This video from England is called Olympic missile row.
From daily The Morning Star in London, England:
Busy week ahead for activists
Sunday 20 May 2012
Anti-war campaigners will be backing some key solidarity meetings over the next week and many activists at the big anti-Nato demo in London this weekend have already pledged support.
More than 200 US-based Ethiopian activists packed into the town square in Thurmont, Maryland, on Saturday to protest against the east African country’s prime minister’s invitation to the G8 summit.
The flag-waving Ethiopian immigrants were protesting against the rule of Meles Zenawi, who was invited along with the heads of Benin, Ghana and Tanzania to discuss food security at Camp David.
The US is a major contributor of aid to Ethiopia, whose leader has been accused of restricting freedoms and news media.
“Shame on you!” chanted the protesters, many waving their country’s red, green and yellow flag.
Some held a banner saying: “Zenawi: brutal dictator, pathological liar, mass murderer.”
Police had restricted demonstrators to Thurmont, several miles from the presidential retreat.
A handful of demonstrators from Occupy movements in Baltimore, Washington and Connecticut, joined in.
Thousands of protesters gathered in Chicago on Sunday for a march to the lakeside convention centre where Nato leaders are meeting.
Several hundred demonstrators wound through the US city’s streets for hours on Saturday, testing police who barricaded streets and used horseback officers.
Tense clashes between protesters and police resulted in 18 arrests.
A later march stretched for hours as protesters zigzagged through the city centre, decrying terrorism-related charges levelled against three men earlier in the day.
Organisers pledged a larger crowd as protesters from the Occupy movement joined forces with an anti-war coalition.
“We want the world to focus on Nato – it’s not important and has no mandate any more,” said Occupy Chicago spokesman Micah Philbrook.
Three activists who traveled to Chicago for the summit were accused on Saturday of manufacturing Molotov cocktails in a plot to attack Obama’s campaign headquarters and other targets.
But defence lawyers argued that the police had trumped up the charges to frighten peaceful protesters away.
They told a judge it was undercover officers who brought the firebombs to an apartment in Chicago’s South Side where the men were arrested.
As the Nato mission in Afghanistan winds down after nearly 11 years, the so-called insurgents remain undefeated, corruption runs rife and the peace process is stuck in the mire.
Such is the bleak reality of Afghanistan as Nato leaders met to map their way out of a futile, failing and ultimately unpopular war.
None of the Nato countries have the stomach to pursue the futile war much longer and the only viable option they can conceive of is to leave behind an Afghan army and police force capable of defending its puppet regime against the Taliban and its allies after the Nato combat mission ends in 2014.
That would require no less than $4.1 billion (£2.6bn) a year.
The war has already claimed the lives of at least 3,000 Nato service members and thousands of Afghans.
Support for the war has eroded in Europe and hit a new low in the US, where only 27 per cent say they back the war.
Nato is training a 352,000-member force, but the size is to shrink to about 230,000 sometime after 2015.
England: Anti-war protesters are planning more demonstrations after a hugely successful gathering in London at the weekend in solidarity with mass action in the US against Nato: here.
Much of the Hermitage art was once property of the Russian imperial family.
At present, there is an exhibition in the Hermitage in Amsterdam called Rubens, Van Dyck & Jordaens. Flemish painters from the Hermitage.
This video is called Exhibition Rubens, Van Dyck & Jordaens in Hermitage Amsterdam extended to 15 June 2012.
There are 75 paintings and twenty drawings. I saw them on 18 May.
Also Flemish paintings from Saint Petersburg, by painters other than the three famous artists from the exhibition name, are on show there in Amsterdam. Basically, those Flemish paintings have in common that they are from the first half of the seventeenth century. Rubens lived 1577-1640; Anthonie van Dyck 1599-1641; Jacob Jordaens 1593-1678.
That was an interesting revolutionary period in Belgian, Dutch, and European history. It was the second half of the eighty years’ war between the Spanish and Austrian Habsburg monarchs on one side, and the rebels who wanted to break free from the Habsburgs after the revolt against the Spanish king’s economic and religious policies in the 1560s in the Netherlands. So, this exhibition now in Amsterdam brings up questions: of art history, but also of general history.
In this article, I will mainly use “the Netherlands” as authors then used it: not just the present state of that name, but, roughly, present day Belgium (and Luxembourg) as well.
One way to look at that long conflict is to consider it as a conflict between feudalism and the rising bourgeoisie.
Already in the late middle ages, towns and their bourgeois inhabitants were comparatively strong in the western Netherlands: Flanders, Antwerp city in the west of Brabant duchy, Zeeland, Holland.
While the eastern Netherlands (French-speaking Walloon regions, German-speaking eastern Luxembourg, the east of Brabant duchy, Gelderland duchy, Overijssel province) were more conservative, more like much of continental Europe: hierarchical, with the nobility and the high level Roman Catholic clergy more powerful than the towns.
The 1560s revolt against King Philip II of Spain, with its iconoclasm against the rich Roman Catholic church, was especially in the western Netherlands. The bulwark of the townspeople; and of the Protestant religion growing among them.
After defeats in the 1570s, in the 1580s the armies of the Spanish king, now under more able military leadership, starting from the feudal south-east, managed to re-conquer the urban south-west. And the north-east; which, however, they were unable to hold, as the big rivers through the central Netherlands were a military obstacle.
So, the military frontier between the Spanish monarchy and the new Dutch republic became not an east-west divide, but a north-south divide, more or less along the present border between Belgium and the Netherlands.
That was bad news for rebels in the south, many of whom fled to the north. In some Dutch cities in Holland county, the majority of inhabitants now consisted of refugees from the Spanish occupied Netherlands. This contributed to Amsterdam city becoming the commercial capital of Western Europe soon.
Previously in the sixteenth century, that had been Antwerp. When the Spanish forces conquered Antwerp, that was a disaster for that prosperous city. About half the people fled to the northern Netherlands (or to Protestant towns in Germany, like the family of painter Rubens). And for those who stayed in Antwerp, income went down. As the war continued, and the estuary of the Scheldt river, on which Antwerp trade depended, was in rebel northern hands.
The artists Rubens, Van Dyck and Jordaens had in common that they all worked in Antwerp during that time. In 1609, a twelve years’ truce between the independent and the Spanish Netherlands started. Which meant some economic recovery, and some more possibilities for artists, in Antwerp. Those artists, however, had to recognize the victory of the Spanish monarchy, of the feudal old order, in the southern Netherlands, including Antwerp. The Roman Catholic church needed many new altar paintings after the 1560s iconoclasm, for its counter-reformation propaganda.
As for the position of an artist like Rubens in the southern Netherlands, compared to an artist like Rembrandt in the north, I will now paraphrase from an earlier blog post.
At an exhibition in The Hague, one exhibit made a visual statistic comparison between the paintings of Rubens and Rembrandt.
They spoke the same language, Dutch, and lived in what was still seen as the seventeen united provinces of the Low Countries.
With both the bourgeois republicans who in Rembrandt’s and Rubens‘ days ruled the north, and the Habsburg monarchs who ruled the south, at least initially still hoping to unite all seventeen provinces under their own rule.
Nevertheless, the statistics of the various categories of subjects in Rubens’ and Rembrandt’s artistic productions show significant differences between the two artists.
Differences in artistic views between two individuals, doubtlessly.
But also differences showing how different socially and politically Rubens’ South and Rembrandt’s North had become since the Dutch revolt against the Roman Catholic Spanish absolute monarchy had started in the 1560s.
This video is called The Night Watch by Rembrandt van Rijn (Part I).
And here is Part II.
These are the figures; percent of total works by Rubens and Rembrandt:
Altar paintings: Rubens 15%, Rembrandt 0%
Biblical paintings, not commissioned by a church: Rubens 20%, Rembrandt 20%
Scenes from daily life and landscapes: Rubens 10%, Rembrandt 5%
While Rubens was originally from a Protestant, rebel, and refugee Antwerp family, and made his peace with the Roman Catholic Church and the monarchy later, Rembrandt’s views are closer to the republican Dutch revolt.
The figures show that Rembrandt, contrary to Rubens, made zero altar paintings.
In the northern low countries, the newly established Protestant church did not commission them.
Neither did the Roman Catholic church, now on the margins of legality.
If we put both Christian religious categories together, 20% of Rembrandt’s paintings fitted in the “Christian” category, vs. 35% of Rubens’.
Rembrandt himself was not an official member of any church, and was free to do that in “tolerant” Amsterdam.
The Bible was interesting to him as a source of subjects, but over all, religion did not play as big a role in his work as in Rubens’.
Rembrandt painted far less historical and mythological paintings than Rubens.
In countries other than the Dutch Republic, these types of paintings often made complimentary allusions to contemporary princes and nobles, and/or were often commissioned by them.
In The Netherlands, there was no monarchical court comparable to this.
Which would have liked very much to be a princely court like elsewhere in Europe; but constitutionally wasn’t.
Rembrandt got a commission from the princely court (princely, as the Stadhouders were also absolute monarchs in the tiny statelet of Orange in southern France).
The Hermitage Amsterdam exhibition notes that Stadhouder Frederik Hendrik prefered painters from the feudal southern Netherlands, though that region was the military enemy, to “bourgeois” northern painters like Rembrandt. He also prefered Gerard van Honthorst to Rembrandt as a painter of portraits of his wife. Honthorst was not from the Spanish occupied southern Netherlands. However, his home province Utrecht in the central Netherlands was less bourgeois rebellious than Rembrandt’s Holland. And Honthorst had spent much time in feudal Italy.
Nevertheless, if compared to Rubens, Rembrandt painted many more portraits.
Not commissioned by princes or nobles, but by the newly emerged bourgeoisie. Dutch art historian Bert Biemans who studied the economic side of seventeenth century Dutch art, estimates that a million paintings were painted then in the Netherlands. Many, compared to other countries then. As the Dutch bourgeoisie who might buy art bought comparatively more than mainly upper class people in other countries.
That Rembrandt painted so many more portraits than Rubens may be a sign of a stronger bourgeoisie; and of stronger individualism in the northern low countries.
Rubens, Van Dyck and Jordaens, like Rembrandt, were from “bourgeois” families. However, Antwerp bourgeois, including artists, if they wanted to survive, unlike Rembrandt, had either to become refugees or to accept a social order in which nobles and Roman Catholic clergy were of higher rank than them. Here, one can also see differences between the three individuals. Rubens, being both a successful painter and a diplomat, managed to climb on the social ladder. So did Van Dyck, whom the king of England knighted not so long before the English revolution upset the old order in ways similar to the sixteenth century Dutch revolt. Jordaens, from an affluent merchant family, sold his works to fellow bourgeois, not to the church or the nobility. Except for the court of Stadhouder Frederik Hendrik: a princely-feudal enclave in the northern bourgeois republic.
How Revolutionary Were The Bourgeois Revolutions? by Neil Davidson; review here.
Wildlife and bird tourism worth billions every year
Bird watching can help eco-tourism fly high in a green economy
May 2012. Migratory birds undertake some of the most daring journeys in the animal kingdom, often covering thousands of kilometres to migrate. And the growing fan base of these winged adventurers is now presenting economic opportunities through sustainable tourism.
There is a growing trend among bird tour operators to practice sustainable and socially responsible ecotourism, while relying on local goods and services or supporting local conservation projects. Indeed, the UNEP Green Economy Report shows that global spending on all areas of ecotourism is increasing by about six times the industry-wide rate of growth.
Bird watching worth US$ 32 billion per year in the United States
A survey by the United States Fish & Wildlife Service puts the annual economic value generated by bird watchers (or ‘birders’) and other wildlife watchers at around US$ 32 billion per year in the United States alone. This amount corresponds to the GDP of Costa Rica, which, coincidently, is a popular destination for US birders.
Wildlife tourism represents 4% of Scottish tourism
In Scotland, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) found out in 2011 that between GBP 5 – 8 million (US$ 8 – 12 million) is spent annually by tourists wishing to see White-tailed Eagles on the Isle of Mull alone. The equivalent of at least 110 full-time jobs – 4 per cent of jobs in Scotland associated with wildlife tourism – is supported by this expenditure every year. Economic benefits delivered by White-tailed Eagles on the Isle of Mull have more than tripled since 2005.
“Birding plays a significant and growing part in the tourism industry, and creates direct and indirect economic benefits for many countries and communities, also amongst developing countries. Wildlife watching appeals to a wide range of people, and opportunities to participate in wildlife watching are and should increasingly be a factor in tourists’ holiday choices today”, said Elizabeth Maruma Mrema Acting Executive Secretary of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS).
In a struggling economy, many mills and factories are forced to close, but that’s not the case for Armstrong Milling in Ontario. According to TheSpec.com, the mill has doubled its workforce in the past decade and sees only growth ahead, thanks to the booming bird feeding business. Initial studies have shown that as baby boomers seek more relaxed recreational pastimes, many of them are turning to feeding the birds, which is good for business. Furthermore, people of all ages can feed the birds, so the market is seeing steady growth at odds with the fluctuating economy: here.
PARIS: Ahead of yesterday’s Champions League final and with Euro 2012 just around the corner, animals of all shapes and sizes queued up to succeed Paul the Octopus, the famous clairvoyant Cephalopoda
Paul, an octopus who lived at an aquarium in the German city of Oberhausen, rose to fame during the last World Cup for correctly “predicting” the outcome of eight consecutive matches at the tournament.
The tentacled soothsayer, who picked winners by selecting food from boxes decorated with teams’ national flags, passed away after the tournament, but there are now plenty of animals bidding to step into his (eight) shoes.
Ahead of yesterday’s Champions League showdown in Munich between Bayern Munich and Chelsea, a local sausage dog named Sissi and an octopus called Rosi from nearby Rosenheim have both predicted that Bayern will prevail.
Dachshund Sissi opted for a dish of food underneath a goal bearing the Bayern logo, while Rosi chose food from a box in Bayern red, apparently backing the Bavarians to beat Chelsea at Munich’s Allianz Arena.
But reports from England say Nicholas, the llama from Sussex, believes the Blues will prevail, after he chose a blue ball in his pen over a red one.
English tabloid the Daily Mirror reports that Nicholas’s prediction carries some weight as he correctly predicted Chelsea would beat Liverpool 2-1 in the FA Cup final earlier this month.
The English llama was ‘more clairvoyant’ than the German animals; as Chelsea won.
Bahraini Prince Should Not be Welcomed in UK, Petition Asserts
Published May 20th, 2012 – 08:43 GMT
The petition drawn up by Avaaz, the world’s largest and most effective online campaigning community for change, will call on the British Prime Minster David Cameron and Jacques Rogge, President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to prevent Sheikh Nasser’s entry to the UK, declaring him as “persona non grata”, the Ahlul Bayt News Agency reported.
Sheikh Nasser, one of six sons to King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa of Bahrain and the President of the Bahrain Olympic Committee, had publicly called for “a wall to fall on the heads” of all those who peacefully demonstrated against the Al-Khalifa regime.
He also headed a committee that arrested, imprisoned and tortured 150 sportsmen and sports officials, including a disabled athlete, with some prisoners saying they were personally beaten by Sheikh Nasser himself.
Furthermore, when Mohammed Hubail, Bahrain’s national football team player, was sentenced to two years imprisonment, Sheikh Nasser tweeted, “If it was up to me, I’d give them all life.”
Meanwhile, the All Party Parliamentary Group for Democracy in Bahrain has urged British Foreign Secretary William Hague to withdraw an invitation to the King of Bahrain to attend the UK Queen’s diamond jubilee event because it lends “respectability to a tyrannical regime.”
The Al-Khalifa regime holds at least hundreds of anti-regime figures including three leading Bahraini human rights activists in custody, while international human right bodies are banned from visiting the country.
The regime has also killed at least 50 activists in the crackdown on protests since February 2011.
Anti-government protesters have been holding peaceful demonstrations across Bahrain since mid-February 2011, calling for an end to the Al Khalifa dynasty’s over-40-year rule.
Violence against the defenseless people escalated after a Saudi-led conglomerate of police, security and military forces from the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (PGCC) member states – Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar – were dispatched to the tiny Persian Gulf kingdom on March 13, 2011, to help Manama crack down on peaceful protestors.
So far, tens of people have been killed, hundreds have gone missing and thousands of others have been injured.
Bahrain Sports: Mixing Soccer, Football, and Torture: here.
Bahrain: Call for the immediate release of Mr. Al-Khawaja and all other detained human rights defenders and netizens: here.
Bahrain Live Coverage: Regime Says, “This Protest Good, This Protest Bad”: here.
Bahrain’s flashy crony capitalism cannot last. Opposition to the grand prix was fuelled by anger towards the excesses of prestige projects and the squandering of resources: here.
United Nations member states should scrutinize Bahrain’s deplorable human rights record during the country’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the UN Human Rights Council on May 21, 2012, Human Rights Watch said today. The international community should push Bahrain to adopt specific measures to ensure free expression and peaceful assembly, end torture, free political prisoners, and establish credible accountability mechanisms for continuing abuses: here.
Bahrain Feature: Seeing the Crisis Through Children’s Cartoons: here.
19-year-old girl in Egypt invents a spacecraft propulsion device
A 19-year-old Egyptian university student called Aisha Mustafa has invented a propulsion device intended to offer spacecrafts a new method and cheaper means of energy consumption.
The propulsion device promises chances of using quantum physics and chemical reactions in artificial satellites, instead of the current radioactive-based jets and ordinary rocket engines.
Mustafa’s device is based on a scientific mix between quantum physics, space technology, chemical reactions and electrical sciences.
Mustafa said the inventions generates energy for space vehicles from electric energy formed by Casimir-polder force, which occurs between separate surfaces and objects in a vacuum and by the zero-point energy considered as the lowest state of energy.
The device uses reflective panels for additional force which resembles photovoltaic solar cells.
At present, artificial satellites, spacecrafts and space vehicles depend on rocket gas engines that use forced gas at a supersonic speed, or chemical reactions rockets propelled by solid or liquid fuels such as radionuclide or petroleum. Others use electrically propelled probes, which depend on thrusting force via accelerating ions.
The physics student at Sohag University told EGYNews agency she has patented the device with Egyptian Academy of scientific Research and Technology (ASRT).
The invention is related to a hypothetical concept of a jet propulsion called “Differential Sail”, theoretically created by NASA’s retired professor Marc G. Millis — who led NASA breakthrough propulsion physics project.
Dr. Ahmed Fikry, Mustafa’s supervisor, said the invention would be highly beneficial in several fields and areas of industries once adopted.
The 19-year-old says she aims at testing her invention at major scientific research organisations hence the possibility of applying it in upcoming space missions.
The new invention, analysts say, is expected to make space travels, easier, cheaper and faster in future.
Occupy Movement Wins Spate of Legal Battles, but Faces New Challenges Ahead as “NATO 3” Face Terrorism Charges. J.A. Myerson, Truthout in the USA: “Three activists have been charged with ‘possession of incendiary or explosive device, conspiracy to commit terrorism & providing material support for terrorism,’ which seems to mean ‘beer-making equipment’. The ‘NATO 3’ were among nine activists abducted by police in a nighttime raid and disappeared for a number of hours. The three activists had previously posted a video of Chicago Police intimidating and threatening them with physical violence while they searched the protesters’ vehicle”: here.
The NATO Raids and Arrests: This Is What Jail Solidarity Looks Like. Yana Kunichoff, Truthout: “Only a few hours after they were released from hours in solitary confinement, a few of the activist arrested in a Wednesday evening raid on a Chicago home were happy to be eating something that wasn’t a baloney sandwich. [One activist] said ‘I had to go to the bathroom in shackles. I felt like I was in Gitmo.’ [Another said] ‘I didn’t know what time of day it was … That’s what solitary confinement is for, it’s torture'”: here.
Why Protest NATO? Sam Jewler, Truthout: “In many ways, Afghanistan is worse off under NATO’s Groundhog Day-like reign of terror than it was before…. Civilian deaths have become a hallmark of NATO interventions, in which forces rely on so-called precise aerial campaigns so as not to risk their own soldiers’ lives. Even in the Balkans, NATO’s first and signature so-called ‘humanitarian war,’ it’s estimated that there were thousands of civilian deaths and that tens of billions of dollars worth of damage was done”: here.
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Most Expensive Weapon Ever. Ben Freeman, Truthout: “Tom Cruise steps onto the tarmac … and the fighter plane he’s getting into is the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) – the most expensive weapon ever, which is slated to be the mainstay of the US Navy, the Air Force and the Marine Corps. The entire program is now expected to cost taxpayers nearly $1.51 trillion; that’s more than any weapon in history”: here.
The jail terms imposed on three young men arrested at an anti-NATO protest in 2012 are an outrageous and reactionary attack on democratic rights: here.
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