This is an ortolan bunting video from Sweden.
Ortolan bunting in Sweden
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Daily Archives: May 20, 2017
United States racism influenced nazi Germany
This video from the USA says about itself:
American Racism Inspired Nazi Nuremberg Laws
1 April. 2017
The first half of our interview with James Whitman, Professor at Yale Law School and author of the book “Hitler’s American Model,” who joins David to discuss American influence on Nazi Nuremberg laws, and similarities and differences between pre-World War II Germany and America today.
This video is the sequel.
From the Washington Post in the USA:
The Nazis as students of America’s worst racial atrocities
By Jeff Guo, May 19
Jeff Guo is a journalist in Washington, D.C.
When Adolf Hitler seized control of Germany in 1933, one of his priorities was to create a legal framework for his vision of an anti-Semitic state. Thus began a meticulous Nazi research project on race-based lawmaking aimed at erasing the rights of Germany’s Jews.
One foreign country in particular grabbed the Nazis’ interest because of its advanced and innovative system of legal racism.
The object of Nazi fascination? America.
“In the early twentieth century the United States was not just a country with racism,” writes Yale law professor James Whitman in his book “Hitler’s American Model.” “It was the leading racist jurisdiction — so much so that even Nazi Germany looked to America for inspiration.”
In his startling new history, Whitman traces the substantial influence of American race laws on the Third Reich. The book, in effect, is a portrait of the United States assembled from the admiring notes of Nazi lawmakers, who routinely referenced American policies in the design of their own racist regime.
As they drafted their own laws to exclude German Jews from public and civic life, Nazi lawyers carefully studied how the United States suppressed nonwhite immigrants and consigned minorities to second-class citizenship. In private hearings, they discussed how the U.S. model for white supremacy in the Jim Crow South could be transposed to Germany and inflicted on the Jews.
The Nazis were keenly influenced by America’s laws forbidding interracial marriage. Dozens of states not only banned black-white unions but subjected violators to lengthy jail sentences. The harsh criminalization of mixed-race marriages in America set an example for the Nazis as they created their Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, which forbade German Jews from marrying non-Jews, invalidated existing mixed marriages and sent offenders to prison labor camps.
Whitman’s book contributes to a growing recognition of American influences on Nazi thought. Other historians have shown, for instance, that the vigorous U.S. eugenics movement emboldened the Nazis, who copied America’s forced-sterilization programs and took cover in the pseudoscientific theories of American eugenicists.
Biographer John Toland has noted that Hitler admired the American conquest of the West, particularly the decimation of the Native American population. The Nazi concentration camps may have been based, in part, Toland argued, on the Native American reservation system.
The Nazi atrocities held a dark mirror to some of America’s most shameful impulses. On some level, Americans understood this. After World War II, eugenics fell out of favor, and the United States gradually rolled back some of its racist laws. Jim Crow was dismantled, at least on paper, by the efforts of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. And the last anti-miscegenation laws were struck down in 1967. This was slow progress, but it probably would have been slower if the Nazi regime hadn’t horrified the world with its racial intolerance.
Two United States racists who influenced nazism were car factory boss Henry Ford, with his propaganda for the anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; and pseudo-scientist Lothrop Stoddard, who coined the word ‘subhuman’ (Untermensch in nazi Germany).
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Sailfish video
This 17 May 2017 video says about itself:
Sailfish Are Master Hunters – Planet Earth – BBC Earth
Stunning footage of Sailfish three metres long closing in on prey. Ever the resourceful hunter, they will only use just enough energy to make their kill, never wasting a fin stroke. What is more remarkable is how they can change colour to warn their companions or confuse their prey.
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Pentagon wars come home to New York City
This video from the USA says about itself:
Many Vietnam veterans still struggle with PTSD
22 July 2015
New research shows more than a quarter-million Vietnam veterans are struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder, 40 years after the war ended. Kenneth Craig reports from New York.
By Eric London in the USA:
Veteran drives through crowd in Times Square: The war comes home
20 May 2017
On Thursday, a 26-year-old military veteran named Richard Rojas drove his Honda Accord through a crowded sidewalk in New York City’s Times Square, killing an 18-year-old Michigan woman and wounding 22. Rojas says he was on Phenycylidine (PCP) and that he intended to kill passers-by.
After crashing through the crowd, Rojas ran around screaming and waving his arms. He evidently told police that god told him to commit this horrible act. He had previously reported hearing voices in his head. He allegedly told police, “You were supposed to shoot me!”
At a press conference following the incident, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced, “There is no indication that this was an act of terrorism.”
By this, de Blasio meant that Rojas had no association with an organized terrorist group. But, in a larger sense, this tragedy is the product of the terror wreaked by US imperialism across the world, poisoning social relations domestically and breaking the minds of countless young enlisted people.
In an interview with the New York Times, Rojas’ childhood friend, Hansel Guerrero, explained that Rojas joined the Navy as “a journey out of the New York life.” Guerrero and Rojas lived in the same apartment building on Walton Avenue in the working-class neighborhood of Mount Eden, in New York’s Bronx borough.
Guerrero told the Times: “People go and they serve their country and they come back crazy and nobody helps them.”
Rojas, whose mother is Dominican, worked in auto shops and dreamed of graduating from college. He joined the Navy in 2011, working as an electrician’s mate until he was dishonorably discharged in 2014. It is not clear whether he served in a combat zone. While stationed at a Naval base in Jacksonville, Florida, Rojas was arrested in 2012 for threatening violence against police. In 2013, the Navy locked him up for two months in a military jail, though it has not been reported why.
Rojas’ friends explained that he wasn’t the same upon returning from the Navy. On April 15, 2015, he was convicted for driving while intoxicated.
Reuters spoke with another of Rojas’ friends, Harrison Ramos: “Rojas returned from his Navy service with a drinking problem and had posted ‘crazy stuff’ on social media,” the news service reported.
Ramos told Reuters: “Don’t make him out to be a terrorist or something. He served his country and when he came back, nobody helped him. He went through a real rough time. That’s my friend, and it hurts.”
“He finally came home, and it was hard for him to find a job,” Ramos added. “He was having a lot of bad nightmares. He was talking crazy. He was acting strange.”
The Times reported: “His mind was clouded with conspiracy theories. His dreams of opening his own clothing business had wilted. He lashed out at friends who challenged him; some thought his grasp of reality slipped and that he needed psychiatric help.
“During a string of arrests in recent years, Mr. Rojas once threatened to kill police officers, and last week accused a notary of trying to steal his identity and grabbed his neck, the authorities said.”
The sentiments expressed by Rojas’ friends are commonplace in a country where hundreds of thousands of veterans have been broken by the weight of a quarter century of war. There are many young people in the US who know a veteran who “came back crazy” with “nobody to help them,” as Rojas’ friends put it. Some counties have even set up special court programs for veterans convicted of crimes.
Last month, a 23-year-old Army veteran in North Carolina strapped her service dog to a tree and shot it five times before posting a video of the execution to Facebook. The dog was intended to help her with her Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and the episode calls to mind the first line of Phil Klay’s Redeployment, a series of short stories about returning veterans and the ongoing wars: “We shot dogs.”
On May 16, 24-year-old Edwin Fuentes was shot to death by police following a stand-off in Tustin, California. Fuentes was an Afghanistan veteran who suffered from PTSD. His neighbor, another veteran, told the OC Register that Fuentes “was having problems and he wanted other vets to talk to.”
A 2016 study from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) revealed that 20 veterans kill themselves every day—over 116,000 since 2001, roughly the size of the population of Michigan’s state capital, Lansing.
A survey of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans also revealed that a majority of veterans have contemplated suicide. A 2017 VA report found that female veterans are two to five times more likely to kill themselves than civilian women, in part due to the prevalence of rape and sexual abuse within the military.
The reactionary climate of nationalism and brutality engendered by the US military has transformed the social composition of the country.
The US Defense Department is the country’s largest employer, with 3.2 million employees, military and civilian. As the strike force of corporate America, the military exerts an immense power over all of the “official” institutions of American capitalism.
It’s reactionary culture, of idealizing violence and justifying its crimes in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan through hyper-nationalism, permeates into broader sections of society, altering not only the personal lives of millions of veterans, but also the social psychology of the country as a whole. No American is unfamiliar with the nauseating displays of militarism in everyday life: the bomber fly-overs before sporting events, Marine Corps recruiters in high schools, the use of tanks and assault rifles by local police.
In the words of Shakespeare’s Edward IV: “They shall have wars and pay for their presumption.” The personal breakdown of individuals like Richard Rojas exemplifies the breakdown of American society under the weight of US imperialism and capitalism.
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Young Bermuda petrel visited by parent
This video from Bermuda says about itself:
Overnight Visit From Adult on Cahow Cam – May 18, 2017
It’s a full-belly Friday for the Bermuda Petrel chick thanks to a late night visit from this adult cahow on Thursday. Watch here as the two birds congregate in the burrow after reuniting in the nest tunnel. Over the next two weeks, the larger-than-life cahow chick will begin to shed its downy plumage and its first fresh set of flight feathers.
The Cahow Cam is a collaboration between the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Nonsuch Expeditions. You can watch the cam live here
and learn more about Nonsuch Island‘s environs (including the cahow) here.
A new study finds that birds who freely choose their own mates have more offspring than those which were paired up by researchers in a sort of avian ‘arranged marriage’ — findings that have far-reaching implications for conservation and captive breeding practices: here.
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Bush’s ‘new’ Afghanistan’s vice presidential torture, sexual abuse scandal
This video says about itself:
The Shady Afghan Warlords Whom the US Pays to Fight the Taliban
Afghan Warlords (2009): Despite shady pasts, powerful warlords are given recognition from Washington in return for their support fighting drug traffickers and the Taliban. We take a look at America’s new pragmatic approach.
One such character is Gul Agha Sherzai, aka The Bulldozer and Governor of Nangarhar for the last five years. After striking a political deal with President Karzai, he became a power broker to be reckoned with.
Ruling from his Jalalabad palace, Sherzai shows off his power: The Taliban is no danger. I have defeated them. By Afghan standards, security in his region has drastically improved along with an impressive fall in drugs production. Its hard to argue that he’s been anything but a success to enthuse US counter-narcotics officials. However, his past is less than pristine.
An expert on the region says: To be an effective leader there, at some point you had to have been involved in the commission of atrocities, together with the accumulation of enormous wealth and that means opium.’ Sherzai allegedly got wealthy during his time as governor of Kandahar taking a cut from the opium profits from the area. While his former associate has been serving a life sentence in the US, he’s been enjoying a high-profile collaboration with Washington. Why? Theres a perception [in] the West that he’s somebody who can be rehabilitated. He was simply deemed more useful.
From the BBC:
Afghan Vice-President Dostum flies to Turkey amid torture claims
Afghanistan’s Vice-President, Abdul Rashid Dostum, has left the country amid claims that he ordered his men to kidnap, beat and rape a political rival last year.
Afghan officials confirmed he had left Kabul for Turkey on Friday night.
General Dostum has not been charged with any offence, and the incident is under government investigation. …
The vice-president is a former [?] warlord with decades of experience in Afghanistan’s turbulent political arena.
He is blamed for some of the worst atrocities in the country’s long-running civil war, but joined its national unity government in 2014.
The allegations against him come from Ahmad Eshchi, a former ally, who says he suffered days of severe beatings and sexual abuse at Gen Dostum’s command.
He said the vice-president and 10 other men assaulted him while he was forcibly kept at Gen Dostum’s residence in November 2016.
The ex-warlord denies the claims and has said that Mr Eshchi was detained by the country’s intelligence service. …
In 2008 Gen Dostum went to Turkey amid similar allegations that his personal militia had abducted, beaten and sexually assaulted a political rival in Kabul, then fired on police who responded to the incident.
The U.S. will never win the war in Afghanistan: here.
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Greenfinch sings, video
This 19 May 2017 video shows a greenfinch singing in the orchard of Doorwerth castle in Gelderland province in the Netherlands.
Marijke Kemps made this video.
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NATO’s ‘new’ Libya bloodbath of civilians, militia men
This 28 September 2012 video says about itself:
It describes the events that caused the Libyan civil war and the NATO attack on Libya. It tells in an unknown richness of details the progression of the events that caused the war. Additionally it questions the UN resolution. The original documentary was made by citizens of Tripoli.
From the BBC today:
Libya death toll ‘rises to 140’ at Brak El-Shati airbase
Reports suggest as many as 140 people, including civilians, may have died in an attack on an airbase in Libya.
It was originally thought 60 people died when a government-allied militia tried to take over the Brak al-Shati base on Thursday.
The [Tripoli] government
one of at least three governments killing each other’s fighters and civilians in the ‘new’ Libya which resulted from the NATO 2011 ‘humanitarian’ war. The European Union wants to make a deal about forcibly returning refugees with one of these governments.
‘s defence minister and the commander of the militia have both been suspended pending an investigation.
The prime minister’s office has denied ordering the attack.
A militia spokesman said they had “liberated the base and destroyed all the forces inside”.
The town’s mayor said some aircraft had been set ablaze.
Most of the dead were soldiers of the self-proclaimed Libyan National Army (LNA), an alliance in the east of the country which does not recognise the government in the capital, Tripoli. That force has been in control of the airbase since December.
Its spokesman gave the new death toll of 140.
“The soldiers were returning from a military parade. They weren’t armed. Most of them were executed,” he said.
The UN’s envoy to Libya, Martin Kobler, said he was “outraged” by reports of summary executions. …
The attack breached an informal truce between the rival forces that was reached earlier this month when the LNA’s commander, General Khalifa Haftar, met the [Tripoli] Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj.
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Birds of prey shows banned in Antwerp, Belgium
This video is called National Geographic Wild Birds of Prey (Raptors, Hawks, Falcons) Documentary.
On 19 May 2017, Dutch Vroege Vogels radio reported that Antwerp city in Belgium has banned shows with birds of prey and owls.
BirdLife in Flanders had campaigned for years against these shows. They agree with the ban, and say it should be extended to banning having owls or birds in prey in captivity. Having these birds in captivity is already illegal in some European countries, like Estonia, Sweden and Cyprus. Trade in owls and birds of prey is often connected to crime like stealing eggs or nestlings.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 