orphan Nina (Luna Schweiger) and German Afghan war veteran Max Fischer (Til Schweiger). Nina, eyewitness to a crime, is scheduled to testify in court as a key witness. Weapons dealer Backer (Heiner Lauterbach) is out to prevent her appearance in court at all costs, while Max, who has left the army and now works as a bodyguard, is commissioned to protect Nina.

Max and Nina first flee to Max’s best friend Rudi (Moritz Bleibtreu), severely injured in Afghanistan, and then to his ex-girl-friend Sara (Karoline Schuch), who is naturally still in love with him. After innumerable shootouts that leave most of the leading figures either dead or dying, the film ends with Backer blown up by a car bomb and Fischer resigning from his job.

Schutzengel, which shot to the top of the German box office in its first weekend, is primarily distinguished by its cynicism and clichéd story telling. Every aspect of the plot is predictable, the protagonists are caricatures and the dialogue is poor. Seeking to win the empathy of the viewer, the film repeatedly slides into embarrassing triviality. Director Schweiger, a leading German actor, has sought so slavishly to copy his American idols that the drama repeatedly descends into unintentional comedy.

The film’s website features a promotional video recorded in Mazar-I-Sharif, a German military base in Afghanistan, where soldiers were able to attend four pre-premieres. Schweiger and his film crew were flown in at the expense of the Bundeswehr. The video shows German soldiers praising Schweiger as “one of us” and describing Schutzengel as “moving”, “very credible” and a reflection of “our reality”.

The film, shot in Berlin and Brandenburg, focuses exclusively on war and violence. War is presented as an integral part of human society, everyday life as a setting for brutal excesses and a battleground where those who survive are skilled in the business of professional killing. Schutzengel never probes the causes of war. The global economic crisis and its consequences are entirely absent.

The German military is pursuing clear political objectives by selecting Schweiger’s film as a new advertising medium. Following its recent transformation from a conscript army to a professional army, the recruitment of volunteers in Germany is progressing slower than expected. The recent decision of the German Constitutional Court to legalize military interventions within the country in “exceptional situations of catastrophic proportions” has met with considerable criticism.

Two world wars and the terrors of fascism are still deeply engraved in the consciousness of the German population. The war crime committed in the Afghan town of Kunduz where more than 140 people, mostly civilians, were killed at the command of a German army colonel in 2009 is not forgotten. Polls clearly indicate that the overwhelming majority of Germans oppose not only the war in Afghanistan, but any military action abroad.

Thus the Bundeswehr now turns to a show business ally with two important assets: first, Schweiger, whose career as an actor began in the popular comedy Manta, Manta (1991), has for several years appealed to a large, predominantly youthful audience. As producer and director of a number of romantic comedies, he has access to an important target group for the Bundeswehr.

Second, Schweiger has moved increasingly to the right politically in recent years. His anti-democratic views have been common knowledge in film circles for some time. Even though his films are publicly funded by millions of euros (Guardian Angel received more than 3 million), he has excluded most media representatives from previews of his movies, restricting access to those journalists he knows will report positively about him.

In public, Schweiger has established himself as a right-wing advocate of law and order polices primarily through appearances on television talk shows. On an NDR (state-run northern German television) talk show he summed up his view of the persecution of Jews in the Third Reich: “Those [Jews] who were not smart enough to beat it got killed, the others who were smart enough took off and enriched the American film business”.

This mockery of millions of Jewish concentration camp victims has not prevented the NDR from engaging Schweiger as leading actor in four episodes of the popular Tatort television series, guaranteeing him an audience of millions. The methods he will employ as a Hamburg police officer were revealed by his future director and Lethal Weapons fan Christian Alvart, who told the media: “Til Schweiger won’t knock at a door, he’ll break it down”.

Having been slammed by serious critics, Schweiger likes to present himself to the public as a lone wolf, swimming against the current. In reality, he is riding a wave of cheap populism and enjoys the support of powerful and financially strong partners. The Bild newspaper and the Springer Media Group have promoted his films and supported him in his new alliance with the Bundeswehr by publishing his “Afghanistan-diary” in which Schweiger describes his impressions “exclusively for Bild”.

The soldiers Schweiger glorifies in his diary, however, are far removed from the “heroes” he portrays on screen. They are the victims of a government policy that, under a phony “humanitarian” pretext, sends them into a war driven by economic and political interests and in which they are used as tools for the suppression of the Afghan population.

This contradiction between the objective role of German soldiers at war and their subjective attitude towards it could be the basis for a realistic and timely film about the Bundeswehr mission in Afghanistan. However, Schweiger has not the least interest in such an approach. He prefers to idealize a military that sends young people to the killing fields of Afghanistan and is consciously preparing to intervene against resistance by the German working population to the attacks on its living conditions.

Related articles

• German government promotes militarism (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Syria: German Army soon part of War of Aggression – Syria: German Bundeswehr gives Islamists and terrorists covering fire. (syrianews.cc)
• Zero Dark Thirty’s Torture Lie (readersupportednews.org)

Iraqi children’s birth defects

This video is called DEPLETED URANIUM from US, UK munitions ’cause birth defects in Iraq‘.

By Fred Mazelis in the USA:

New evidence that US invasion has produced epidemic of birth defects in Iraq

17 October 2012

A new study confirms, not for the first time, the horrific price paid by the Iraqi people for the US-led invasion of their country in 2003, and the 2004 bombing campaign and assaults on the city of Fallujah in particular.

Eight years after the attacks on Fallujah, a majority-Sunni city about 40 miles west of Baghdad where the resistance to the invasion had been tenacious, the consequences of this collective punishment, illegal under international law, are continuing to unfold.

A study published in the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology focuses on an extraordinary epidemic of congenital birth defects in Iraqi cities over the past decade, particularly in Fallujah and in the southern city of Basra, assaulted by British troops in 2003.

This study has been released only one month before a broader survey is due to be released by the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO report has looked at nine areas in Iraq and is also expected to show increases in birth defects.

As summarized in the British newspaper The Independent, the first study, entitled “Metal Contamination and the Epidemic of Congenital Birth Defects in Iraqi Cities” and published online on September 16, pinpoints statistics for Fallujah and Basra that add up to a public health crisis that is as serious as any other around the world.

More than 50 percent of all births surveyed in Fallujah were born with a birth defect between 2007 and 2010, the newspaper explains. In the 1990s, Falllujah had a birth defect rate of 2 percent. This rose to about 10 percent in the early years of the twenty-first century, and then exploded in the years following the siege of Fallujah in 2004.

The data on miscarriages was also significant. Before the 2004 attacks on Fallujah, both in April and in November-December of that year, about 10 percent of pregnancies ended in miscarriage. This rose to a rate of 45 percent in the two years after the bombings. It fell as the most drastic attacks subsided, but the rate still remained high, at one in six pregnancies.

In Basra, attacked by British troops as part of the US-led invasion, the data is also compelling. Al Basrah Maternity Hospital recorded birth defects in just 1.3 out of 1,000 babies born a decade before the 2003 assault. This had risen to 20 out of 1,000, a 17-fold increase that is very likely attributable to the decade-long US-led sanctions campaign. In the past seven years, the rate of birth defects has risen another 60 percent, to 37 out of 1,000 births.

One of the authors of the article, Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, an environmental toxicologist at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health, spoke to The Independent about the study’s significance. The birth defects are almost certainly related to metal exposure as a result of bombs and bullets used over the past two decades. Levels of lead were five times higher in the hair of children with birth defects in Fallujah than in other children, and mercury levels were six times higher.

Dr. Savabieasfahani said there is a “footprint of metal in the population” and there is “compelling evidence linking the staggering increases in Iraqi birth defects to neuro-toxic metal contamination following the repeated bombardments of Iraqi cities.”

“In utero exposure to pollutants can drastically change the outcome of an otherwise normal pregnancy,” the doctor continued. “The metal levels we see in the Fallujah children with birth defects clearly indicates that metals were involved in the manifestation of birth defects in these children. The massive and repeated bombardment of these cities is clearly implicated here.” She added that the data was like an underestimate, since parents often hide children with birth defects.

A professor of environmental toxicology at Leeds University in Britain, Alastair Hay, told The Independent that the figures in the study were “absolutely extraordinary” and that “people here would be worried if there was a five or 10 percent increase [in birth defects]. Professor Hay said that another factor, in addition to the increase in metal exposure, was “the extreme stress people are under in that period; we know this can cause major physiological changes.”

Official spokesmen for both the US Defense Department and the British government responded to the latest findings with statements that add up to little more than evasion and double talk. The Pentagon claimed, “We are not aware of any official reports indicating an increase in birth defects in Al Basrah or Fallujah that may be related to exposure to the metals contained in munitions used by the US or coalition partners. We always take very seriously public health concerns about any population living in a combat theatre.”

Iraq: ten years, a million lives and trillions of dollars later: here.

Lu Lobello, Iraq War Veteran, Tracks Down Kachadoorian Family And Apologizes For Shooting Incident In 2003: here.

Related articles

• Horrors of war: US, UK munitions ’cause birth defects in Iraq’ (rt.com)
• RT @BeyondAid: Fallujah has seen a five-fold increase (and rising) in birth defects since US siege during Iraq War http://t.co/VBCFplbV (independent.co.uk)
• Iraq records huge rise in birth defects, New study links increase with military action by Western forces (refreshingnews99.blogspot.in)
• Invasion of Iraq causes epidemic of birth defects (climateandcapitalism.com)
• Q&A: Severe Birth Defects Soar in Post-War Iraq (ipsnews.net)
• Horrors of war: US, UK munitions ’cause birth defects in Iraq’ (alethonews.wordpress.com)

Ant-eating dinosaurs?

From Dinosaur Tracking blog:

October 17, 2012

Did Dinosaurs Eat Ants?

If there’s one group of dinosaurs that needs better PR, it’s alvarezsaurs. They’re among the strangest dinosaurs to have ever evolved, yet outside of dinosaur die-hards, few people have ever heard of them. They’re not one of those classic forms–the sauropods, tyrannosaurs, stegosaurs, or ceratopsids–that have been cherished for the past century. Paleontologists only recently began to uncover their bones. Alvarezsaurus itself was named in 1991, but it and its close relatives didn’t quite get swept up in the same wave of dinomania as their other Mesozoic cousins.

Alvarezsaurs weren’t big, toothy, or menacing. That’s part of makes them so special. Alvarezsaurus, Mononykus and their relatives from Cretaceous Asia, South America and North America were small dinosaurs–these feathered dinos ranged from the size of a pigeon to about the size of a turkey. In fact, these dinosaurs were so avian in nature that there was once a debate about whether alvarezsaurs were non-avian dinosaurs or birds that had lost the ability to fly. Since those early debates, numerous studies have confirmed that they were non-avian dinosaurs that were closely related to the strange therizinosaurs and ostrich-like ornithomimosaurs.

But the strangest thing of all is the mystery of what alvarezsaurs ate.

Despite being short, alvarezsaur arms weren’t wimpy. Not at all. Alvarezsaur forelimbs were very stout and included one robust finger tipped in a big claw. (Among these dinosaurs, the total number and development of the fingers varied, but they’re connected by having one finger that was bigger than the others.) In contrast, these dinos often had a reduced number of very small teeth.

Paleontologists thought they saw a connection between these traits and a life feeding on social insects. Mammals such as pangolins and ant-eaters also have stout, heavy-clawed arms and are toothless–a functional pairing that goes with a life of tearing into ant and termite nests to slurp up the scurrying insects in their nests.

Could alvarezsaurs have done the same? So far, it’s the most popular hypothesis for their bizarre nature. In a 2005 paper, paleontologist Phil Senter proposed that Mononykus would have been capable of the kind of scratch-digging needed to rip open social insect nests. Then, in 2008, Nicholas Longrich and Philip Currie described the alvarezsaur Albertonykus in deposits that also contained traces of Cretaceous termites. Alvarezsaurs seemed to have the right equipment and live at the right time to be social insect predators.

But we don’t really know. No one has published any direct evidence that Albertonykus or any other alvarezsaur ate ants or termites. The hypothesis is certainly a reasonable one, but we still need a test of the idea. Fossil feces may eventually hold the answer.

If paleontologists eventually uncover dinosaur dung of appropriate size that contains ants or termites and comes from a habitat shared by alvarezsaurs, that discovery would strengthen the ant-eating hypothesis. A cololite would be even better. While coprolites are petrified feces that have already been excreted, cololites are fossil poop preserved inside the prehistoric creature’s body prior to expulsion. If paleontologists found an alvarezsaur with a cololite containing termites, that would be direct evidence that these dinosaurs truly did snarf down hordes of insects. For now, though, we can only hope that some lucky fossil hunter makes such a discovery.