British workers will mark May Day with big strike against Blair’s policies

By Matthew Cookson:

Workers to hit back on May Day

Tuesday 1 May is set to see a major strike in defence of public services as the PCS civil service workers’ union steps up its action against job cuts, low pay and privatisation.

Around a quarter of a million PCS members have already taken strike action this year.

Now the union wants to make May Day the date of its next national strike action.

Workers across the public sector are facing similar attacks on pay and cuts in services. The unions should turn this into a mass day of action in defence of public services. …

In London workers can bring all the battles together in the evening by attending the Organising for Fighting Unions May Day rally.

Speakers will include Mark Serwotka, the PCS general secretary, Tony Benn and Respect MP George Galloway.

Blair and Brown are increasingly out of step with public opinion on the questions of jobs, pay and services.

With the government weakened by scandal and growing opposition, union activists need to ram home their advantage.

May Day can be a rallying point for all those who want to hit back at New Labour’s assaults.

See also here.

Update: here.

And here.

And here.

May Day in London, Manchester, etc.: here.

First burrow digging dinosaur species discovered

From Belgian daily Het Laatste Nieuws:

An international scientific team has found the first burrow digging dinosaur species ever, the latest issue of Proceedings B of the British Royal Society says.

The plant eater Oryctodromeus cubicularis, unknown until now, lived some 95 million years ago and took care off its offspring in an underground burrow.

The animal was about two meter long; just the tail was 1.25 meter.

Spade-like snout

The fossil discovery in the US state of Montana marks a new page on dinosaurs, the team of David Varrichio of Montana State University in Bozeman says.

More on this here.

And here.

And here.

This newly discovered species is distantly related to iguanodons.

They belong to the hypsilophodonts (see here).

Burrowing mammals: here.

African Plants – New Scholarly Resource

From Botanic Gardens Conservation International:

African Plants – New Scholarly Resource

ONLINE

20th March 2007

A wealth of information on the world of African plants is now available at the touch of a button.

Aluka (www.aluka.org), is an international not-for-profit organization collaborating with institutions and individuals around the world to produce a digital library of scholarly resources from and about Africa.

With the introduction of Aluka’s first content area, the African Plants Initiative (API), online access will be made available to an extensive library of African plants research material, including scientific and historical data as well as photographs and illustrations, which are joined together for the first time in a single resource.

British TV outs US troops who killed its journalist Terry Lloyd in Iraq

From The Scotsman:

TV channel outs troops it links to death of reporter

RUSSELL JACKSON

ITV last night revealed the names of all 16 US marines it claims were present when journalist Terry Lloyd was shot dead while working in Iraq nearly four years ago.

The marines, reportedly of Red Platoon, Delta Company – one of whom “almost certainly” fired the shot that killed the ITN journalist – were listed one by one on ITV’s 6 o’clock news.

It is the first time their names have been revealed in full, but US authorities refused to confirm whether the information read out on air was accurate.

US Central Command said it had “no intention” of confirming names.

Mr Lloyd was killed in a hail of American tank fire as he and three colleagues approached Iraq‘s second city of Basra during the US-led invasion in March 2003.

His family said that US forces had been allowed to behave like “trigger-happy cowboys” after a coroner recorded a verdict of unlawful killing at the inquest in Oxford last October.

The US troops involved were never publicly identified and did not give evidence during the eight-day hearing.

Oxfordshire Deputy Assistant Coroner Andrew Walker said afterwards that he would write to the Attorney General and the Director of Public Prosecutions “to see whether any steps can be taken to bring the perpetrators responsible for this to justice”.

The Lloyd family’s lawyer, Louis Charalambous, said last night that the family welcomed the public outing of the 16 troops and urged them to come forward and explain themselves.

Anti Iraq war in Britain: here.

City of Berkeley in the USA: prosecute Donald Rumsfeld for war crimes.

Bush worse than Saddam, Iraqi who toppled Saddam statue says

From Stories in America blog:

Regrets from the Man Who Brought Down Saddam

His hands were bleeding and his eyes filled with tears as, four years ago, he slammed a sledgehammer into the tiled plinth that held a 20ft bronze statue of Saddam Hussein.

Then Kadhim al-Jubouri spoke of his joy at being the leader of the crowd that toppled the statue in Baghdad’s Firdous Square. Now, he is filled with nothing but regret.

The moment became symbolic across the world as it signalled the fall of the dictator.

Wearing a black vest, Mr al-Jubouri, an Iraqi weightlifting champion, pounded through the concrete in an attempt to smash the statue and all it meant to him.

Now, on the fourth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, he says: “I really regret bringing down the statue.

The Americans are worse than the dictatorship. Every day is worse than the previous day.”

The weightlifter had also been a mechanic and had felt the full weight of Saddam’s regime when he was sent to Abu Ghraib prison by the Iraqi leader’s son, Uday, after complaining that he had not been paid for fixing his motorcycle.

He explained: “There were lots of people from my tribe who were also put in prison or hanged.

It became my dream ever since I saw them building that statue to one day topple it.”

Yet he now says he would prefer to be living under Saddam than under US occupation.

Mr Kadhim al-Jubouri is not alone on this.

90% of Iraqis see things similarly.

Including maybe the most pro Bush politician in Iraq, Iyad Allawi.

As for the toppling of the statue in 2003: a big media show was built around it by the US government and corporate media.

Big media images were from angles that disguised that few people were present on Baghdad’s Firdous Square.

Most of those were US soldiers, and exile Iraqis flown in with very unpopular politician, Ahmed Chalabi, convicted to a long prison term for fraud in Jordan; said to be a US-Iranian secret services double agent.

Most Iraqis opposed Saddam Hussein; however, even in April 2003, many already suspected that Bush rule might become even worse than Saddam Hussein rule.

Today, these views are even stronger. Many of those who in 2003 thought freedom had come, have found out that though Saddam might be gone, tyranny was definitely not. On public opinion polls in Iraq: Halliburton Polls, by Arianna Huffington.

Time to bring down Bush, Blair, and their accomplices.

Chalabi’s ex sidekick Makiya now: here.

Chalabi, ‘Curveball‘, and ‘WMD‘: here.

Pollution in Iraq: here.

UK: Vikings block Trident nuclear base

This video is called Greenpeace blockade Trident submarine at Faslane.

From Earth First! in Britain (with photos there):

York Vikings go berserk over Trident

19.03.2007

A twelve strong group from York, dressed as Vikings, have successfully blockaded both entrances to the Faslane nuclear submarine base.

The coordinated action completely closed the base for half an hour this morning. Four men and eight women were arrested in the peaceful protest.

One of the protesters, Richard Lane, said “The Vikings slaughtered tens of thousands of people but they did so over half a millennium. Trident could do the same in a minute.”

Dave Taylor of York Green Party said “Whatever happened to the ethical foreign policy that New Labour once promised?”

“There is nothing ethical about spending billions of pounds on weapons that the human race cannot afford to use,” he added.

The base is subject to a year long campaign rejecting nuclear weapons and, in particular, the renewal of Trident.

This has attracted a lot of international support. So far, nearly 600 people from all over the world have been arrested in as many actions and blockades.

Archaeologists have discovered a mass grave of decapitated Vikings on the southern coast of England dating from AD 910-AD1034. Scientists think they may have been caught and killed by locals: here.

USA: ‘supporting’ soldiers, the Bush way. Cartoons by Mikhaela

A new cartoon by Mikhaela in the USA (above); on US soldiers’ armour in the Iraq war; hospitals scandals; and anti gay discrimination.

And a not so new, however still to the point, cartoon by her (below).

Bush, Iraq war, and Walter Reed and VA hospitals scandal: here.

New crossbill species found in Idaho, USA

From ScienceDaily:

New Bird Species Found In Idaho, Demonstrates Co-evolutionary Arms Race

One does not expect to discover a bird species new to science while wandering around the continental United States.

Nor does one expect that such a species would provide much insight into how coevolutionary arms races promote speciation. On both fronts a paper to appear in The American Naturalist proves otherwise.

Julie Smith, now at Pacific Lutheran University, and her former graduate advisor, Craig Benkman at the University of Wyoming, have uncovered strong evidence that coevolution has led to the formation of a species of bird new to science in the continental United States.

Benkman discovered in 1996 what appears to be a new species restricted to two small mountain ranges in southern Idaho (the South Hills and Albion Mountains).

This species is a morphologically and vocally distinct “call type” of red crossbill (Loxia curvirostra complex), which is a group of seed-eating finches specialized for extracting seeds from conifer cones.

Fieldwork by Smith has revealed some of the mechanisms that have contributed to the nearly complete cessation of interbreeding between this crossbill and other call types that move into the South Hills every year.

Perhaps most remarkable is that this new crossbill evolved because of a coevolutionary arms race between crossbills and lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) in the last five to seven thousands years.

As South Hills crossbills exerted selection on lodgepole pine for increased seed defenses, lodgepole pine in turn exerted selection on crossbills for larger bills to deal with these increased seed defenses.

This coevolution has caused these crossbills to diverge substantially in bill morphology from other crossbills.

Because the South Hills crossbill is adapted to remove seeds from the well-defended cones there, it is a superior competitor and thereby limits the less well adapted and nomadic call types to breeding at very low frequencies in the South Hills.