How British art students occupied their college in 1968

From British daily The Morning Star:

The art school revolt

(Tuesday 27 May 2008)

IN FOCUS: The Hornsey College of Art occupation

ROCKING THE ESTABLISHMENT: Hornsey 1968: The Art School Revolution by Lisa Tickner.

NICK WRIGHT remembers the year when art students shook the Establishment.

On May 28 1968, the art and design students of Hornsey College of Art occupied the main building in Crouch End.

It was in a building that subsequently became the TUC education centre and a place where thousands of workers sharpened their negotiating and organising skills.

The occupation ended after some weeks in the betrayal of negotiated agreements and expulsion of students deemed to be agitators and subversives.

Staff were sacked, departments closed and the college remained shut for most of the year while the authorities and the local Tory council assembled the instruments of repression and exclusion that enabled them to reopen the college on their terms.

I found myself fingered at a student union meeting, confronted by a court tipstaff and served with an injunction that excluded me from the college on the grounds that my presence would be “prejudicial to the academic good order of the establishment.”

A visitor hoping to get a new perspective on the political and social significance of the year 1968 from the current exhibit at the Oakland Museum of California will find that hope unfulfilled. The subject is a worthy one for a retrospective, but, while the exhibition has its entertaining aspects and is not devoid of interest, in the end it disappoints: here.

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Protest against Bush visiting London, 15 June

This video from England says about itself:

November 2003 – Demonstration against George W Bush state visit to London following the invasion of Iraq.

From the Stop the War Coalition in Britain:

War criminal George Bush will visit London during his European tour next month. He is expected on [Sunday] 15 June. Stop the War is planning a protest in London on that day against Bush and his war policies, and against the British government’s continuing support for his wars. Watch this space for more details.

From British daily The Morning Star of today:

PEACE campaigners reiterated demands for US and British leaders to face justice for their war crimes on Tuesday after former deputy leader of the Labour Party John Prescott admitted that the Iraq war would be a “mark against” the record of new Labour.

Play Zameen on Indian farmers

This video is called Monsanto Indian Farmer Suicide, about common farmers’ problems.

From British weekly Socialist Worker:

Satinder Kaur Chohan on her play Zameen about Indian farmers’ fight for land

The writer of a new play on the disaster of big business’s control over Indian agriculture, Satinder Kaur Chohan spoke to Esme Choonara

“If I make one person think about the issues unfolding on the other side of the world, I will have achieved something,” says writer Satinder Kaur Chohan of her new play Zameen (meaning “land”).

The play can hardly fail to make the audience think. It is a searing critique of the devastating impact of the market on the lives of Indian cotton farmers.

As spiralling food prices threaten hunger across the world, the play is a timely examination of the true costs of big business’s grip on agriculture.

Dutch sea eaglets banded

This video is about a white-tailed eagle irritated by crows.

From Staatsbosbeheer in the Netherlands:

Staatsbosbeheer has banded the two young sea eagles in Oostvaardersplassen nature reserve. This is the third year that the white-tailed eagle couple there has eaglets; however, it is the first time that they have two chicks. One eaglet by now has a weight of 4.2 kilogram and is a female. The other chick has a weight of 3.5 kilogram and is a male.

Talking about raptors in the Low Countries: there are griffon vultures in Belgium right now. Photos are here.

Male bees prefer orchids to females

From Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News:

Bee Prefers Sex With Orchid Over Females

May 27, 2008 — It’s no wonder romantic couples give each other flowers, since researchers have determined one orchid is so attractive to male bees that the males actually prefer sex with the orchid over sex with female bees of their own species.

The finding demonstrates the incredible seductive powers of certain flowers, and how these flowers — in this case Ophrys orchids — can compete with female insects for male attention.

The orchid sexual tool kit includes three powerful “weapons” that overwhelm male Colletes cunicularius bees through sight, touch and smell. All three mimic characteristics of female bees that are ready to mate.

“The visual mimicry includes (copying) the color and shape of a female (bee),” co-author Florian Schiestl told Discovery News.

“Tactile memory includes (copying) the hairs on the body of a female,” added Schiestl, a University of Zurich botanist and biologist.

He and colleague Nicolas Vereecken focused, however, on the orchid’s perfume, which humans cannot smell, but is irresistible to male bees.

Bush’s ‘new’ Iraq bans all sports organizations

This video is called An Iraqi Refugee Reveals The Horrible Iraqi Truth.

Another video from the USA which used to be on the Internet used to say about itself:

Many months after Saddam Hussein’s government was toppled and its torture chambers unlocked, Iraqis are again being routinely beaten, hung by their wrists and shocked with electrical wires. This is why Iraqis hate US.

From Reuters:

“The FIFA [international football association] Executive Committee decided to suspend the Iraqi Football Association (IFA) as of today … following the governmental decree passed on May 20 which dissolved the Iraqi National Olympic Committee and all national sport federations, including the IFA,” FIFA said in a statement.

When Saddam Hussein was still in power, he and his sons were notorious for interfering in Iraqi sports organizations.

Now, apparently, George W. Bush’s ‘new’ Iraq has decided to out-dictator Saddam Hussein; not only in death tolls (see also here), numbers of prisoners, torture, worse situation for workers, worse situation for women, worse situation for gay people, etc. etc: but also in sports.

Why Bush’s Iraq is Worse Than Saddam’s, By WILLIAM BLUM: here.

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New discoveries on Australian marine life

This slide show shows mostly corals, sponges and seascapes from Belize.

From Deakin University in Australia:

Diverse life discovered on the seabed

Wednesday, 28 May 2008

Deakin University

A breathtaking array of marine life on Victoria’s seafloor has been discovered off Victoria’s Surf Coast by Deakin University scientists.

The discovery includes previously unknown ‘gardens’ of magnificently coloured sponges, seaweed forests and seagrass meadows, and submerged river systems and lagoons that would have supported Aboriginal communities over 10,000 years ago.

The findings were captivating and would redefine the way the Victorian’s see their marine environment, according to Dr Daniel Ierodiaconou, Deakin researcher and the principal scientist overseeing the project.

“For the first time we have an accurate and comprehensive picture of life and the diversity of marine habitats along the Surf Coast, including hotspots for marine plants and animal communities,” Dr Ierodiaconou said.

“The findings also present a picture of what our region looked like prior to sea-level rise that occurred 10,000 to 12,000 years ago.

“These results will redefine conservation planning, improve fisheries management, and improve infrastructure planning to limit impacts on the environment. More than ever before we will be better informed about ways to conserve these areas and the life they contain for future generations to enjoy.”

The research project, which received $700,000 funding from the Australian Government, mapped seafloor habitats from Anglesea to the 12 Apostles – a massive 600,000 hectares of the State’s coastal waters. Research was done by sonar technology, towed video cameras and remotely operated vehicles.

A joint initiative of Deakin University, Fugro Survey P/L, the Australian Maritime College and the Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing, the work forms part of an ambitious undertaking to eventually map all of Victoria’s marine environment.

News from the same area: giant squid caught.

Solar-powered sea slug harnesses stolen plant genes: here.

Global Diversity of Sponges (Porifera): here.

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Webcam at Spanish imperial eagle nest

This is a video from Spain on the Iberian imperial eagle.

From BirdLife:

The eagles have landed – online!

19-05-2008

A new webcam trained on a family of Spanish Imperial Eagles Aquila adalberti will aid the Alzando el vuelo (Taking off) conservation programme. The camera will raise the project’s profile by affording web-surfers unique views of the mighty raptors.

The nest is located in the Cabañeros National Park (Spain), in the centre of the Iberian Peninsula, and is home to a pair of Spanish Imperial Eagles and their young chick. By entering the website people will be able to watch the birds 24 hours a day. Precautions were undertaken to ensure the pair were not disturbed during the cameras installation, and it is expected that the offspring will fledge around mid June.

The webcam is here.

March 2009. Despite being one of the most threatened species on the International Union for Nature Conservation (IUCN)’s red list, the Spanish imperial eagle (Aquila adalberti) is recovering in Spain. The species has undergone an increase from 38 pairs in 1974 to 253 in 2008, data viewed as hopeful by the scientists who carried out the demographic study on the Iberian Peninsula: here.

“Flying High” conserving the Spanish Imperial Eagle: here.

Goya drawings rediscovered after 130 years

This is Francisco Goya: The Third of May, 1808.

From The Times in England:

Three exceptional drawings by Goya, the 18th-century Spanish artist, have been rediscovered after 130 years, to the excitement of art historians and collectors.

Such is their importance that they are expected to sell for more than £2 million at Christie’s in London this summer.

All trace of the drawings, which had been in one of the artist’s sketchbooks, had been lost since they were offered for sale in Paris in 1877. They were among 105 drawings dated back to 1796 and had been collected from sketchbooks whose pages he filled with studies of people in various moods and situations.

They do not relate to any known finished works.

In 1877 the 105 drawings sold for between 6 and 140 francs, far from outstanding prices, despite Goya‘s fame. Two of these three rediscovered examples even went unsold. Today the record for a Goya drawing stands at £1.3 million.

The same story as for so many other artists’ works: people who did not contribute a drop of paint, or a single pencil stroke, making lots of money.

Another drawing shows an anguished figure stitched into a dead horse. The image bears an extensive inscription in Goya’s hand, in which he outlined the story behind it. In Saragossa, in the middle of the 18th century, the peasants revolted against a local official called Lampinos, who had been persecuting students and women in the city. Seeking revenge, the people stitched him inside a dead horse where, according to the inscription, “for the whole night he remained alive”.

See also here.

And here.

Goya: Los Caprichos in Los Angeles: here.

Fantasies, Follies and Disasters: The Prints of Francisco de Goya: here.

Actress Jessica Lange decries Iraq war

This video from the USA says about itself:

Half a million demonstrators participate in AntiWar Protest in Washington DC on January 18th 2003.

Representatives of many countries in the world (England, Palestine, Philippines…), Jessica Lange, Martin Luther King Jr, Brian Becker (ANSWER coalition), made virulent speaches against the impending Invasion of Iraq.

From the New Zealand Herald:

Jessica Lange decries Iraq war

5:00AM Tuesday May 27, 2008

Oscar-winner Jessica Lange lashed President George W. Bush’s Administration and denounced the war in Iraq during an address at Sarah Lawrence College.

The star of Tootsie and Blue Sky was applauded by students at the small liberal arts college after comparing the conflict with the Vietnam War.

“We are living in an America that, in the last seven and a half years, has waged an unnecessary war, established prison camps, condoned torture, employed corporate armies, eliminated the right of habeas corpus, practiced extraordinary rendition, and believe me, this is only a partial list.”

Director of Tootsie, Sydney Pollack, dies: here.