Tulip tree new discoveries

This is a tulip tree video from the USA.

From the BBC:

16 April 2013 Last updated at 07:10 GMT

Tulip tree‘s genome is ‘molecular fossil’

By Mark Kinver, Environment reporter, BBC News

The “extraordinary level of conservation” of genetic data in the tulip tree remains largely unchanged since the dinosaurs, a study suggests.

The species’ genomic change is about 2,000 times slower than in humans, making it a “molecular fossil”, a team of US researchers said.

The new information has affected our understanding of flowering plants‘ evolution, they added.

The findings have been published in the open access journal BMC Biology.

The team from the universities of Indiana and Arkansas sequenced the mitochondrial genome of the species (Liriodendron tulipifera), only to discover it had one of the slowest silent mutation rates (a process that does not affect gene function).

They added that the sequencing showed that many of the genes that had been lost during 200 million years of flowering plants’ (angiosperms) evolution had been preserved.

“Based on this, it appears that the genome has been more-or-less frozen in time for millions and millions of years,” explained co-author Prof Jeffrey Palmer.

Prehistoric powerhouses

Mitochondria are found within organisms’ cells and their job is to generate power. They do this by converting food stuffs into chemical energy that the organism uses to function.

In an accompanying commentary, Prof Ian Small from the University of Western Australia – who was not involved in the research – said the vast variations between the genetic data of angiosperms gleaned from mitochondrial genome sequencing made “untangling their evolutionary histories difficult”.

However, he added, the paper by Prof Palmer et al turned out to be ” an extremely useful window into the past”.

Prof Small said the species was a member of an “early branching lineage” that was distinct from other groups that housed most of the world’s crop plants, which had been the target of most sequencing efforts around the globe.

As a result of the slow mutation rate, he explained: “This ‘fossilised’ genome gives us some important clues as to what mitochondrial looked like (and how they functioned) as flowering plants evolved and took over the land in the time of the dinosaurs.”

He added that the increasing cost-effectiveness of the sequencing process was making it easier to choose strategically informative species rather than focusing on economically important ones, ie food crops.

He explained that data gaps remained: “The coverage of early diverging plants is still from optimal, with many large and important groups still badly sampled – for example, gymnosperms and ferns.”

He concluded: “I look forward to being able to analyse the next molecular ‘fossil’ to roll off the sequencing machines.”

In detail: Tulip tree

Scientific name: Liriodendron tulipifera
Average height: 20m-30m
Native to the eastern US, and is considered to be one of the region’s tallest native trees
Generally flowers in mid-summer
Distinctive-shaped leaves, which are said to resemble dinosaur footprints
Popular parkland species, as its flowers look similar to tulips
Seeds are wind dispersed, often travelling up to seven times the distance of the mother tree
The timber has a reputation of being resistant to termites

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United States NASA space education threatened

This video is called Great NASA Images – Deep Space Part 1.

By Bryan Dyne in the USA:

US sequester cuts force NASA to halt outreach programs

28 March 2013

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has announced an immediate halt and review of all public outreach programs and educational activities and most likely will cancel them altogether. The memo released by NASA states this is the direct result of $900 million in budget cuts caused by the sequestration—the mechanism put in place by the Obama administration and the Republican-controlled Congress to slash federal spending.

It is unclear at the time of this writing how many jobs will be lost as a result of these cuts.

In terms of scope, the memo goes on to specify that the programs affected include those “intended to communicate, connect with, and engage a wide and diverse set of audiences to raise awareness and involvement in NASA, its goals, missions and programs, and to develop an appreciation for, exposure to, and involvement in STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics]”.

NASA maintains dozens of such programs, ranging from programs directed at children as young as five years old through college internship programs to promote a study of the sciences.

These cuts come alongside a general slashing of funds to publicly funded basic research. The National Institutes of Health was cut by $2.52 billion, the National Science Foundation lost $586 million and Department of Energy research was dropped by $400 million. All in all, research spending took an 8 percent cut.

NASA was founded under the Eisenhower administration of the late 1950s, a political response to the success of the Soviet Union in its launching of history’s first satellite in 1957. It was also done to coordinate the efforts of disparate organizations that were part of the already existing US space programs. NASA’s first space mission was Explorer 1, launched on January 31, 1958.

The cutting of NASA’s budget is less than two years after the shuttle program ended in August 2011. It is a continuation of the policy decisions made during the Bush administration and continued under Obama. It also continues the steady decline of NASA’s budget. It is now less than half a percent of the federal budget, half as much as it was 20 years ago and more than eight times less than what it was during the height of the Apollo program.

Significantly, cutting public outreach programs is primarily directed at NASA employees, who run those events. Contractors, on the other hand, will still have NASA money allocated to them. Just last August, NASA awarded contracts totaling more than $1 billion as part of its Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) initiative to Boeing, SpaceX, and others. SpaceX, owned by billionaire co-founder of PayPal Elon Musk, already received a $1.6 billion contract from NASA in December 2008 to develop a replacement to NASA’s Space Shuttle.

Contracting out work combined with cutting NASA’s budget goes along with the drive by the Obama administration to privatize public resources. No longer will the public benefit from the advances generated by space flight, of which there are many. In fiscal year 2003, the economies of the 50 states were boosted by more than $12.5 billion as a result of NASA research. There are tens of thousands of non-space applications of technologies generated by the space program.

The rationale for the necessity of these cuts at NASA, as is the case with cuts to other “unnecessary” federal programs, is that “there is no money.” Left out of this reasoning by agency bureaucrats appointed by the Obama administration as well as the corporate media is that the banks and major financial institutions are being bailed out to the tune of $85 billion a month.

These cuts and re-appropriations are part and parcel of those hitting other governmental agencies, which assist the working class in one way or another. Head Start, a program funded by the US Department of Health and Human Services designed to address the educational and nutritional needs of children in poverty under the age of five, will see a loss of 70,000 children from eligibility as a result of the budget sequestration. Cuts to the US Postal Service will stop Saturday mail delivery this August.

Other programs to be cut are the US Department of Education’s Title I program, which provides assistance from the federal government to local school districts in areas of rampant poverty. It will lead to the elimination of an estimated 10,000 teachers. Parents of some 1,300 children with severe mental disorders will see their federal support for treatment lost as the Children Mental Health Services program sees its budget slashed.

Ending public outreach programs is a continuation of the ongoing destruction by the ruling elite of the free dissemination of scientific knowledge. It speaks to the decline of American capitalism and the socially regressive character of the profit system on a world scale.

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Hunger in the USA, new documentary film

By James Brewer in the USA:

A Place At The Table: A damning picture of hunger, with feeble conclusions

27 March 2013

The documentary A Place At The Table deals with the shameful hunger crisis in America. The number of people affected by food insecurity—not knowing where one’s next meal is coming from—has increased from 20 million Americans in the 1980s to 60 million today.

From the opening scenes in the remote village of Collbran, Colorado (population 708), to vignettes of life in rural Mississippi and urban North Philadelphia, the documentary crews effectively present the struggle of people to live normal lives while dominated on a daily basis by the inability to get and maintain a regular source of healthy food.

Rosie, a fifth grader in Collbran, complains about being hungry and not being able to concentrate in class. Rosie’s grandmother Dawn and her mother Trish—who explains that her paycheck amounts to only $120 every two weeks—describe what it is like trying to keep the family fed.

Barbie Izquierdo, from North Philadelphia, talks about her life as a young, unemployed single mother trying to keep her two children nourished. She is on food assistance. Because processed food was her exclusive diet as a child, she refuses to feed it to her children, which makes her job of providing them a proper diet much harder. Barbie expres ses herself eloquently about the circumstances she and her children endure. A Place At The Table is a contradictory work. On the one hand, the film truthfully portrays the conditions of widespread layers of the population. On the other, the filmmakers’ political agenda infects and even contradicts the story the film tells.

A Place At The Table

Advertised as “From the people who brought you [the 2008 documentary] Food, Inc .,” the film is produced by Participant Media, the company created by multibillionaire and philanthropist Jeffrey Skoll, originally president of the Internet auction firm eBay. Participant Media’s stated aim is “to create entertainment that inspires and accelerates social change.”

One of the company’s notable productions is Waiting for ‘Superman’ (2010), ostensibly a documentary, but, in reality, a right-wing attack on public education. The unwaveringly pro-Obama outlook of the production company weighs heavily on the narrative in A Place At The Table.

A Place At The Table

The film is directed by Lori Silverbush, wife of reality TV’s Top Chef star Tom Colicchio (who also executive produces and stars in the film) and Kristi Jacobsen.

No doubt, many of those involved have good intentions, desiring to turn the attention of the public to the widespread hunger and misery that exist in American society.

Impressive cinematography and production values are brought to bear. Original music by T-Bone Burnett and the pop duo The Civil Wars provides the soundtrack. A certain depth is provided by the many food and nutrition experts who are featured.

Participant Media released the documentary on March 1 as a multimedia event. It is available online through iTunes, Amazon and OnDemand, as well as on DVD, and it is also showing in theaters.

The first expert introduced in A Place at the Table is Raj Patel, the author of several nutrition policy-related books, including Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System. He explains that hunger and obesity, seemingly mutually exclusive, are closely related.

The state of Mississippi, for example, has the highest rates of both food insecurity and obesity in the US. Rural towns in the state have only small grocery stores that don’t get fruits and vegetables because they are serviced on the principle of “maximum delivery, minimum cost.”

A Place At The Table

Such areas are called “food deserts,” and they are not restricted to rural parts of the US. In North Philadelphia, Barbie is shown making a trek on multiple buses, spending hours to get healthy food for her family.

The experts featured in A Place At The Table provide important information about the food crisis, including how the government gives huge subsidies to corporate farms to grow the wrong crops and how the food system is geared toward producing the most profitable foods—corn, soybeans and wheat—rather than healthier foods.

Many of the film’s commentators, including screen actor Jeff Bridges, make the point that the existence of hunger on such a scale in a land of great wealth is unacceptable. This is unquestionable, but the argument tends to be framed in nationalistic, patriotic terms.

It is not accidental, for instance, that Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack is featured speaking before Congress on the issue of obesity. He points out that only 25 percent of young people between the ages of 19 and 24 are eligible for military service because of the prevalence of obesity.

In this way, the filmmakers adapt themselves to the right-wing politics of the entire political establishment. Why can’t a humanitarian appeal be made without couching it in terms of national security?

The political argument in A Place at the Table is its weakest, most retrograde element. The filmmakers assert that as a result of a 1968 CBS documentary, “Hunger in America,” the issue was put “on the national agenda.” And that by the late 1970s, hunger in America was almost eliminated because “regular Americans rose up and demanded a public assistance safety net.” A banner text says, “WE CAN DO IT AGAIN.”

This is a falsification of history. If both political parties in the 1960s and early 1970s, including the administration of Richard Nixon, were obliged to make concessions to the population, it was because of the mass political struggles that had erupted and the threat of further social upheaval. Furthermore, American capitalism was still in a position at the time to allocate funds for nutrition and other social programs. The opposite is the case today. The entire political establishment—including the Democratic Party—is committed to austerity and “fiscal responsibility,” and united in its determination to destroy what little remains of the social safety net.

It is ironic that A Place At The Table was released the same day as the sequester cuts took effect.

While the documentary makes numerous references to the US as a prosperous country, it does not refer once to the continual impoverishment of wide layers of the population, at the same time as the upper echelons accumulate unprecedented amounts of wealth. The conditions of social inequality are directly connected to the growth of hunger.

While the various experts in the film make generally correct points about the system of food production and distribution, none of the widely available—and revealing—statistics on unemployment, foreclosures, homelessness and poverty are introduced.

For the broad population, it becomes increasingly self-evident that America functions as a society of the rich, by the rich and for the rich. The creators of A Place At The Table decided that reference to these real social divisions had to be avoided.

Related articles

• Movie review: Colorado town gets a close-up in hunger documentary “A Place at the Table” (denverpost.com)
• Documentary ‘A Place At The Table’ Is A Call To Action On Hunger (npr.org)
• Food documentary “A Place at the Table” examines hunger in Colorado, nation (denverpost.com)
• With 50 Million Hungry in U.S., New Film Calls for ‘A Place at the Table’ (pbs.org)
• Jonathan Kim: ReThink Review: A Place at the Table – Hungry In the Land of the Fat (huffingtonpost.com)
• A Place at the Table Opens in Theaters March 1 (thegeniusway.me)
• What’s it like to go to school hungry? (blogs.greatschools.org)
• ‘A Place at the Table’ review: Compelling (sfgate.com)
• Eduardo Navas: A Place at the Table: It’s Not a Film, But a Transmedia Project (huffingtonpost.com)
• Table Talk with Tom Colicchio, Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush (Feature) (popmatters.com)

Karl Marx and economic crisis today, from TIME magazine

This video from Brazil says about itself:

[Sergio Silva] The Surplus Value Samba

This video is in Portuguese and has already been uploaded to YouTube twice. The original version was first uploaded in October 05, 2006 as [Sergio Silva] O samba da mais-valia. Then, French subtitles were added and uploaded in March 19, 2008 as [Sergio Silva] La Samba de la Plus-value. However, to better understand the thought of Marx, the world clamoured for English subtitles and here they are at last. The credits of that spectacular work are at the end of the video. We can see the world as change now. At least the WWW world. Revolution and Carnival are finally together.

From TIME magazine in the USA:

World Finance

Marx’s Revenge: How Class Struggle Is Shaping the World

By Michael Schuman

March 25, 2013

Karl Marx was supposed to be dead and buried. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and China’s Great Leap Forward into capitalism, communism faded into the quaint backdrop of James Bond movies or the deviant mantra of Kim Jong Un. The class conflict that Marx believed determined the course of history seemed to melt away in a prosperous era of free trade and free enterprise. The far-reaching power of globalization, linking the most remote corners of the planet in lucrative bonds of finance, outsourcing and “borderless” manufacturing, offered everybody from Silicon Valley tech gurus to Chinese farm girls ample opportunities to get rich. Asia in the latter decades of the 20th century witnessed perhaps the most remarkable record of poverty alleviation in human history — all thanks to the very capitalist tools of trade, entrepreneurship and foreign investment. Capitalism appeared to be fulfilling its promise — to uplift everyone to new heights of wealth and welfare.

Or so we thought. With the global economy in a protracted crisis, and workers around the world burdened by joblessness, debt and stagnant incomes, Marx’s biting critique of capitalism — that the system is inherently unjust and self-destructive — cannot be so easily dismissed. Marx theorized that the capitalist system would inevitably impoverish the masses as the world’s wealth became concentrated in the hands of a greedy few, causing economic crises and heightened conflict between the rich and working classes. “Accumulation of wealth at one pole is at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole,” Marx wrote.

A growing dossier of evidence suggests that he may have been right. It is sadly all too easy to find statistics that show the rich are getting richer while the middle class and poor are not. A September study from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) in Washington noted that the median annual earnings of a full-time, male worker in the U.S. in 2011, at $48,202, were smaller than in 1973. Between 1983 and 2010, 74% of the gains in wealth in the U.S. went to the richest 5%, while the bottom 60% suffered a decline, the EPI calculated. No wonder some have given the 19th century German philosopher a second look. In China, the Marxist country that turned its back on Marx, Yu Rongjun was inspired by world events to pen a musical based on Marx’s classic Das Kapital. “You can find reality matches what is described in the book,” says the playwright.

… But the consequence of this widening inequality is just what Marx had predicted: class struggle is back. Workers of the world are growing angrier and demanding their fair share of the global economy. From the floor of the U.S. Congress to the streets of Athens to the assembly lines of southern China, political and economic events are being shaped by escalating tensions between capital and labor to a degree unseen since the communist revolutions of the 20th century. How this struggle plays out will influence the direction of global economic policy, the future of the welfare state, political stability in China, and who governs from Washington to Rome. What would Marx say today? “Some variation of: ‘I told you so,’” says Richard Wolff, a Marxist economist at the New School in New York. “The income gap is producing a level of tension that I have not seen in my lifetime.”

Tensions between economic classes in the U.S. are clearly on the rise. Society has been perceived as split between the “99%” (the regular folk, struggling to get by) and the “1%” (the connected and privileged superrich getting richer every day). In a Pew Research Center poll released last year, two-thirds of the respondents believed the U.S. suffered from “strong” or “very strong” conflict between rich and poor, a significant 19-percentage-point increase from 2009, ranking it as the No. 1 division in society.

The heightened conflict has dominated American politics. The partisan battle over how to fix the nation’s budget deficit has been, to a great degree, a class struggle. Whenever President Barack Obama talks of raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans to close the budget gap, conservatives scream he is launching a “class war” against the affluent. Yet the Republicans are engaged in some class struggle of their own. The GOP’s plan for fiscal health effectively hoists the burden of adjustment onto the middle and poorer economic classes through cuts to social services. Obama based a big part of his re-election campaign on characterizing the Republicans as insensitive to the working classes. GOP nominee Mitt Romney, the President charged, had only a “one-point plan” for the U.S. economy — “to make sure that folks at the top play by a different set of rules.”

Amid the rhetoric, though, there are signs that this new American classism has shifted the debate over the nation’s economic policy. Trickle-down economics, which insists that the success of the 1% will benefit the 99%, has come under heavy scrutiny. David Madland, a director at the Center for American Progress, a Washington-based think tank, believes that the 2012 presidential campaign has brought about a renewed focus on rebuilding the middle class, and a search for a different economic agenda to achieve that goal. “The whole way of thinking about the economy is being turned on its head,” he says. “I sense a fundamental shift taking place.”

The ferocity of the new class struggle is even more pronounced in France. Last May, as the pain of the financial crisis and budget cuts made the rich-poor divide starker to many ordinary citizens, they voted in the Socialist Party’s François Hollande, who had once proclaimed: “I don’t like the rich.” He has proved true to his word. Key to his victory was a campaign pledge to extract more from the wealthy to maintain France’s welfare state. To avoid the drastic spending cuts other policymakers in Europe have instituted to close yawning budget deficits, Hollande planned to hike the income tax rate to as high as 75%. Though that idea got shot down by the country’s Constitutional Council, Hollande is scheming ways to introduce a similar measure. At the same time, Hollande has tilted government back toward the common man. He reversed an unpopular decision by his predecessor to increase France’s retirement age by lowering it back down to the original 60 for some workers. Many in France want Hollande to go even further. “Hollande’s tax proposal has to be the first step in the government acknowledging capitalism in its current form has become so unfair and dysfunctional it risks imploding without deep reform,” says Charlotte Boulanger, a development official for NGOs.

His tactics, however, are sparking a backlash from the capitalist class. …

Resentment is reaching a boiling point in China’s factory towns. “People from the outside see our lives as very bountiful, but the real life in the factory is very different,” says factory worker Peng Ming in the southern industrial enclave of Shenzhen. Facing long hours, rising costs, indifferent managers and often late pay, workers are beginning to sound like true proletariat. “The way the rich get money is through exploiting the workers,” says Guan Guohau, another Shenzhen factory employee. “Communism is what we are looking forward to.” Unless the government takes greater action to improve their welfare, they say, the laborers will become more and more willing to take action themselves. “Workers will organize more,” Peng predicts. “All the workers should be united.”

…

Marx would have predicted just such an outcome. As the proletariat woke to their common class interests, they’d overthrow the unjust capitalist system and replace it with a new, socialist wonderland. Communists “openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions,” Marx wrote. “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.” There are signs that the world’s laborers are increasingly impatient with their feeble prospects. Tens of thousands have taken to the streets of cities like Madrid and Athens, protesting stratospheric unemployment and the austerity measures that are making matters even worse.

So far, though, Marx’s revolution has yet to materialize. … Despite such calls, however, current economic policy continues to fuel class tensions. … Debt-burdened governments in Europe have slashed welfare programs even as joblessness has risen and growth sagged. In most cases, the solution chosen to repair capitalism has been more capitalism. Policymakers in Rome, Madrid and Athens are being pressured by bondholders to dismantle protection for workers and further deregulate domestic markets. Owen Jones, the British author of Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class, calls this “a class war from above.”

There are few to stand in the way. The emergence of a global labor market has defanged unions throughout the developed world. …

That leaves open a scary possibility: that Marx not only diagnosed capitalism’s flaws but also the outcome of those flaws. If policymakers don’t discover new methods of ensuring fair economic opportunity, the workers of the world may just unite. Marx may yet have his revenge.

— With reporting by Bruce Crumley / Paris; Chengcheng Jiang / Beijing; Shan-shan Wang / Shenzhen

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No NATO arms for Syrian war, the people say

This video is called ‘Al-Qaeda “army” presence in Syria much higher than officials say’.

From daily The Guardian in Britain of Friday 22 March 2013:

Americans and Britons are deeply sceptical about the idea of arming Syria’s rebels and the possibility of sending western troops into the country, according to a bilateral poll.

Despite the escalating civil war, growing casualty figures and a rising tide of refugees flooding out of Syria, there is little appetite for more robust action than the current approach of providing “non-lethal support” to the rebels, the YouGov poll found.

There have been increasing demands on Capitol Hill to arm the opponents of the Assad regime or intervene more directly, and this week Barack Obama toughened his own rhetoric amid contested claims about Damascus using chemical weapons. But the new binational survey – produced for YouGov-Cambridge, the polling company’s academic thinktank – finds US voters opposed to the idea of supplying munitions by a 29-point margin: 45% against to 16% in favour.

Identical questions were posed in Britain, where David Cameron has, with the French president, François Hollande, recently tried and failed to persuade the EU to lift its arms embargo. But the British public emerges as even more strongly against: 57% oppose arming the rebels and 16% are in favour.

In both the UK and the US, opposition to arming the rebels is marked on the right as well as the left of the political spectrum: 52% of American Republicans and 63% of British Conservatives are against supplying arms.

Any thought of sending western troops into Syria would also be badly received – especially in the UK. By a 32-point margin (55%-23%) Britons reject the idea of sending in UK and allied troops to protect civilians. The anti-intervention lead rises to 59 points (68%-9%) if the aim were “overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad“.

In the US too, proposals to put boots on the ground would run up against public opinion. Americans lean 33%-27% against sending in troops “to protect civilians”, and are more decisively against directly enforcing regime change, splitting 42%-16% against. Although more Republicans (22%) than Democrats (14%) would be prepared to support the latter, the partisan difference are not as great might have expected given the continuing divisions over the war to topple Saddam Hussein.

A decade on from the invasion of 2003, YouGov reaffirms the verdict of other pollsters and finds a rough two-to-one (53%-27%) balance of Britons saying that the war launched by George Bush and Tony Blair was wrong rather than right.

From the Campaign Against Arms Trade in Britain:

What You Can Do

Promote human rights not arms sales

Prince Charles is just back from a visit to Saudi Arabia to help ‘enhance military links’ – despite the regime’s horrific human rights abuses and its suppression of dissent. In the UK, the government continued to push more arms sales.

Royal visits and the promotion of arms sales send the wrong message: one that condones not condemns human rights abuses, that legitimises authoritarian regimes and demoralises those struggling for democracy.

» Please write to your MP to express your concerns – and ask them to act to ensure that Saudi Arabia and other countries which abuse human rights are not invited to this September’s DSEi arms fair in London.

No weapons to Syria

Foreign Minister William Hague is chipping away at the EU arms embargo. He has announced the UK will send armoured vehicles and body armour and refuses to rule out further steps.

CAAT strongly opposes any moves to provide arms to any side in the conflict. Instead the UK should place pressure on countries giving military support to either side to end such support, and focus on non-military solutions to the conflict.

» Act now to ask William Hague to reinstate a full arms embargo on all sides in the conflict. Email William Hague today.

Arming repressive regimes: NOT OK!

Weapons supplied by the UK have been used against democracy protesters in the Middle East and North Africa. Yet the UK still spends public money on persuading some of the world’s worst human rights abusers and most unstable regimes to buy weapons. This is NOT OK.

David Cameron, on an arms sales tour of the Middle East, claimed arms sales to authoritarian regimes are ‘legitimate and right.’ This is NOT OK.

» Add your voice to CAAT’s petition to say it’s time to end government support for the arms trade.

After US President Barack Obama’s trip to Israel last week the US and its allies are moving ahead with plans to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and install a pro-Western regime. CIA operations and calls to arm the Syrian opposition are escalating, amid a US diplomatic offensive in the Middle East to isolate Assad, and the collapse of a pro-Syrian government in Lebanon: here.

Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid From C.I.A.: here.

The CIA war against Syria: here.

USA-Syria: The Only Red Line Should be to Stay Out: here.

The US and Jordanian militaries have stepped up a secret program to train thousands of armed fighters to send into Syria with the apparent aim of carving out a buffer zone in the south of the country: here.

Western leaders divided over how to take on Syrian revolt: here.

FRANCE DETERMINED TO ARM THE ‘SYRIAN NATIONAL COALITION’: here.

In a series of interviews, UN investigator Carla del Ponte said that sarin gas used in Syria was fired by the US-backed opposition, not the regime of President Bashar al-Assad: here.

Ex-CNN Reporter Ordered to Manipulate News on Syria and Iran: here.

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• UK News: Nato countries ‘plan Syria action’ (walesonline.co.uk)
• William Hague: Britain may defy Syria arms ban (metro.co.uk)
• Obama warns of extremist threat in post-Assad Syria (dailystar.com.lb)
• EU Remains Split on Shipping Arms to Syrian Rebels (abcnews.go.com)
• US, NATO Prepare Syria Intervention (theuglytruth.wordpress.com)
• William Hague admits UK-supplied weapons could fall into the hands of jihadists in Syria (independent.co.uk)

Economic crisis, but not for corporate CEOs

This video says about itself:

As countries like Greece and Spain struggle under massive debts that are impoverishing its people, the elites around the world are getting richer and richer. This report looks at the ever widening gap.

“There are customers that have all the way up to 100 vehicles in their garage.” Torsten Muller-Otvos from Rolls Royce tells us. Each one costs about half a million and last year Rolls Royce sold more cars than ever before in their 100-year history, but then the luxury industry knows no crisis. Since 2009 the rich have become on average 6 percent richer. So while one in six Americans now has no health insurance, Manhattan’s 58 billionaires have gotten richer

As Manuel Koch points out the ratio of return expected by the rich has totally shifted, “People used to be happy making three million profit. Today companies like Apple account for 6 billion profit. That’s profit! Not turnover.” But despite their greater income the super-rich aren’t too happy about the idea of their tax loopholes being closed. In their minds they give back, even if it’s not through taxes. “I know a lot of rich friends who have charities…when they reach a certain level they give back to the community. So I think less tax is always better than too much.” But as the world struggles through a financial crisis and the globe-trotting elite continue to grow wealthier, there’s not much evidence they have their communities interests at heart.

By Andre Damon in the USA:

US corporate executives cash in

22 March 2013

As the US government prepares to furlough 1 million federal workers and slash hundreds of billions in social spending, corporate executives in the United States are receiving among the highest payouts in history. USA Today reported Thursday that at least ten CEOs took in $50 million apiece in 2012, largely as a result of cashing in stocks that have soared in value with the rising market. According to the newspaper, “Early 2013 proxy filings detailing 2012 compensation show a growing number of CEOs reaping $50 million or more, gains that could prove unmatched in breadth and size since the Internet IPO craze enriched tech company executives more than a decade ago.”

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Ospreys, how to help them

From the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in the USA:

NestWatch eNewsletter

March 2013

An Osprey takes off from its nest platform. Photo by Dea via Birdshare.

Platform for Success The Osprey is a large fish-eating hawk and a top consumer in the food chain. Like Bald Eagles, Ospreys declined following the widespread use of the pesticide DDT. Now that DDT has been banned in the United States for 40 years, the Osprey is a common sight in open habitats near water. Ospreys are good indicators of environmental toxins, and their recent rebound is a positive sign. Similar to eagles, the Osprey builds a conspicuous nest out of large sticks that is fairly easy to spot, if you know where to look. Ospreys seek out a high vantage point near water from which to build their bulky nest, usually atop a sturdy treetop or snag. However, the Osprey will readily nest on an artificial structure, such as utility poles, boats, or even duck blinds, particularly when other options are limited. Because it can be undesirable to have an Osprey nest on one of these structures, many people encourage safer nesting by Ospreys by putting up an artificial nesting platform. Ospreys will readily use artificial platforms, and the following tips will help you to recruit a nesting pair of Ospreys to your area. Build community support for the Osprey by educating neighbors about this regal raptor. Talk to your local bird club, conservation organization, utility company, and/or parks department about providing in-kind or financial support for your project. Simply by asking, you may be able to secure donations of old utility poles, lumber, hardware supplies, or labor. Choose a location that is likely to attract Ospreys. The location for the platform should be within 1,600′ of water, and should be taller than any nearby trees (or at least 20′ tall, whichever is greater). If the platform is to be located in water, it should be at least 15′ over the water’s surface. Platforms can even be placed on utility poles with the aid of 6-8′ risers (work with your utility company to place platforms in areas where Ospreys are already using utility poles for nest sites). Ospreys are fairly tolerant of nearby human activity and of other Ospreys, so long as there is an adequate food supply to support nesting. Follow our construction plans for building the platform, and consider adding a predator guard to the post. Add a few large sticks to the bottom of the platform; this will entice Ospreys to check out your nest start. Monitor the platform for activity, and report your observations to NestWatch.org. You can also peek into the private lives of Ospreys by tuning in to the Lab of Ornithology’s Osprey Cam in May to watch nesting Ospreys in Montana, courtesy of Project Osprey. Finally, share your success with us, and publicize it in your local newspaper! People will be curious about the platform, and this is the perfect chance to share the amazing Osprey with them. Coordinating a big project like this can bring together people from very disparate backgrounds–such as utility workers, anglers, and bird watchers–who might not otherwise work together for bird conservation. By taking on a project like this, you will not only be building a platform for success for the Osprey, but for future community partnerships, as well.

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African lions extinct by US American hunters?

This video says about itself:

A look at the strategies adopted by a pride of South African lions as they hunt zebras, impalas and giraffes in the Singita Game Reserve.

From the (conservative) Daily Mail in England:

The real killers: American trophy hunters drive African lions closer to extinction

By Daily Mail Reporter

UPDATED: 14:37 GMT, 2 March 2011

African lions are being driven towards extinction by American hunters determined to bag trophies, wildlife organisations have warned.

The lions, already threatened by conflict with farmers over land and by shrinking habitats, are being driven to the brink by the increasing demand from the U.S. for personal trophies, such as lion skins, and a growing trade in animal parts.

Jeff Flocken, of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said: ‘The king of the jungle is heading toward extinction, and yet Americans continue to kill lions for sport. It is time for this senseless killing and unsustainable practice to stop.’

A coalition of wildlife organisations has petitioned the White House to list the African lion as an endangered species and ban the import of hunting trophies such as skins, claws and skulls, which can sell for thousands of dollars.

The coalition, which includes IFAW, the Humane Society of the United States, Humane Society International, Born Free and Defenders of Wildlife, said that two-thirds of the lions hunted for sport were taken to the U.S. in the past 10 years.

They said that at least 5,663 lions were traded for recreation between 1998 and 2008, with 64 percent of the resulting trophies being imported into America.

There were up to 200,000 lions in Africa 100 years ago, said the coalition. That figure has now fallen to between 23,00 and 40,000, with lions extinct in 26 countries.

The practice is made worse by the hunters’ desire to bag a dominant male, according to a report in The Guardian. The death of the leader makes the pride unstable, with the new dominant male often killing all the cubs to preserve his position. Mr Flocken said: ‘The countries that allow hunting have the worst drops in lion populations.’

Hunters are by no means the only threat. The human population in Afria, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, is growing rapidly and could hit 1.75 billion by 2050. Wilderness areas are being encroached upon to make room for agriculture and to build roads – such as the controversial highway across the Serengeti.

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Author Mark Twain against war

This video from the USA is called THE WAR PRAYER – Mark Twain.

From Rick Rozoff’s blog in the USA:

Mark Twain: Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War

March 19, 2013

Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

American writers on peace and against war

Mark Twain: Selections on war

====

Mark Twain

From Man’s Place in the Animal World (1896)

The higher animals engage in individual fights, but never in organized masses. Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one who gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out, as the Hessians did in our Revolution, and as the boyish Prince Napoleon did in the Zulu war, and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel.

***

Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his own country, under his own flag, and sneers at the other nations, and keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy expense to grab slices of other people’s countries, and them from grabbing slices of his. And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for “the universal brotherhood of man” – with his mouth.

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Birds, bees, aquatic life killed by neonicotinoids

This video from the USA about bees is called Colony Collapse Disorder: It’s Pesticides, Stupid!

From Wildlife Extra:

Birds, bees, and aquatic life threatened by gross underestimate of toxicity of world’s most widely used pesticide

American Bird Conservancy calls for ban on neonicotinoids

March 2013. As part of a study on impacts from the world’s most widely used class of insecticides, nicotine-like chemicals called neonicotinoids, American Bird Conservancy (ABC) has called for a ban on their use as seed treatments and for the suspension of all applications pending an independent review of the products’ effects on birds, terrestrial and aquatic invertebrates, and other wildlife.

Persistence, cumulative effect and groundwater infiltration

“It is clear that these chemicals have the potential to affect entire food chains. The environmental persistence of the neonicotinoids, their propensity for runoff and for groundwater infiltration, and their cumulative and largely irreversible mode of action in invertebrates raise significant environmental concerns,” said Cynthia Palmer, co-author of the report and Pesticides Program Manager for ABC, one of the nation’s leading bird conservation organizations.

The Impact of the Nation’s Most Widely Used Insecticides on Birds

ABC commissioned world renowned environmental toxicologist Dr. Pierre Mineau to conduct the research. The 100-page report, “The Impact of the Nation’s Most Widely Used Insecticides on Birds,” reviews 200 studies on neonicotinoids including industry research obtained through the US Freedom of Information Act. The report evaluates the toxicological risk to birds and aquatic systems and includes extensive comparisons with the older pesticides that the neonicotinoids have replaced. The assessment concludes that the neonicotinoids are lethal to birds and to the aquatic systems on which they depend.

A single corn kernel coated with a neonicotinoid can kill a songbird

“A single corn kernel coated with a neonicotinoid can kill a songbird,” Palmer said. “Even a tiny grain of wheat or canola treated with the oldest neonicotinoid — called imidacloprid — can fatally poison a bird. And as little as 1/10th of a neonicotinoid-coated corn seed per day during egg-laying season is all that is needed to affect reproduction.”

Dangerous aquatic concentrations

The new report concludes that neonicotinoid contamination levels in both surface- and ground water in the United States and around the world are already beyond the threshold found to kill many aquatic invertebrates. Data on surface water contamination from surveys to date, most notably from California and from the Canadian Prairies, indicate that concentrations of several of the neonicotinoid insecticides are high enough to be causing impacts in aquatic food chains. Data from other jurisdictions such as the Netherlands show even higher levels of contamination.

The report also identifies procedural deficiencies in how the US Environmental Protection Agency assesses aquatic impacts. “EPA risk assessments have greatly underestimated this risk, using scientifically unsound, outdated methodology that has more to do with a game of chance than with a rigorous scientific process,” the report says.

First introduced in the 1990s in response to widespread pest resistance and health concerns linked to older pesticides, the neonicotinoid insecticides quickly became top sellers in global pesticide markets. Now the most widely-used insecticides in the world, it is difficult to find pest control commodities that do not contain one or several of the neonicotinoid insecticides. California alone has registered nearly 300 neonicotinoid products.

Serious concerns

EPA scientists have repeatedly documented serious concerns about the persistence, mobility and toxicity of the products, and yet the Agency continues to grant registrations allowing the chemicals to be used for an ever-widening range of crops and non-agricultural use sites.

EPA and other regulatory agencies worldwide have underestimated the toxicity of these compounds to birds partly because the risk assessment methods fail to account sufficiently for interspecies variation in toxicity. For example, risk assessments underestimate acute risk by up to 10 fold for bird species beyond mallard ducks and bobwhites, the two usual test species. As for aquatic invertebrates, EPA has underestimated the toxicity of the neonicotinoid imidacloprid by over an order of magnitude because of the Agency’s failure to consider data from the peer-reviewed literature. EPA has grossly underestimated the toxicity of the other neonicotinoids as well, in part due to the Agency’s reliance on their standard test species, Daphnia magna, a freshwater flea which happens to be uniquely insensitive to neonicotinoids.

Given that a single neonicotinoid-coated seed can kill a bird, it is also important that seeds marketed for home bird feeders remain free of these chemical treatments. In response to sporadic wild bird seed contamination incidents, ABC has monitored bird seed sold by Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes and Target. To date, ABC’s independent bird-seed testing efforts have focused on older products such as the organophosphorous and carbamate pesticides. The neonicotinoids are a candidate for future testing.

The report also charges that there is no readily available biomarker for neonicotinoids as there is for cholinesterase inhibitors such as the organophosphorous pesticides.

“It is astonishing that EPA would allow a pesticide to be used in hundreds of products without ever requiring the registrant to develop the tools needed to diagnose poisoned wildlife. It would be relatively simple to create a binding assay for the neural receptor which is affected by this class of insecticides,” said Dr. Mineau. The ABC report calls on EPA to require that registrants of acutely toxic pesticides develop the tools necessary to diagnose poisoned birds and other wildlife.

Toxicity to bees

Neonicotinoids’ toxicity to bees and other insects has brought them the most attention thus far and has dominated recent concerns of regulatory institutions worldwide. The serious risk to bees should not be understated, as one-third of the U.S. diet depends on these insect pollinators. The ABC assessment makes clear, however, that the potential environmental impacts of neonicotinoids go well beyond bees. The report urges EPA to expand its registration review of neonicotinoids to include birds, aquatic invertebrates, and other wildlife.

Buglife concerns

Vanessa Amaral-Rogers, UK insect charity Buglife‘s Pesticides Officer, said “This highlights the poisonous nature of neonicotinoid insecticides, environmental concerns go well beyond pollinators. They can persist in the soil for many years, leach into aquatic ecosystems and affect birds and mammals. One of the reasons neonicotinoids are so commonly used is because they are promoted as being non-toxic to vertebrates, but this study shows that claim to be false”.

This report has been released shortly after the European Commission failed to agree on a proposed ban on three of the most commonly used neonicotinoids- imidacloprid, thiamethoxam and clothianidin. Representatives from Member States met last Friday to discuss a significant ban after the European Food Safety Authority identified a ‘high acute’ risk to honeybees. However with five countries abstaining from the vote, including the UK, the ban failed to go through.

Vanessa said “The ban proposal will now go through the appeals process with the European Commission free to ban the insecticides unless Member States reach a compromise within two months. I am sure that the European Commission will take note of the recommendations of this significant report when making their next decision and enforce a robust ban”.

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