US religious Right teaches children Loch Ness monster is real

Posted on June 25, 2012 by petrel41

This video is called HOW TO SEE THE LOCH NESS MONSTER.

Louisiana Private Schools Teach Loch Ness Monster Is Real In Effort To Disprove Evolution Theory

06/25/2012 3:39 pm

Some students at private schools in Louisiana are being taught that Scotland’s fabled Loch Ness monster is real, a claim that is then held as evidence disproving Charles Darwin‘s theory of evolution, the Scotsman reports.

Thousands of students across the state are eligible to receive publicly funded vouchers to allow them to attend private Christian schools where textbooks published by Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) claim the monster was actually a dinosaur that existed at the same time as man, an assertion which conflicts with the theory of evolution.

The Times Educational Supplement, a British publication for teachers, published an article in 2009 that included an excerpt from Accelerated Christian Education’s Biology 1099 textbook, which was published in 1995:

Are dinosaurs alive today? Scientists are becoming more convinced of their existence. Have you heard of the `Loch Ness Monster‘ in Scotland? `Nessie,’ for short has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur.

Could a fish have developed into a dinosaur? As astonishing as it may seem, many evolutionists theorize that fish evolved into amphibians and amphibians into reptiles. This gradual change from fish to reptiles has no scientific basis. No transitional fossils have been or ever will be discovered because God created each type of fish, amphibian, and reptile as separate, unique animals. Any similarities that exist among them are due to the fact that one Master Craftsmen fashioned them all.

Let us presume for the sake of argument that Nessie exists, is a plesiosaur, and still lives 65 million years after all other plesiosaurs became extinct (err … creationists don’t accept 65 miliion years) … If it is a plesiosaur, then it is not a dinosaur, as Accelerated Christian Education claims. Though dinosaurs and plesiosaurs lived at the same time, plesiosaurs were not dinosaurs.

Loch Ness monster tour guide Tony Drummond, 47, told the Scottish Sun the curriculum is “ridiculous propaganda.”

And Bruce Wilson, a researcher specializing in the American political religious right, told the Scotsman that one of the texts also claims “dinosaurs were fire-breathing dragons.”

“It has little to do with science as we currently understand. It’s more like medieval scholasticism,” Wilson told the paper.

According to Scotland’s the Herald, one of the textbooks also provides a somewhat controversial look at the Ku Klux Klan.

“The [Ku Klux] Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross … In some communities it achieved a certain respectability as it worked with politicians,” the textbook reads, according to the Herald.

Recovered Kemp’s turtle returning to USA

Posted on June 25, 2012 by petrel41

This video is called Saving The Endangered Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle: Episode I – Nesting.

Translated from Dutch news agency ANP:

Sea turtle Flip may return to the U.S.

25/06/12, 14:08

The rare marine turtle which washed up late last year on the beach of Monster may return to the United States to go back to the ocean there. The U.S. government has announced this to Sea Life Scheveningen.

Immediately, the aquarium has asked for an export license for transporting Flip to the U.S. When Flip was found on December 10, she was very weak and had multiple injuries. Also, she refused to eat. In the past six months she has recovered well, her injuries have healed, and her weight has more than doubled, according to Sea Life Scheveningen.

Flip, who still resides in quarantine, is a Kemp’s turtle. These are normally only found in the Gulf of Mexico. It is the smallest sea turtle species of all. It is also one of the most endangered marine turtles.

The application for an export license takes about one month. When the license will be there, then within a few weeks Flip will fly by plane to the U.S.

Crisis, but not for bank billionaires

Posted on June 25, 2012 by petrel41

Bank fat cat cartoon

By Pat Garofalo in the USA:

Bank CEO Pay Grew By 12 Percent Last Year, While Worker Wages Near All-Time Lows

Jun 25, 2012 at 12:00 pm

According to an analysis by the pay research group Equilar, compensation for top bank CEOs grew by nearly 12 percent last year. The Financial Times noted that these increases occurred “despite widespread falls in profits and share prices“:

Top US and European bankers, including JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon and Citigroup’s Vikram Pandit, have enjoyed double-digit annual pay rises averaging almost 12 per cent, despite widespread falls in profits and share prices, Financial Times research shows. […]

The analysis of total pay awarded to 15 bank chiefs by Equilar, a US pay research group, shows they received an average 11.9 per cent pay rise last year to $12.8m, the second increase in a row. …

Bankers such as Brian Moynihan at Bank of America, Citigroup’s Mr Pandit and JPMorgan’s Mr Dimon enjoyed the largest gains.

Britain: Cartoon: RBS and NatWest bank system failure: here.

Are Banksters Redeemable? Interview With Former JPMorgan Director John Fullerton. Laura Flanders, The Nation: “John Fullerton is a former managing director at JPMorgan. Finance drives economics, he says, and economics largely determines the fate of the planet, yet the resources of the planet are finite. ‘The notion that exponential growth can go on indefinitely in a finite planet is in violation with arithmetic and basic physics.’ As long as growth is the sine qua non of market economic ideology: ‘We are lost'”: here.

New Greek finance minister already gone

Posted on June 25, 2012 by petrel41

Vassilis Rapanos

From the BBC:

25 June 2012

Last updated at 16:55 GMT

Greece’s newly designated finance minister, Vassilis Rapanos, has resigned less than a week after being appointed to the job.

In a letter to new Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, Mr Rapanos said he was stepping down due to ill health.

Mr Rapanos has been in hospital since last week receiving treatment for stomach pains.

Mr Samaras is himself recovering from eye surgery which has caused him to miss this week’s EU summit.

Mr Rapanos, who is chairman of the National Bank of Greece, was named finance minister last week as part of Greece’s new three-party coalition government.

However, he was rushed to hospital last Friday before he could be sworn in and has been in hospital ever since.

The BBC’s Mark Lowen in Athens say there has been speculation that Mr Rapanos is unhappy with the makeup of the new cabinet, and other reasons may lie behind his decision to resign.

Several names have been touted as Mr Rapanos’s replacement, including the former Prime Minister Lucas Papademos, he says.

The new coalition will be keen to fill the post swiftly, our correspondent adds.

Mr Samaras, meanwhile, underwent routine surgery on Saturday for a damaged retina and the operation was said to have been a success.

As well as missing the EU summit, Mr Samaras’s health problems also led the “troika” of rescue lenders to postpone a visit to Athens.

Inspectors from the EU, European Central Bank and IMF had been due to review Greece‘s progress in meeting bailout conditions on Monday.

Debt-stricken Greece is under huge international pressure to fulfil the terms of its international bailout.

Paraguay’s president fights against coup

Posted on June 25, 2012 by petrel41

This video is called Paraguay’s Lugo condemns ‘parliamentary coup’.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Lugo launches fight to regain presidency

Monday 25 June 2012

by Our Foreign Desk

Deposed Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo started a full-on fightback today against the politicians who engineered his dismissal.

Politicians loyal to him set up an alternative government and Mr Lugo pledged to upstage Paraguay’s new leaders at regional summits.

Mr Lugo’s new stance marked a dramatic about-face from just two days earlier when it seemed he would go meekly into retirement after the country’s Congress voted to impeach him.

Since then, he has received a flood of support from South American nations, including the Mercosur trade bloc, which suspended Paraguay from taking part in a summit that started in Argentina today.

Mercosur nations expressed “their most energetic condemnation of the rupture of democratic order” in Paraguay, in a joint statement issued by the Argentinian Foreign Ministry.

All three other full Mercosur members have reacted with alarm to Mr Lugo’s removal, denouncing the fact that the Senate’s impeachment trial lasted just five hours, giving the president little time to mount a defence.

Brazil and Argentina announced they were calling their ambassadors home and Uruguay expressed concern.

And Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said that his government will cut off fuel sales to the country.

Venezuela had become a key supplier to Paraguay as Mr Chavez built close ties with Mr Lugo.

Paraguay currently owes Venezuela’s state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela nearly $300 million (£193m).

The developments hampered efforts by newly sworn-in President Federico Franco to justify Lugo’s removal and fend off criticism from regional leaders.

Before the suspension, Franco had said that Foreign Minister Jose Felix Fernandez would represent Paraguay at the summit.

But Mr Lugo has now said that he will attend the summit and will participate in handing over the rotating presidency of another regional bloc Unasur to Peru next week.

“I will not collaborate with Franco’s government because it is bogus.

“It has no legitimacy,” Mr Lugo said.

His former cabinet ministers announced that they were establishing a parallel government to continue Mr Lugo’s policies and would meet on matters of state tomorrow.

“President Lugo will be with his ministers to take decisions and then inform what those determinations were,” said Augusto Dos Santos, Mr Lugo’s minister of social communication.

A Tragic Week in Paraguay: here.

Update 27 June 2012: here.

Amphibians wildlife video

Posted on June 25, 2012 by petrel41

This video says about itself:

The discovery of rare neotenic Tiger Salamanders, toads struggle to breed through drought, snakes hunt young amphibians to survive, and visually stunning time lapse changes of a wetland from Winter thaw, summer and Winter freeze.

Actor Scholten van Aschat faces theatre’s final curtain

Posted on June 25, 2012 by petrel41

Gijs Scholten van Aschat is one of the most famous actors in the Netherlands.

Though he has played in films, he is basically a stage actor.

Yesterday, 24 June 2012, he played a solo act in the LAK theatre in Leiden.

Why was such a “big” actor in that relatively small theatre?

Already in 2009, when there was a threat that the LAK theatre would close down, and there was a big, then successful, campaign to save it, Scholten van Aschat in a video (see below) expressed his support for the theatre and its good qualities.

In 1947, when the Netherlands and the whole world were much poorer than now, at Leiden University, the Leiden University Arts Centre and its theatre, the LAK theatre, started.

During the Great Economic Depression in the 1930s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, president of the USA, did not cut arts funding. Quite the contrary. The arts budget became much bigger, by giving unemployed artists work, etc.

In the present economic crisis, however, governments, including in the Netherlands, believe in the economic fairy tales of Milton Friedman and Margaret Thatcher.

Though Dutch voters oppose austerity, the collapsed caretaker Rightist minority government keeps cutting in education and arts.

Conforming to government policies, Leiden university bosses have decided to close down the theatre.

After an earlier farewell night at the theatre, Sunday 24 June afternoon was the last time the LAK theatre was open.

And the last actor on its stage, before its ultimate final curtain, was Gijs Scholten van Aschat.

Scholten van Aschat played an old clumsy theatre employee. Everyone had left him, behind a closed door. His only “company” was a coat, forgotten by a theatre patron.

Among the few words which Scholten van Aschat said was: “I am going to sit down”. However, there was no chair.

Then, he said “I am going to lie down”. He did. And died.

Venezuela bans shark finning

Posted on June 25, 2012 by petrel41

This video is called Caribbean Reef Sharks.

From Wildlife Extra:

Venezuela ends shark finning & creates protected area

Ban on commercial shark fishing in 1440 square miles

June 2012. Venezuela has set forth a series of measures to protect sharks within its waters. Most significantly, commercial shark fishing is now prohibited throughout the 3,730 square kilometres (1,440 square miles) of the Caribbean Sea that make up the popular Los Roques and Las Aves archipelagos, whose pristine beaches and coral reefs make it a diving and fishing attraction.

Important breeding ground and nursery

Scientists have identified Los Roques, located about 128 kilometres (80 miles) off the Venezuelan coast, as an important breeding ground and nursery for populations of several species of sharks, including the lemon shark and the Caribbean reef shark.

“Our research has found that newborn sharks in the mangroves and cays of Los Roques migrate throughout the Caribbean and Atlantic Ocean,” said Rafael Tavares, an expert with Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Agrícolas (INIA), Venezuela, who has researched sharks in the region for nearly 20 years. “These new, far-reaching protections would not be possible without the support of the Los Roques community, especially the local fishermen.”

Ban on shark finning

The new regulation also prohibits the practice of shark finning (cutting off the fins and dumping the body overboard at sea) and mandates that all of these animals caught in Venezuelan waters must be brought to port with their fins naturally attached.

“Venezuela’s decision to prohibit shark finning means that it now joins the rest of the countries of South America, North America, and Central America in banning this wasteful practice,” said Jill Hepp, manager of global shark conservation at the Pew Environment Group. “Combined with the breeding ground safe haven in Los Roques and Las Aves, this is the latest step in the growing global movement to save these magnificent animals.”

Sharks are highly susceptible to overfishing because of biological characteristics such as long life, low birth-rate, and few offspring. It is estimated that up to 73 million are killed annually for their fins, primarily due to increased demand for shark fin soup.

Courtesy of The Pew Environment Group.

Shark ‘finning’ finally outlawed in Spain (theolivepress.es)
European anti-shark finning victory (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
American Samoa ends shark fin trade (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
EU takes steps to bolster shark finning bans (greenerideal.com)
European Parliament Votes To Ban Shark Finning (huffingtonpost.com)
Pew Applauds European Parliament Vote for Stronger Shark Finning Ban (prnewswire.com)
EU finally ends shark finning (terradaily.com)
Taking Shark Fins off the Menu (theecologist.org)
Applaud European Parliament for Closing Loopholes in Shark Finning Laws (forcechange.com)
EU votes to ban shark finning (ctvnews.ca)

Galapagos tortoise Lonesome George dies

Posted on June 25, 2012 by petrel41

This video is about the Galapagos islands and the tortoise Lonesome George.

From the BBC:

24 June 2012 Last updated at 22:25 GMT

Last Pinta giant tortoise Lonesome George dies

Staff at the Galapagos National Park in Ecuador say Lonesome George, a giant tortoise believed to be the last of its subspecies, has died.

Scientists estimate he was about 100 years old.

Park officials said they would carry out a post-mortem to determine the cause of his death.

With no offspring and no known individuals from his subspecies left, Lonesome George became known as the rarest creature in the world.

For decades, environmentalists unsuccessfully tried to get the Pinta Island tortoise to reproduce with females from a similar subspecies on the Galapagos Islands.

Park officials said the tortoise was found dead in his corral by his keeper of 40 years, Fausto Llerena.

While his exact age was not known, Lonesome George was estimated to be about 100, which made him a young adult as the subspecies can live up to an age of 200.

Galapagos icon

Lonesome George was first seen by a Hungarian scientist on the Galapagos island of Pinta in 1972.

Environmentalists had believed his subspecies (Chelonoidis nigra abingdoni) had become extinct.

Lonesome George became part of the Galapagos National Park breeding programme.

After 15 years of living with a female tortoise from the nearby Wolf volcano, Lonesome George did mate, but the eggs were infertile.

He also shared his corral with female tortoises from Espanola island, which are genetically closer to him than those from Wolf volcano, but Lonesome George failed to mate with them.

He became a symbol of the Galapagos Islands, which attract some 180,000 visitors a year.

Hunted to extinction

Galapagos National Park officials said that with George’s death, the Pinta tortoise subspecies has become extinct.

They said his body would probably be embalmed to conserve him for future generations.

Tortoises were plentiful on the Galapagos islands until the late 19th century, but were later hunted for their meat by sailors and fishermen to the point of extinction.

Their habitat furthermore suffered when goats were introduced from the mainland.

The differences in appearance between tortoises from different Galapagos islands were among the features which helped the British naturalist Charles Darwin formulate his theory of evolution.

Some 20,000 giant tortoises of other subspecies still live on the Galapagos.

Iraq war and Tony Blair, new evidence

Posted on June 25, 2012 by petrel41

This video says about itself:

This is a video highlighting the propaganda and lies told by the Bush administration in order to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

These lies included :

– Iraq supported Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups
– Iraq was developing nuclear weapons
– Iraq had huge quantities of chemical and biological weapons
– Iraq had a fleet of unmanned vehicles to deliver these weapons
– Iraq has failed to destroy its chemical and biological weapons
– Iraq attempted to buy uranium from Africa
– Iraq was amassing these weapons to use against the USA and its allies
– The US security services knew where these weapons were
– The insurgency would be short lived
– The US military were wrong about the number of troops required and Bush/Rumsfeld/Cheney knew best

There were plenty of others …

By Rory MacKinnon in England:

Campbell says Blair blocked Iraq war advice

Sunday 24 June 2012

Peace activists demanded that Tony Blair be put back on the witness stand and then in the dock today after his former spin doctor revealed explosive new details about the run-up to the illegal Iraq war.

The disgraced ex-PM barred his attorney general from giving his ministers “nuanced” advice against invading, according to the newly published fourth book of Alastair Campbell‘s diaries.

Mr Campbell wrote that then-attorney general Lord Goldsmith had wanted to “put the reality” of the situation to the Cabinet before Blair blocked his report.

Lord Goldsmith had written a legal opinion to Blair on March 7 2003 stating that there was a “reasonable case” for the war but “also a case to be made the other way.”

Yet less than a week later Lord Goldsmith chopped his opinion to just a single page after Blair‘s staff told him that the PM would “simply say the advice said there was a reasonable case.”

Some estimates put the Iraq war‘s death toll at 1.5 million, including the knock-on effects of destroyed infrastructure and sectarian violence.

And anti-war activists said the fresh revelations meant that Mr Blair, Mr Campbell and Lord Goldsmith must be called back to the Chilcot inquiry into the war, which is now preparing its final report.

Stop the War Coalition‘s Lindsey German said it was a last chance to correct the official history.

“I think that this is yet another piece of evidence that Blair set out to mislead not just the British public but his own Cabinet,” she said.

The fact that it came from “partner-in-crime” Alastair Campbell made it even more damning, she added.

But the world would “never, never, never” forgive Blair, no matter what the inquiry decided: “There will always be people around the world who see him as a war criminal.”