This 28 February video shows a spoonbill foraging in stormy weather in the Netherlands.
Harry Brummelhuis made this video.
Spoonbill foraging, video
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Daily Archives: February 28, 2017
Dutch opera director not to USA because of Trump
This video says about itself:
21 August 2015
Take a behind the scenes look at the Nederlandse Reisopera (Dutch Touring Opera) production of Orphée et Eurydice.
In just one day, the Source Four® LED Series 2 Lustr® luminaries with asymmetric Source Four LED CYC adapters were rigged and focused, lit the show, and were derigged.
Translated from Dutch NOS TV today:
Director Nicolas Mansfield of the Dutch Touring Opera company from Enschede will not travel to the United States for now. He disagrees with the Trump policies and therefore will stay as a matter of principle out of the country.
“As long as Muslims are not welcome there, I do not feel welcome,” Mansfield told RTV Oost broadcasting organisation. The artistic director had plans to visit an operatic convention in Dallas in May, but has canceled the trip. …
“I will not bring one euro of Dutch tax money to the US as long as that man will be in power,” Mansfield says.
Related articles
Two-barred crossbill in Sweden
Neonazis deprive Ukrainians of winter fuel
This video from the USA says about itself:
Svoboda and the History of Ukrainian Nationalism Pt. 1
10 March 2014
Historian Per Rudlging discusses the influence of the Ukrainian right-wing nationalist party Svoboda and the historical roots of Ukrainian nationalism.
This video is the sequel.
By Jason Melanovski:
Coal crisis hits Ukraine as far-right groups enforce blockade
28 February 2017
Vowing to end contraband from entering Ukraine, nationalist far-right militia groups have blockaded trains, roads and other conduits of goods from the separatist-controlled Lugansk and Donetsk provinces in the Donbass region. As a result, Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman announced last week that the country had been forced into a state of emergency due to the loss of coal resources from the Donbass region.
The area has long been the major producer of anthracite coal that is used for heating and electricity both in Ukraine and throughout the former Soviet Union. Lacking coal, millions could be left without heat and electricity within weeks, including the major Ukrainian cities of Kiev and Kharkiv.
The far-right forces behind the coal blockade also regularly prevent food, water, medicine and other humanitarian assistance from reaching the Donbass, which is a direct violation of the Minsk II protocol agreements signed by the Ukrainian government in February 2015.
Due to the present crisis, Ukraine could be forced to import coal from Russia, according to Minister of Energy and Coal Industry Ihor Nasalyk. Other sources, such as South Africa, are experiencing high demand and would be unable to supply Ukraine with the coal necessary to keep the country running. Imported coal from Russia would likely also be seen as unacceptable to Ukraine’s far-right militia groups that were essential in bringing the Poroshenko regime to power in a western-backed coup three years ago.
The coal crisis coincides with news of a forthcoming gas price hike of up to 40 percent on April 1, the date Ukraine agreed to deregulate its gas prices according to International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreements. According to Nafto-Gaz director Yuri Vitrenko, “If government regulation of consumers prices doesn’t continue, so called ‘special obligations,’ then going by current prices in the European market, the value of the Ukrainian currency and other factors, we can expect consumer prices for gas to grow by up to 40 percent.”
The continuation of discounted gas prices for consumers would be a violation of the IMF agreements. It could jeopardize the continued financial backing of the IMF, which is essential to keeping the current government in power.
Poroshenko has responded to the coal crisis by vowing to end the blockade. Speaking before the country’s National Security and Defence Council, he stated, “If the blockade is not lifted, the Ukrainian steel industry could lose up to 300,000 jobs. And the state will lose up to $2 billion in foreign exchange earnings.” Poroshenko added that the militia forces were harming the Ukrainian government’s attempts to protect its “territorial integrity” and accused the groups of carrying out a PR campaign “of blood.”
Despite the Poroshenko government’s public opposition to the blockade, it was well aware of the far-right militias’ blockade plans for several months prior to the current energy crisis.
Anatoly Vinogrodsky, one of the main organizers of the blockade, claimed that blockade forces had notified the government in December 2016 of their plans.
Rinat Akhmetov, a coal and steel oligarch from Donetsk who possesses a net worth of over $3 billion, is often identified as one of the targets of the blockade. In October 2016, Russian opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta published an investigative report into the smuggling operations of Donbass seperatist groups. The report showed that, free from government taxes and regulations, separatist leaders and oligarchs such as Rinat Akhmetov have enriched themselves while war continues and the working class suffers the consequences. Despite backing the Donbass separatists for financial gain, Akhmetov himself lives in the capital of Kiev to stay close to the Poroshenko regime.
Fearful that the blockade could further undermine its allies in Kiev, the European Union (EU) has called for an immediate end to the blockade. “Those responsible for the blockade must cease their actions and the authorities must address this problem as a matter of priority,” stated an EU spokesman on February 16.
The US administration of President Donald Trump, still undecided in its attitude toward the Poroshenko regime, refused to offer outright for the Ukrainian government, remarking only, “We are concerned by the current disruption to the coal supply from the on-government-controlled areas of Donetsk and Luhansk and its potential impact on Ukraine’s energy system, the Ukrainian economy, and the Ukrainian people.”
Due to Kiev’s domestic unpopularity and reliance on western imperialist backing, relatively small nationalist, far-right political parties in the country, such as Right Sector, have been able to gain a degree of power that is disproportionate to their size or level of support within the populations.
Regardless of its present confrontation with these forces, right-wing militia groups, such as the Azov Battalion, are essential to the Poroshenko government’s continued war against the Donbass.
Related articles
Bullfinches in Sweden
Donald Trump, trade wars and shooting wars
This video from the USA says about itself:
Trump Plans To ‘Sharply’ Increase Military Spending
27 February 2017
President Trump will instruct federal agencies on Monday to assemble a budget for the coming fiscal year that includes sharp increases in Defense Department spending and drastic enough cuts to domestic agencies that he can keep his promise to leave Social Security and Medicare alone, according to four senior administration officials.
By Patrick Martin in the USA:
Trump proposes huge hike in military and police spending
28 February 2017
The Trump administration sent instructions to federal agencies Monday proposing a $54 billion increase in spending for the Pentagon, the intelligence agencies and the Department of Homeland Security, to be offset by $54 billion in cuts for other agencies, mainly those involved in domestic social services and regulation of business.
Trump’s budget outline sets the stage for his first address to Congress on Tuesday. It provides further evidence that the Trump administration will be dedicated to radically rolling back social spending to finance a dramatic escalation of military operations, both in the neo-colonial wars in the Middle East and against the United States’ ‘great power’ rivals: China and Russia.
Federal departments are being told to file budget requests for the fiscal year that begins October 1, 2017 based on the numbers they were given by the Office of Management and Budget. Each agency will be responsible for working out the cuts required to meet proposed reductions, while the Pentagon, CIA and DHS will propose expanded operations with the additional funds they are to be awarded.
There were no details made public about the exact budget ceilings given to each federal department, but White House officials made it clear that foreign aid programs in the State Department and anti-pollution regulation through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would suffer some of the largest cuts.
The total budget of the EPA is only $9 billion, so many other domestic programs are certain to be hard-hit, involving such departments as Education, Labor, Transportation, Agriculture (which includes food stamps), Housing and Urban Development and Health and Human Services.
The biggest federal social programs, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, are not affected by the budget order, which involves only funding for so-called discretionary programs, those financed through annual congressional appropriations. Entitlement programs, where benefits are paid out automatically to those who establish their eligibility, are covered by a separate budget process.
OMB Director Mick Mulvaney appeared at the White House press briefing Monday afternoon to explain the action taken by the Trump administration. He emphasized that setting what he called the “top-line budget number” for each department was only the start of a protracted process.
The OMB will use the figures from each department and agency to prepare a budget outline to be submitted to Congress on March 16. A full budget will not be ready until sometime in May, Mulvaney said. He also indicated that while spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid were not addressed in the action taken Monday, “entitlement reform”—i.e., cuts in these critical programs—would be a subject of discussion with congressional leaders later in the budget process.
Press reports identified the three White House officials who have played the main roles in the initial budgeting: Mulvaney, who was confirmed on February 16 as budget director; National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, the former president of Goldman Sachs, the huge investment bank; and Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, the former chief executive of the fascistic Breitbart News site, who exercises increasingly broad sway over all White House policy decisions.
While no details have yet been released of what the $54 billion increase in military-police spending will pay for, the scale of the increase, in and of itself, shows the real character of the Trump administration. This is to be a government of war abroad and mass repression at home.
Trump himself touched on this theme in typically rambling and unfocused remarks to a meeting of the National Governors Association Monday. “We never win a war,” he said. “We never win. And we don’t fight to win. We don’t fight to win. So we either got to win, or don’t fight at all.”
He continued, telling the governors, “My first budget will be submitted to the Congress next month. This budget will be a public safety and national security budget, very much based on those two with plenty of other things, but very strong. And it will include a historic increase in defense spending to rebuild the depleted military of the United States of America at a time we most need it.”
Additional money for the Pentagon is likely to go to a dramatically increased tempo of operations in Iraq and Syria. Defense Secretary James Mattis delivered proposals to the White House Monday for an offensive against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), as required by an executive order issued by Trump last month. No details are available yet, but any acceleration of the bombing campaign, let alone the deployment of significant numbers of US ground troops, would increase the cost of that war by many billions.
The $54 billion increase would also presumably include funds for the construction of Trump’s planned wall on the US-Mexico border, as well as a massive increase in spending on detention facilities for the hundreds of thousands of immigrants to be rounded up under the executive orders already issued by the White House.
The federal budget is operating under the constraints imposed by the 2011 Budget Control Act, the bipartisan legislation negotiated by the Obama White House, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, and a Democratic-controlled Senate. This set up the so-called sequester process, under which all discretionary spending is subject to a budget freeze, for both domestic and military programs.
Each year, increased spending for programs under the sequester has been worked out on the basis of roughly equal increases for domestic and military programs. Last year, for fiscal year 2016, Congress approved $543 billion for domestic discretionary programs and $607 billion for the military. The Trump White House plan would thus represent a cut of about 10 percent for domestic programs, and an increase of nearly that amount for the military.
Any significant change in the sequester process would require support from congressional Democrats, particularly in the Senate, where the Republican party holds only a narrow 52-48 edge, and any major legislation would require a 60-vote majority to pass.
Several congressional Republican leaders criticized the White House plan as insufficiently skewed to the military. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry of Texas issued a statement criticizing the “low budget number” and adding, “The administration will have to make clear which problems facing our military they are choosing not to fix.”
Senator John McCain of Arizona, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, declared that the Trump plan is “a mere 3 percent above President Obama’s defense budget, which has left our military underfunded, undersized and unready.”
For all the statements by Trump and the Republicans bemoaning the supposedly “depleted” state of the US military, the United States spends more on its armed forces than the next 15 countries in the world combined. The military budget is only inadequate if the mission of the US military is assumed to be the conquest of the entire planet and the subduing of all armed resistance from any quarter—which is actually the perspective of the American ruling elite.
The address by US president Trump to the ultra-right-wing Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last Friday saw a further elaboration of the trade war agenda which is at the heart of the economic policies of his administration—a program which has already brought warnings of devastating consequences for the world economy: here.
President Donald Trump will deliver an address to both houses of Congress tonight, broadcast live throughout the United States. According to talking points released by the White House yesterday, the speech will “lay out an optimistic vision for the country” and “invite all Americans of all backgrounds to come together in the service of a stronger, brighter future for our nation.” The very fact that Trump will be delivering the address is proof that the “state of the union” is neither optimistic nor bright. Trump and his administration of political thugs are testament to the horrifying decay of political culture in the United States. The agenda that the administration is rapidly implementing holds out for the working class of the entire world a future of unending war, dictatorship and social devastation: here.
STEELY DON Mexico has hit back at the tariffs on steel and aluminum that Trump announced Thursday, imposing its own tax on pork, apples, grapes, cheeses and steel — all products from U.S. Heartland states that supported Trump in the 2016 election. Canada and the European Union said they would also fight the tariffs, sparking fears of a global trade war, while the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce warned that Trump’s position could put 2.6 million American jobs at risk. [Reuters]
Britain must not be ‘cowed or bullied’ by US steel tariffs, Labour’s Barry Gardiner says: here.
THE CAPITALIST world was rocking yesterday after President Trump’s declaration of a trade war on his European Union, Canadian and Mexican rivals. The US tariffs of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminium came into effect yesterday: here.
TRUMP’S NEW TRADE WAR: INDIA Trump has opened a new front in his trade wars by ending preferential trade treatment for India — just before the country’s general election. [Reuters]
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Red-breasted goose and Swedish cattle video
This October 2013 video from Uppland province in Sweden shows a red-breasted goose and cattle.
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Trumps breaks refugee promise to Australia
This satiric video from Australia says about itself:
America First, Australia Second/ Australia Welcomes Trump In His Own Words (Official)
6 February 2017
From daily The Morning Star in Britain:
Australia: Trump stalling on implementation of refugee deal
Tuesday 28th February 2017
AUSTRALIAN senators heard yesterday that Washington has yet to send security officers to vet refugees held on Pacific islands for resettlement.
US President Donald Trump has reluctantly agreed to honour a pledge by predecessor Barack Obama to accept up to 1,250 refugees refused entry to Australia.
But he said they would be subject to “extreme vetting” before being granted asylum in the US.
Australia pays Nauru and Papua New Guinea to hold more than 2,000 refugees, mostly from Iran, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, in foul conditions condemned by human rights campaigners.
Immigration and Border Protection Department secretary Mike Pezzullo told a senate committee that US Department of Homeland Security officers were set to start vetting refugees on the islands as soon as they were authorised to do so by the White House.
Mr Pezzullo told the legal and constitutional affairs committee he was confident there would be “movement within the next few, several months.”
“The present administration’s made it clear they are currently looking at their vetting thresholds,” he said.
Committee member Senator Nick McKim, who described Mr Trump as “insane,” questioned how Mr Pezzulo could have confidence in that time frame, given that the White House was “in absolute disarray.”
Mr Pezzullo replied that he was relying on advice from US Homeland Security and State Department officials.
State Department officials have already conducted preliminary interviews on the islands to ensure that candidates for resettlement were genuine refugees, he said.
Mr Trump has described the deal with Australia as “dumb” and raised doubts about whether it will proceed.
Extraordinary conflicts have erupted within Australia’s Liberal-National Coalition government, underscoring a profound political crisis that is engulfing not just the government but the entire parliamentary establishment: here.
LEAKED VIDEO OF THE AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER MAKING FUN OF TRUMP Will make things awkward at the next state dinner. [HuffPost]
Few refugees leave Australian detention camps under US “swap” deal: here.
Related articles
Ancient primate fossil discovery in India
This 2014 video Lecture 16 Early Primate Evolution.
From the University of Southern California in the USA:
Newfound primate teeth take a big bite out of the evolutionary tree of life
The new species of primate from India is distantly related to the lemurs of Madagascar
February 28, 2017
Summary:
Fossil hunters have found part of an ancient primate jawbone related to lemurs — the primitive primate group distantly connected to monkeys, apes and humans, a researcher reports. Scientists named the new species Ramadapis sahnii and said that it existed 11 to 14 million years ago. It is a member of the ancient Sivaladapidae primate family, consumed leaves and was about the size of a house cat.
Fossil hunters have found part of an ancient primate jawbone related to lemurs — the primitive primate group distantly connected to monkeys, apes and humans, a USC researcher said.
Biren Patel, an associate professor of clinical cell and neurobiology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, has been digging for fossils in a paleontologically rich area of Kashmir in northern India for six years. Although paleontologists have scoured this region for a century, relics of small extinct primates were rarely found or studied.
Scientists named the new species Ramadapis sahnii and said that it existed 11 to 14 million years ago. It is a member of the ancient Sivaladapidae primate family, consumed leaves and was about the size of a house cat, said Patel, co-author of the new study in the Journal of Human Evolution.
“Among the primates, the most common ones in the Kashmir region are from a genus called Sivapithecus, which were ancestral forms of orangutans,” Patel said. “The fossil we found is from a different group on the primate family tree — one that is poorly known in Asia. We are filling an ecological and biogeographical gap that wasn’t really well documented. Every little step adds to the understanding of our human family tree because we’re also primates.”
The last primate found in the area was 38 years ago. So, in addition to being a new species, this is the first primate fossil found in the area in decades.
“In the past, people were interested in searching for big things — things they could show off to other people,” Patel said. “A lot of the small fossils were not on their radar.”
The inch-and-a-quarter partial mandible belongs to a primate weighing less than 11 pounds that had outlived its other adapidae cousins found in North America, Europe and Africa by millions of years.
“New primates are always a hot topic, and this one is the first of its kind from its area in Asia, which has significant consequences for understanding primate evolution in the Old World,” said Michael Habib, an assistant professor of clinical cell and neurobiology at the Keck School of Medicine who was not involved in the study.
The question that remains is how the ecosystem in northern India supported this species when its relatives elsewhere were disappearing or had already gone extinct. Future fieldwork and recovering more fossil primates will help answer this question.
“People want to know about human origins, but to fully understand human origins, you need to understand all of primate origins, including the lemurs and these Sivaladapids,” Patel said. “Lemurs and sivaladapids are sister groups to what we are — the anthropoids — and we are all primates.”
Researchers from Hunter College of the City University of New York, New York Consortium in Evolutionary Primatology, Arizona State University, Stony Brook University and Panjab University also contributed to this study, which was supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, the Institute of Human Origins and funding from some of the involved universities.
Related articles
British drones killing Iraqi, Syrian civilians
This 11 April 2016 video from the USA is called U.S. Drone Strike Kills 17 Civilians, Including First Responders In Afghanistan.
A British military video used to say about itself:
RAF drone kills Afghan civilians 06.07.11
It’s emerged that four Afghan civilians were killed and two wounded when an RAF drone targeting insurgent leaders fired on two trucks in Helmand province. … The incident occurred in the Nowzad District of Northern Helmand in March earlier this year.
By Steve Sweeney in Britain:
British drones may have killed 1,000s of civilians
Tuesday 28th February 2017
SECRET British armed drone strikes may have contributed to thousands of civilian deaths in Iraq and Syria, a new report revealed yesterday.
Drone Wars UK has gathered information regarding British air strikes against Isis in Iraq and Syria and found that Britain had carried out 1,200 air strikes against Isis — launching over 2,500 missiles in 2015 and 2016.
The figures were uncovered through Freedom of Information requests to the MoD over a two-year period.
The campaigners also revealed that armed British Reaper drones secretly crossed into Syria just weeks after a 2014 parliamentary vote limited military action against Isis to strictly within Iraq.
Officials claimed this did not amount to military action, but intelligence gathered by the drones was used by coalition forces to launch air strikes in Syria.
The report suggests that 22 per cent of Britain’s 726 air strikes in Iraq and Syria in 2016 were carried out by Reaper drones.
It shows weapon launches by British Reaper drones increased by 30 per cent from 274 in 2015 to 358 in 2016.
Airwars, a journalist-led organisation which monitors reports of civilian casualties from air strikes in Iraq and Syria, estimates that between 1,959 and 2,898 people were killed in coalition air strikes in 2015 and 2016.
An MoD spokesman told the Star: “We can’t completely eliminate the risk of civilian casualties but we carefully mitigate that risk through strict targeting procedures.
“The evidence from detailed assessments of each strike is that we’ve avoided any civilian casualties so far in this conflict.”
Airwars has called for an independent review of the MoD’s assessment process.
Campaign Against Arms Trade spokesman Andrew Smith told the Star: “This is an excellent piece of work and exposes the dangerous lack of transparency and accountability that surrounds drones.
“There must be a far greater scrutiny of attacks and strikes being undertaken by the armed forces and the work for Drone Wars is vital in that debate.
“Drone attacks often have devastating consequences and have killed thousands of civilians around the world.”
Stop the War national officer Chris Nineham said the report showed that Britain was “fighting almost completely unreported wars” in Syria and Iraq.
He said: “Not only is there a virtual media blackout on this activity, but the MoD is still peddling the ridiculous line that no civilians have been killed in these attacks.”
The MoD refused to reveal the number of British Reapers deployed on operations in Iraq and Syria.
As Iraqi government forces press further into the densely populated areas of western Mosul, the key role being played in the advance by US-led air strikes and artillery barrages is becoming clear. The brutal offensive on Iraq’s second-largest city has already displaced upwards of 200,000 civilians, including 8,000 over the past week: here.
USA: The group UpstateDroneAction.org released a statement Friday morning: “Four drone resisters, James Ricks, Daniel Burns, Brian Hynes, and Ed Kinane, from the 2015 big books action were found innocent of all charges at 11 p.m. at the Dewitt Town Court. After deliberating for only about a half hour, the jury returned with a verdict of not guilty on all charges. Applause erupted in the courtroom upon the jurors’ announcement of the verdict. The four were charged with obstruction of government administration, disorderly conduct, and trespass and faced a year in jail. Following the rendering of the verdict, a juror approached Brian Hynes and said ‘I really support what you are doing. Keep doing it.’: here.
Recent reports expose the absurdity of the British government’s claims that it had “no evidence” that UK air strikes had killed a single civilian in Iraq and Syria during the three-year-long bombing campaign: here.
US blamed for carrying out deadly drone strike on Syrian military: here.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 