This 17 January 2017 video says about itself:
Venomous Red-Tailed Viper Snake giving birth to 12 babies in India – National Geographic
https://twitter.com/WildWildTWest/status/1158774444342546434
Young snakes born in India
1
Daily Archives: February 13, 2017
Racists in the Trump administration
This video from the USA says about itself:
President Bannon? Racist, Islamophobic Breitbart Leader Consolidates Power in Trump White House
1 February 2017
President Trump took the unprecedented step of giving Bannon a full seat on the “principals committee” of the National Security Council last week. Bannon has emerged as one of the most powerful figures in the White House. On Tuesday, The New York Times ran an editorial posing the question “President Bannon?” The Times wrote, “We’ve never witnessed a political aide move as brazenly to consolidate power as Stephen Bannon—nor have we seen one do quite so much damage so quickly to his putative boss’s popular standing or pretenses of competence.” For more, we speak with Josh Harkinson, senior reporter at Mother Jones. His recent article is headlined “The Dark History of the White House Aides Who Crafted Trump’s ‘Muslim Ban.'”
By Patrick Martin in the USA:
Nazis in the Trump White House
13 February 2017
Viewers of the Sunday morning television interview programs were given their first long look yesterday at a top Trump aide, Stephen Miller, the so-called “chief policy adviser” at the White House. What the American public saw was repulsive. If Hollywood casters are looking for someone to play the role of an SS officer in the next World War II movie, they’ve got their man in Miller.
Miller appeared on Fox News, ABC, NBC and CBS. Eyes fixed straight ahead in a glassy stare, his replies to questions consisted exclusively of pre-programmed lies about the unlimited powers of the president in the areas of immigration and national security. He denounced the federal judges who halted the enforcement of Trump’s executive order banning all refugees and visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries.
ABC’s George Stephanopoulos was compelled to point out that Miller was lying through his teeth, and challenged him to provide a shred of evidence for his claims of massive vote fraud depriving Trump of a majority of the popular vote. Even Fox News interviewer Chris Wallace seemed taken aback by the performance.
Asked directly why Trump was leveling personal attacks on judges, the media and even fellow Republicans, Miller employed the central demagogic theme of the Trump cabal to justify its assault on democratic rights. “Our position is that we are the ally of millions of hard-working forgotten men and women all across this country,” he declared, “and President Trump is their champion. That’s our coalition. Our coalition is millions and millions and millions of decent patriotic citizens who just want a pay raise, who just want a good school, who just want a safe community.”
This was said, in bullying tones, about a billionaire president who opposes even an increase in the minimum wage, let alone a genuine rise in the living standards of working people, and whose cabinet picks are pledged to destroy Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, public education, workplace safety regulations and all other forms of social protection for working people.
And who is this “chief policy adviser?”
Miller was profiled by both the New York Times and Washington Post on Sunday. The 31-year-old aide has been an ultra-right activist since his teens. Born into an upper-middle class liberal Jewish family, something went seriously wrong in Miller’s personal development.
He developed a fascination with the extreme right. At Duke University he found a friend in Richard Spencer, the anti-Semitic white supremacist neo-Nazi who has been promoted by Breitbart News. After college, Miller went on to become a spokesman for a series of ultra-right figures in Congress, including Representative Michelle Bachmann and Senator Jeff Sessions. Early in 2016, he joined the Trump campaign, eventually becoming the candidate’s chief speechwriter and a frequent warm-up act at Trump campaign rallies.
Miller is one of a trio of high-profile fascists in the White House. The ultra-right views of White House “chief strategist” Stephen K. Bannon have been widely publicized in the American media, from cover stories in weekly magazines to profiles in major daily newspapers. Bannon ran the ultra-right Breitbart News until last August and made it a focal point for the so-called alt-right.
A New York Times profile published Sunday noted Bannon’s familiarity with the work of Julius Evola, an Italian racist and anti-Semite whose writings were a staple of Mussolini’s fascist dictatorship, and who has been cited as an inspirer of the Greek neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn. Bannon cited Evola’s writings in a speech to a Vatican conference of right-wing Catholics in 2014.
A lesser-known but equally repugnant figure is Michael Anton, recently appointed as director of strategic communications for the National Security Council, making him the second-highest press spokesman for the White House after Sean Spicer. A former speechwriter for New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Anton was a Bush White House aide, in which capacity he fervently backed the decision to invade Iraq. He moved on to communications positions with right-wing publisher (and owner of Fox News) Rupert Murdoch and with Citibank, and then a post as a managing director of the huge hedge fund BlackRock.
Last week, William Kristol, publisher of the neo-conservative journal Weekly Standard, revealed that Anton was the author, under a pseudonym, of a screed issued last September and widely circulated in right-wing circles titled The Flight 93 Election. This essay portrayed a Trump victory as the sole hope for the survival of America (and implicitly compared Hillary Clinton to the Al Qaeda hijackers of the doomed United Airlines flight on September 11, 2001).
Anton made an explicitly racist appeal for support for Trump, claiming that “the ceaseless importation of Third World foreigners with no tradition of, taste for, or experience in liberty means that the electorate grows more left, more Democratic, less Republican, less republican, and less traditionally American with every cycle.” As a result, he warned, the 2016 election was the last chance for “my people,” i.e., white Americans.
This argument is so openly racist and authoritarian that Kristol, himself a longtime right-wing Republican operative and warmonger, compared Anton to the jurist Carl Schmitt, a notorious Nazi apologist.
The White House has over the past half-century provided employment for many unsavory and criminal types. But the Trump administration represents an entirely unprecedented descent into the lower depths. The presence of political filth like Bannon and Miller in positions of great power and influence in the White House signifies a terminal crisis of American democracy.
There have already been suggestions, from New York Times columnists Paul Krugman and Roger Cohen, among others, that the Trump administration plans to seize on the next terrorist incident as the justification for the abolition of democratic rights. Cohen even cited the precedent of the Reichstag Fire, the pretext manufactured by Hitler to impose emergency rule in Germany.
These columnists offer no explanation as to how this situation has arisen, let alone any proposal as to how the accelerating descent toward a police state can be stopped. As is typical of Democratic Party propagandists, they say nothing about the obvious connection between the breakdown of democracy and the socio-economic realities of contemporary capitalism.
The threat of dictatorship arises directly out of the oligarchic character of American society. Trump, Bannon, Miller and Anton did not emerge from a Munich beer hall, but from Wall Street and the corporate elite. Trump is a real estate and casino billionaire, with close ties to the media bosses. Bannon was a Goldman Sachs executive and his media venture, Breitbart, has been underwritten by hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer. Anton served Rupert Murdoch, then CitiBank, then BlackRock, the world’s largest hedge fund.
There is a growing movement against the Trump administration and its attacks on democratic rights and the social interests of the “bottom” 90 percent of society. This movement requires a clear political strategy and program.
The White House’s omission of Jewish victims of the Holocaust in its statement for Holocaust Remembrance Day raised objections from Jewish groups across the political spectrum but the Trump administration’s combative defense was perhaps the most surprising move by a presidency facing record low approval numbers. Last Monday, Deputy Assistant to the President Sebastian Gorka refused to admit that that it may have been poor judgment not to specifically acknowledge the suffering of Jews in the Holocaust. Gorka was an odd choice of proxies for the White House to put forward in defense of its Holocaust Remembrance day statement. He has appeared in multiple photographs wearing the medal of a Hungarian group listed by the State Department as having collaborated with the Nazis during World War II: here.
Related articles
Dark-eyed junco video
Syrian student hit by Trump’s travel ban
This video from the USA says about itself:
Deported Arizona Woman Vows To Fight On
13 February 2017
Guadalupe García de Rayos became the first victim of Trump’s immigration crackdown, she vows to fight on.
By Zac Corrigan and Kevin Martinez in the USA:
Interview: Syrian student in US separated from family by Trump’s travel ban
13 February 2017
R is an undergraduate student at San Diego State University [SDSU] in Southern California. She was born in Syria, and is the only member of her family living in the US. Last month, President Trump signed an executive order restricting travel to and from the US for citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries. She attended a rally to defend immigrants and refugees held by the International Youth and Students for Social Equality, and later met with World Socialist Web Site reporters.
WSWS: Can you tell us your story?
R: I was born in Latakia, Syria [population 300,000], on the coast [of the Mediterranean Sea]. When I was young, my family and I moved to Dubai, because of my father’s job. After high school, I applied to colleges and I got in to SDSU. So I came to the US in 2015. At that point, the war in Syria had been going on for four years.
My parents moved from Dubai to London last summer. In Dubai if you don’t have a job for two months you’re deported, so it wasn’t very stable. But I can’t go to London, because I’m not a minor and my parents can’t sponsor me. I applied for a [UK] visa, but they rejected me twice, because they thought I would try to take refuge there.
So I’m here in the US on a two-year visa, which is about to expire, even though it takes four years to graduate from college. A visa allows you to leave and enter the US as you wish. They gave it to me for two years instead of four, and they said, “Just renew it!”
And now with this [executive order], I can’t renew it. And my family’s US visas are also canceled, according to the ban, so they can’t come visit me. For now, I can legally reside in the US until 2019, but if I leave I can’t come back. I can be here and continue school, but I’m separated from my family.
WSWS: So what are you going to do?
R: Well, I’m applying to colleges in Canada for next semester. But I go through stress that most 19-year-olds don’t have to deal with. Just thinking, where are my parents going to be if my dad lost his job? If I get kicked out [of the US or Canada], where would I go? I would have to go back to Syria.
WSWS: What would happen if you had to go back to Syria?
R: In Syria, it’s not like, “Oh, I’m gonna go back, I’m gonna start over.”
My grandparents still live in Latakia. They have no electricity and no water service. They buy car batteries to charge their lights. And imagine if you need medicine! When my grandfather got sick, I had to buy medicine here, and send it to someone, who then sent it to him in Syria. He’s 82! It wasn’t like this before the war. It wasn’t a rich city, but it didn’t have the kind of poverty, violence and drug problems that it has now. There are so many homeless now. There is basically no system there.
Syrian refugees have become cheap labor. I did a research paper about Syrians working in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan—Syrians who fled through the borders and needed a job. In Lebanon, for example, there is a ban for Syrians, controlling what jobs they can have. You can’t be a manager, or work in certain industries. There are people who were college professors now working as janitors. It’s hard on your ego, but you have to feed your family.
A whole generation of children that were seeing all this violence, parents killed, living with bullets everyday … They are going to have mental and emotional problems.
WSWS: How difficult is it to become a refugee in the US?
R: Well, before the ban, if you wanted to take refuge in the US, or seek political asylum, you went to a lawyer and filled out an application. And it’s not cheap. You’d pay the lawyer more than $1,000 for just one person. Then, it can take up to three years to get accepted—it depends on your language proficiency, how much money you have, and so on. After another year, you can get a green card. And then it’s about four years to become a US citizen. Total, it can take 7-10 years, and it can be canceled at any moment. That’s what has happened to people I know. They were years through the process when they were rejected, and they had to go back.
In the airport they now have the right to check through your phone and laptop and ask you for your social media, and go through that, and interrogate you. My friend who came back from winter break was kept for five hours at the airport. And he’s Saudi, which is not one of the seven countries [banned by Trump’s executive order].
I saw on the news that a Mexican man at the airport had a joke about Trump on his phone and they canceled his visa! Isn’t that kind of like a dictatorship?
WSWS: Is it different for the rich?
R: What a lot of rich Syrians did is they bought passports. There has become a market for this. A passport to a safe country can cost half a million dollars or more. Or there are other ways. If you can afford to buy a house in Greece, for example, you can just become a permanent resident there.
WSWS: What do you think about the actions of the US military in Syria?
R: On the news, they’re reporting that the US is supporting a revolution, for freedom and democracy! But what’s happening is that they’re coming in with troops, and Russia is coming in with troops. Russia has been Syria’s ally and they don’t want to lose any more authority to the US, like what happened in Ukraine and in Cuba. So it’s a power struggle. On the ground in Syria, there is no revolution, it’s US versus Russia.
The US’s role … some people say that it was a conspiracy, that there never was any revolution. That it was proven that there were agents sent in to spark this. [The official story is that] there is a war between Alawis and Sunnis. But my family is half and half. You think they’re fighting all day? No.
WSWS: What do you think about the claims of Trump that the ban on refugees and immigrants is needed to protect the US from terrorists?
R: You have to look at the facts. The US comes in with its military, and destroys the Middle East, Afghanistan, and then accuses anyone who fights against them of being a global terrorist. But when [the US] comes into the Middle East with troops and weapons, what do they get? Obama got a Nobel Peace Prize! How? He’s killed and deported so many people.
New England Patriots players plan to boycott meeting with Trump: here.
THE CURRENT VERSION OF THE TRAVEL BAN IS REPORTEDLY GOING INTO EFFECT Visa applicants from the six Muslim-majority countries must have an immediate relative to be admitted to the U.S., which means a parent, spouse, child, adult son or daughter, son-in-law, daughter-in-law or sibling, including step siblings and other step family relations. Grandparents, aunts, uncles and so forth do not count. [Reuters]
Related articles
Red deer, other animals in winter
This 9 February 2017 video from Hoge Veluwe national park in the Netherlands is about counting red deer.
And in this 23 January 2017 video from Hoge Veluwe national park, warden Henk looks for tracks in the snow by red deer, roe deer, wood pigeon, red fox and other animals.
Related articles
Dutch astronomer boycotts USA because of Trump
According to Dutch daily De Volkskrant today, Dutch astronomer Ilse van Bemmel has decided that for the time being she will not go to congresses in the USA.
Because of solidarity with everyone who is no longer welcome there. Whether they are refugees or scientists.
Related articles
Great Backyard Bird Count, February 17-20
This 2014 video from Toronto in Canada is called The Great Backyard Bird Count.
From BirdLife:
Help conservation by counting birds this weekend
By Audubon, Bird Studies Canada & Cornell Lab, 13 Feb 2017
Birdwatchers around the world are taking part in the Great Backyard Bird Count on February 17-20. Join us to participate in one of the biggest citizen science projects in the world.
A lot has changed since the first Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) was held in 1998. But the enthusiasm of its growing number of participants for this now-global event has never wavered. The 20th annual GBBC is taking place February 17-20 in backyards, parks, nature centres, on hiking trails, school grounds, balconies, and beaches – anywhere you find birds.
Birdwatchers count the birds they see for at least 15 minutes on one or more days of the count, then enter their checklists at birdcount.org – All the data contribute to a snapshot of bird distribution and help scientists see changes over the past 20 years.
“The very first GBBC was an experiment,” says the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Marshall Iliff, a leader of the eBird programme. “We wanted to see if people would use the Internet to send us their bird sightings. Clearly the experiment was a success!” eBird collects bird observations globally every day of the year and is the online platform used by the GBBC.
That first year, birdwatchers submitted about 13,500 checklists from the United States and Canada. Fast-forward to the most recent event in 2016. An estimated 163,763 birdwatchers from more than 100 countries submitted 162,052 bird checklists reporting 5689 species–more than half the known bird species in the world.
“The Great Backyard Bird Count is a great way to introduce people to participation in citizen science,” says Audubon (BirdLife in the US) Vice President and Chief Scientist Gary Langham. “No other programme allows volunteers to take an instantaneous snapshot of global bird populations that can contribute to our understanding of how a changing climate is affecting birds.”
Varying weather conditions so far this winter are producing a few trends that GBBC participants can watch for during the count. eBird reports show many more waterfowl and kingfishers remaining further north than usual because they are finding open water. If that changes, these birds could move southward.
Also noted are higher than usual numbers of Bohemian Waxwing Bombycilla garrulus in the Pacific Northwest and northern Rocky Mountains. And while some winter finches have been spotted in the East, such as Red Crossbill Loxia curvirostra, Redpoll Acanthis flammea, Evening Grosbeak Hesperiphona vespertina, and a few Pine Grosbeak Pinicola enucleator, there seem to be no big irruptions so far. A few eye-catching Snowy Owls Bubo scandiacus have been reported in the northern half of the United States.
Jon McCracken, Bird Studies Canada’s National Programme Director, reminds participants in Canada and the US to keep watch for snowies. He says, “The GBBC has done a terrific job of tracking irruptions of Snowy Owls southward over the past several years. We can’t predict what winter 2017 will bring, because Snowy Owl populations are so closely tied to unpredictable ‘cycles’ of lemmings in the Arctic. These cycles occur at intervals between two and six years. Nevertheless, there are already reports of Snowy Owls as far south as Virginia.’
In addition to counting birds, the GBBC photo contest has also been a hit since it was introduced in 2006. Since then, tens of thousands of stunning images have been submitted. For the 20th anniversary of the GBBC, the public is invited to vote for their favourite top photo from each of the past 11 years in a special album they will find on the GBBC website home page. Voting takes place during the four days of the GBBC.
Learn more about how to take part in the Great Backyard Bird Count at birdcount.org where downloadable instructions and an explanatory PowerPoint are available. The GBBC is a joint project of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society with partner Bird Studies Canada. The GBBC is made possible in part in Canada by sponsors Armstrong Bird Food and Wild Birds Unlimited.
Editors: See the winners of the 2016 GBBC Photo Contest. If you find a winner from your coverage area, please let Birds Studies Canada know if you would like a copy of the image for web or print (if high resolution is available).
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Real Neat Blog Award, congratulations to all ten nominees!
Late in 2014, I made this new award: the Real Neat Blog Award. There are so many bloggers whose blogs deserve more attention. So, I will try to do something about that 🙂
It is the first award that I ever made. I did some computer graphics years ago, before I started blogging; but my computer drawing had become rusty 🙂
The ‘rules’ of the Real Neat Blog Award are: (feel free not to act upon them if you don’t have time; or don’t accept awards; etc.):
1. Put the award logo on your blog.
2. Answer 7 questions asked by the person who nominated you.
3. Thank the people who nominated you, linking to their blogs.
4. Nominate any number of bloggers you like, linking to their blogs.
5. Let them know you nominated them (by commenting on their blog etc.)
My seven questions are:
1. Where do most visits to your blog come from?
2. What is your favourite sport?
3. What has been a special moment for you so far in 2017?
4. What is your favourite quote?
5. What was your favourite class when still at school?
6. Anything you had wished to have learned earlier?
7. What musical instrument have you tried to play?
My nominees are:
2. Rattiesforeverworldpresscom
5. WordDreams…
7. Art Blog
10. When Life Hands You Lemons…
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Many birds at Ontario, Canada feeders
This video says about itself:
Monday Morning Traffic Jam in Ontario
13 February 2017
Redpolls and Pine Grosbeaks search for their spot at the feeder amidst the sound of cracking sunflower seeds.
The FeederWatch cam is located in a residential neighborhood in Manitouwadge, Ontario.
Related articles
Drowned Syrian boy Aylan’s aunt speaks
From RT.com:
West ‘did nothing’ to end war in Syria, says aunt of drowned Syrian boy
Published time: 13 Feb, 2017 10:31
Edited time: 13 Feb, 2017 17:19The Western countries have done nothing to resolve the Syrian crisis, pursuing their false narrative instead, while the real situation in Syria stays underreported, the aunt of a Syrian refugee toddler who drowned in 2015 on his way to Europe told RT.
“Our country is being destroyed by outsiders,” said Tima Kurdi – a Syrian-born Canadian lawyer and the aunt of Aylan Kurdi, a three-year-old Syrian boy who died in September 2015 en route to the Greek island of Kos from Turkey – adding that “Western countries are not doing anything” about that.
She said the death of her nephew became “a wake-up call to the world, a message from God, who told us [that] enough is enough,” adding that the Syrian people “were suffering for four years [at that time] and Syria was crying out to the world for help but nobody was hearing” to these pleas, as “there was not enough media coverage until” the picture of the body of her nephew washed ashore in Turkish resort city of Bodrum made global headlines.
That image prompted politicians in many Western countries to open their borders and take in refugees. However, “months later, they started to forget that image and just got back to their everyday business, but the suffering [of the Syrian people] continued,” Kurdi said.
She went on to say that the West not only did “nothing to end this terrible war,” but also conducted a “terrible” regime change policy in Syria that actually only made the situation even worse. The Western funding of the so-called moderate rebels only prolongs the suffering of the Syrian people, Kurdi stressed, adding that “there are no moderate rebels in Syria.”
“When [Western governments] fund the ‘moderate’ rebels, their [aid] somehow eventually ends up in the hands of the most powerful groups on the ground, which are Al-Nusra Front and Islamic State [IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL],” she said.
The military solution would never work in Syria, Kurdi said, and “we will just see more suffering and more people will die.” She added that she does not take any side in this conflict and supports neither Syrian President Bashar Assad nor the opposition, but she had talked to many Syrians who live in refugee camps in Turkey, and believes that the Western media coverage of the Syrian conflict is biased.
The Western media report that “only President Bashar [Assad] kills his own people,” she said, adding that this sounds absurd to the Syrians. “I want people to understand one thing: if President Assad wants to stay in power in his country, he has to fight for his country but he would not kill his own people as he needs their support.”
The reports in the West on Syria “do not make sense,” as “there is more than just the [Syrian] government and Russia there, there are many rebels, who are fighting and killing my people,” she said, adding that “nobody [in the West] reports about rape” committed by the rebels and stressing that those stories are “terrible.”
Tima Kurdi admitted that Assad’s forces “did hurt the Syrian people,” but did so unintentionally. She also stressed that Syria was “peaceful and safe” before the war.
“Most Syrian people were just living their lives before the war and did not get involved in any politics,” she said, adding that “all kinds of religions” co-existed peacefully in Syria. “Sunni, Shia, Druze, Alawites, Christians – we all lived together and respected each other,” Kurdi, who was born and initially lived in Damascus, told RT, adding that “most Syrian people did not want to leave their homes” when the war came.
She then addressed the issue of the refugee crisis and said that the only way to stop it is to put an end to the war in Syria.
“I encourage the governments of each country to help find a political solution and [to stop violence] in my country. Bring peace to Syria so that you won’t need to see those refugees anymore,” she told RT.
Kurdi also asked people around the world to be more compassionate towards refugees.
“We need to help those suffering refugees. They have a right to be protected and they are peaceful people, like me and you. There is no difference. We need to help them rebuild their lives and welcome them with open arms until their country is safe to go back,” Kurdi said.
“I want people around the world to understand one thing: what will you do if you will be forced to leave your country one day and leave everything behind? What would you want the others to do for you? Do it for my people!” she added.
More than 200 migrants are believed to have died trying to cross the Mediterranean last weekend, according to the UNHCR, the United Nations refugee organization. They are feared to have drowned when the rubber boats into which they were packed by smugglers deflated and sank: here.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 