Downfall of McCain aides linked to Burmese dictators

Posted on May 13, 2008 by petrel41

This video from the USA is called John McCain’s Myanmar (Burma) Connection.

From The Independent weekly in the USA:

McCain Aides Forced to Quit over Ties to Burmese Military Junta

By Leonard Doyle, The Independent. Posted May 13, 2008.

The McCain campaign reeks of special interests.

Two top aides to the Republican presidential nominee John McCain have been forced to resign over their ties to the Burmese military junta, providing yet another embarrassment for Mr McCain who is trying to present himself as the scourge of special interests in Washington.

Douglas Goodyear, who had been chosen to run the 2008 Republican convention, said he was resigning “so as not to become a distraction in this campaign” after it was revealed he was connected to a lobbying firm that has represented Burma’s military leaders.

Newsweek reported at the weekend that the DCI Group, a lobbying firm, represented Burma until last year. Mr Goodyear, its chief executive, “was paid $348,000 in 2002 to represent Burma’s military junta, which had been strongly condemned by the State Department for its human-rights record and remains in power today,” the magazine said.

Mr Goodyear had been given the important task of running the Republican convention in Minneapolis this summer and the controversy threatened to highlight the role of lobbyists in Mr McCain’s campaign.

While Mr McCain publicly portrays himself as a crusader against special interests, many of his closest advisers are former or current lobbyists. Doug Davenport, another McCain aide and former DCI chief executive, has also quit.

Talking about natural disasters, like in Burma now: The tsunami in Sri Lanka: A case study in US humanitarian missions: here.

Top McCain Campaign Adviser Outsources U.S. Jobs: here.

Tropical seabirds in Hong Kong

Posted on May 13, 2008 by petrel41

This video says about itself:

Great Frigatebird juveniles (Fregata minor palmerstoni) playing with a stick over Eastern Is., Midway Atoll.

From India eNews:

Global warming brings tropical birds to Hong Kong

From correspondents in Hong Kong, China

The sighting of two rarely seen tropical birds in Hong Kong could be due to climate change, bird experts here have said.

The birds – a great frigate and the white-tailed tropic-bird – were both spotted around Po Toi, Hong Kong’s southern most island, over the last month.

It was the first time the white-tailed tropic has ever been spotted in Hong Kong and only the fourth sighting of the frigate.

Albert Einstein on religion

Posted on May 13, 2008 by petrel41

This is a video of Albert Einstein.

From British daily The Guardian:

“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” So said Albert Einstein, and his famous aphorism has been the source of endless debate between believers and non-believers wanting to claim the greatest scientist of the 20th century as their own.

A little known letter written by him, however, may help to settle the argument – or at least provoke further controversy about his views.

Due to be auctioned this week in London after being in a private collection for more than 50 years, the document leaves no doubt that the theoretical physicist was no supporter of religious beliefs, which he regarded as “childish superstitions”.

Einstein penned the letter on January 3 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind who had sent him a copy of his book Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt. The letter went on public sale a year later and has remained in private hands ever since.

In the letter, he states: “The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.”

Einstein, who was Jewish and who declined an offer to be the state of Israel‘s second president, also rejected the idea that the Jews are God’s favoured people.

“For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them.”

The letter will go on sale at Bloomsbury Auctions in Mayfair on Thursday and is expected to fetch up to £8,000. The handwritten piece, in German, is not listed in the source material of the most authoritative academic text on the subject, Max Jammer‘s book Einstein and Religion.

One of the country’s leading experts on the scientist, John Brooke of Oxford University, admitted he had not heard of it.

Leftist 20th century artists in the USA

Posted on May 13, 2008 by petrel41

This video from the USA is called George Bellows Paintings.

From London daily The Morning Star:

The other side of US art revealed

(Monday 12 May 2008)

EXHIBITION: The American Scene Prints from Hopper to Pollock
British Museum, London WC1

CHRISTINE LINDEY discovers a fantastic exhibition of humanist prints from the US at the British Museum.

Edward Hopper and Jackson Pollock are well known in Britain, but few will be aware of John Sloan, Louis Lozowick, Robert Gwathmey, Blanche Grambs or Charles Keller. This is hardly surprising, since they were socialists or communists.

Active in the first half the 20th century, they were duly dismissed as “un-American” during the cold war. Along with many others, including apolitical realists, they were overlooked or marginalised by mainstream art history, written at that time which trumpeted the “triumph” of US abstractionism.

With a few exceptions such as Hopper, this skewed narrative has lingered to this day, particularly in Europe.

But not any more. This marvellous exhibition introduces them and other little-known US artists to the British public.

At the beginning of the century, the Ash Can School rejected the idealisations and pretensions of academic art to engage directly with unvarnished life. It included the socialists John Sloan and George Bellows, both of whom made illustrations for the left-wing magazine The Masses.

An admirer of Hogarth, Sloan advised his students to leave the studio to go out into the streets and look at life. His etching Roofs, Summer Night (1906) does just that.

American Letters 1927-1947: Jackson Pollock & Family, published March 18 by Polity Press, is a fascinating volume that sheds light in particular on the Depression years in the US and some of the intellectual and artistic trends that emerged during that harsh era: here. And here.

Victory for flamingos in Lake Natron controversy

Posted on May 13, 2008 by petrel41

This is a flamingo video.

From BirdLife:

Tata withdraws Natron project ESIA Report

12-05-2008

Tata Chemicals Ltd (TCL) has finally withdrawn the much discredited Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) Report for the proposed Lake Natron soda ash plant. The development has been opposed by national NGOs in Tanzania, the Lake Natron Consultative Group (a consortium of 32 mainly East African NGOs), BirdLife International and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB; BirdLife in the UK), for posing serious threats to the survival of Lesser Flamingos Phoeniconaias minor and the livelihoods of local communities.

In an apparent response to these concerns, the company told a stakeholder meeting hosted by the World Bank in Dar es Salaam last week that they had asked the Tanzanian government to disregard the earlier report.

Lake Natron flamingos still in danger: here.

Update October 2008: here.