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Daily Archives: February 1, 2017
Women’s March against Trump, 11 March Amsterdam
This video from the USA says about itself:
Rev. Jesse Jackson: Confirming Sessions as Attorney General Would Stick a Knife Through Martin Luther King‘s Work
1 February 2017
On Tuesday, Senate Democrats managed to delay a vote on Jeff Sessions’s nomination for attorney general. The move comes amid continued protest against Jeff Sessions over his history of opposing the Voting Rights Act and his history of making racist comments. On Monday, about 10 members of the NAACP, including President Cornell William Brooks, were arrested at a sit-in at Sessions’s office in Mobile, Alabama. It was the second NAACP sit-in against Sessions’s confirmation where Brooks and others were arrested. For more, we speak with Reverend Jesse Jackson, founder and president of Rainbow/PUSH and a Democratic presidential candidate in 1984 and 1988.
From Facebook, by the organisers of the first Women’s March against Trump in Amsterdam, on 21 January 2017:
International Women’s Day [8 March] and upcoming Netherlands elections [15 March] fuel us to meet again, in solidarity, to show our numbers and support each others’ actions. We stand for the end of discrimination, equal rights for all humans and we value each other’s diversity and passions to create a world with more commpassion.
More information coming soon – save the date.
They announce another Women’s March in Amsterdam on Saturday 11 March, noon.
21 Women Respond To Trump Telling Female Staff To ‘Dress Like Women’. Reminder: There’s no one way to dress like a woman: here.
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Carp swims under ice
This 31 January 2017 video shows a carp swimming under ice.
Luuk Ruys from the Netherlands made this video.
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Dutch historians against Trump
This video from the USA says about itself:
Gorsuch Nomination Draws Hundreds of Protesters to Steps of Supreme Court
1 February 2017
Whether selecting a nominee for cabinet position, imposing gag rules on government agencies, or issuing an executive order, Trump is inspiring a steady stream of resistance at each turn.
From the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, the Netherlands:
Pledge of non-cooperation with Trump’s Executive Order on Immigration
On Friday 27 January, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order on Immigration effectively banning people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen entry to the United States. Both in its presuppositions and its consequences, the Executive Order is discriminatory against the inhabitants of the countries concerned.
As members of the scientific community in the Netherlands, we sign this pledge of non-cooperation with the Executive Order. Our concern goes out to all persons who are now barred from entering the United States on discriminatory grounds.
We are acutely aware of the implications this measure will have for our own daily activities as scientists and academics. Scientific development thrives on international cooperation and the possibility to engage with scholars across national borders. We are proud of our strong ties with individuals and institutions both in the United States and in the seven affected countries. We will work to maintain and strengthen these connections, and will not accept the exclusion of any colleagues as a result of this ban.
We therefore declare, thatwithin our universities, research institutes and as individual scientists, we will work to uphold our principles of non-discrimination, cooperation and solidarity;
we support the thousands of scientists and their institutions inside the US and elsewhere who have expressed their protest against the Executive Order;
wherever the Executive Order might affect the work of scientists from the seven countries, we will take practical steps to cancel such effects (e.g. when organizing conferences or international workshops, joint research projects, and other forms of cooperation);
we will use our connections to encourage action from the international scientific community to mitigate the immediate results of the ban, and to strengthen the call for its repeal.We ask members of the scientific community to endorse and spread this pledge, both on an individual basis and through their institutions.
International Institute of Social History
For more information please contact communicatie{at]iisg.nl
Posted: 1 February 2017
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Osprey at owl nest in Georgia, USA
This video from the USA says about itself:
1 February 2017
This morning marked another visit by an Osprey to the empty nest on the Great Horned Owl Savannah Cam. While Osprey visits have become more frequent, there’s still no telling if an Osprey breeding pair plans to use this nest as their own, as breeding season is still a ways away.
Mid Atlantic states, like Georgia, offer a longer window for Ospreys to breed than more northern areas where the breeding season is limited by colder temperatures. For example, studies have found that Osprey breeding pairs in North Carolina generally start laying eggs anywhere from mid-March to as late as June!
This camera livestream is a partnership between the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Skidaway Audubon.
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Big Dutch The Hague demonstration against Trump’s xenophobia
This 1 February 2017 video is about the big demonstration today on the Malieveld in The Hague, the Netherlands, against the xenophobic policies of United States President Trump.
And so is this video.
And so is this video.
And so is this video.
On stage, Secretary Bussemaker (Culture, PvdA party) spoke on behalf of the Dutch government. She called the decision by Trump a slap in the face to all those who fight for freedom and equality. She said she stands next to the protesters and that this is “about values” .
“I have long thought that the closing of borders was nothing more than hollow campaign rhetoric, but those poisonous words have become reality,” she said.
Many demonstrators had placards with them with texts against Trump and for tolerance. Some protesters also chanted slogans like No fear, no hate and Make love great again, referring to Trump’s campaign slogan Make America Great again.
Photos are here.
After the rally on the Malieveld, demonstrators tried to march to the United States embassy at the Lange Voorhout. However, police stopped them.
These two videos by Dutch right-wing daily De Telegraaf are about the Malieveld rally.
And this video is about a 31 January 2017 demonstration against Trump in Amsterdam.
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Rare ant, first time on Texel island
This photo, by the California Academy of Sciences, shows a Temnothorax albipennis ant.
This species is rare in the Netherlands. It lives only in the west coast sand dunes, from Voorne to the Zwanenwater nature reserve.
Warden Erik van der Spek reports today that he found a Temnothorax albipennis ant in the Westerduinen sand dunes of Texel last summer. This is a first for the island, and also a first for anywhere north of Zwanenwater. It was a winged female.
Texel island spiders: here.
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Quebec mass murder by Le Pen fan Bissonnette
This video says about itself:
White Supremacist Kills 6 At Quebec Mosque
31 January 2017
Fox News tried to blame a Morrocan guy for this crime to justify Donald Trump’s #MuslimBan. The Canadian police identified Alexandre Bissonnette as the one responsible for this evil act.
By Jacques Richard in Canada:
Quebec City mosque assailant identified with ultra-right
1 February 2017
New information continues to come to light confirming the chauvinist, ultra-right wing views of Alexandre Bissonnette, the 27 year-old Laval University student who has been charged with five counts of murder and six of attempted murder over Sunday evening’s attack on a Quebec City mosque.
Bissonette contacted police only minutes after the assault on the Islamic Cultural Center of Quebec and surrendered to them shortly thereafter. Weapons, including an AK-47 automatic rifle and a high-powered hand-gun, were found in his car.
According to eye-witnesses, the masked gunman who opened fire on Muslims at evening prayer reloaded his weapon twice during the attack.
Sunday’s shooting left six Muslim-Canadians dead and caused nineteen other to be hospitalized. The dead included Canadians of Algerian, Moroccan, and Guinean origin. Most, if not all, were longtime Canadian residents. One was a professor at Laval University. Several others worked for the Quebec government.
Two of the wounded remain in a critical condition. Doctors have stated that they may suffer lifelong impairment.
According to authorities, at his arrest Bissonette expressed remorse, or at least concern about the fatalities, and spoke about taking his own life.
Police claim he has given no explanation for his actions. Nor apparently did he leave any on his computer or social media.
However, he was clearly acting on the basis of ultra-right wing political views.
Since Sunday night, numerous people who encountered Bissonnette in recent years, from the spokesman for a refugees support group, to fellow Laval University students, have said he was virulently anti-immigrant and an unabashed admirer of Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s neo-fascist National Front, and of US President Donald Trump.
Both Le Pen and Trump have systematically stoked anti-immigrant chauvinism and Islamophobia.
Last Friday, just two days before the mosque massacre, Trump signed a patently anti-democratic and discriminatory executive order, excluding refugees, visitors and US permanent residents from seven Muslim countries from entering the US.
According to several associates of Bissonnette, Le Pen’s high-profile visit to Quebec last spring served to radicalize him.
Those who viewed Bissonnette’s Facebook page before it was taken down on police order, report that in addition to confirming his support for Le Pen, the National Front and Donald Trump, it showed him to be an admirer of the Israeli Defense Forces and a gun enthusiast.
Olivier Banville, the former president of the Parti Québécois (PQ) club at Laval University, told the Montreal daily Le Devoir that Bissonnette was in discussion with him for a time in 2014 about joining the pro-Quebec independence party.
Significantly this was when the PQ was championing a so-called Quebec Charter of Values— chauvinist legislation that would have banned public sector workers, at the cost of their jobs, from wearing religious head-coverings and other “ostentatious” religious symbols. An exception was to be made for “discrete” crucifixes.
Media reports have portrayed Bissonnette as an introvert and a loner who had been subjected to bullying throughout much of his youth.
That he is likely psychologically troubled in no way detracts from the political character of his actions and, even more importantly, the culpability of the political establishment and capitalist elite.
In Canada, as in and the other imperialist “democracies,” the ruling elites have promoted a noxious political and social environment through their phony “war on terror” narrative. They have carried out wars of aggression in the Middle East, sweeping attacks on democratic rights, and policies aimed at redistributing wealth to the most privileged sections of society.
Canada’s current prime minister, the Liberal Justin Trudeau, denounced the Harper Conservative government’s open appeals to Islamophobia as “divisive.” However, Trudeau and the Liberals voted for Harper’s Bill C-52, which in the name of fighting “Islamic terror,” has armed the national security apparatus with what even the Globe and Mail, the traditional mouthpiece of Toronto’s Bay Street banks, describes as police-state powers.
…
For the past ten years Quebec’s political establishment and corporate media have promoted the lie that immigrants, especially from Muslim countries, are a potential threat to “our democratic values.”
The amalgam between Muslims and terrorists is never far away. Last August, for example, Jean-François Lisée, the new leader of the Parti Québécois, the alternate governing party of the Quebec ruling class since the 1970s, issued a demand on his Facebook page for the “banning of the burka BEFORE a jihadist uses it to hide his or her movements for an attack.”
In the aftermath of Sunday’s atrocity some journalists have acknowledged, if only very partially, its connection to Quebec’s reactionary debate over “excessive accommodation” to minorities. Michèle Ouimet, a columnist with the Montreal daily La Presse, pointed to an “unhealthy climate fueled by trash radios that allow themselves to say anything and chroniclers who vomit on Muslims and Jews.”
In an official statement, Philippe Couillard, the Liberal Premier of Quebec, obliquely referred to this climate by saying: “The words that are spoken and the words that are written are not insignificant.”
The two parties most openly associated with the chauvinist discourse on Quebec “identity,” the PQ of Lisée and the Coalition Avenir Québec of Francois Legault, immediately rejected any link between their anti-immigrant appeals and the horrific act carried out by an ultra-rightist most likely influenced and encouraged by their positions. The two have promised to continue to demand a public debate on banning the chador and the burka in public—although Lisée thought it politic [to] concede that his earlier warning that a burka could be used to conceal an AK-47 assault rifle was “not a good idea.”
Couillard’s statement, however, was entirely demagogic. His government has mounted an all-out assault on workers by slashing social programs and pensions, while cutting taxes on the rich and big business. At the same time, it has tabled legislation that directly targets the Muslim community by forbidding access to health care, education, and other essential public services (except in emergencies) to women who cover their faces for religious reasons.
The intensified atmosphere of Islamophobia that has been whipped up by mainstream politicians in Quebec and with the rise of Donald Trump in the USA has had the effect of inspiring racist vermin to take up arms. Alexandre Bissonnette, the alleged shooter was “known by several activists in Quebec City for his identity based, pro-Le Pen and anti-feminist positions at the University of Laval and on social networks.” The responsibility for this bloodshed rests not only on the shoulders of the shooter himself but equally on those politicians and commentators who have been stirring up hatred and Islamophobia: here.
Canada Calls Out Fox News For ‘False And Misleading’ Quebec Shooter Tweets. The network is “perpetuating fear and division,” a spokeswoman for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said: here.
Muslim immigrant cabbies say they face discrimination in Quebec City job market: here.
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Water beetle crawls under ice
This 22 January 2017 video shows a beetle crawling under ice on the IJssel river in the Netherlands. Very probably, a great silver water beetle.
E. Ehrlich made this video.
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Big volcano eruption in Hawaii
This video from Hawaii says about itself:
31 January 2017
Kilauea Volcano lava stream at the Kamokuna ocean entry between 25 – 29 January 2017. According to USGS, “Kīlauea Volcano continues to erupt at its summit and East Rift Zone. Lava continues to enter the ocean at Kamokuna and surface flows remain active within 2.4 km (1.5 mi) of the vent at Puʻu ʻŌʻō.”
Dear Kitty. Some blog 