Australian Prime Minister hates national parks

This video is called Wonders of Australia’s National Parks, 1 of 3: Riches of Deserts and Wetlands.

Australian right wing Prime Minister Tony Abbott is very chummy with equally right wing Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe; especially when they together promote militarism.

However, while the Japanese Abe administration recently at least proclaimed one new national park, Abbott looks like he wants to out-Abe Abe in a race ever more to the extreme right.

From Wildlife Extra:

Australian PM outrages with anti national parks stance

March 2014: The Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has declared he will not support the creation of any new national parks in Australia and that the country has quite enough, despite the fact that they cover just four per cent of Australia.

Speaking at the ForestWorks dinner in Canberra Tony Abbott said he was committed to supporting the Tasmanian logging timber industry and that too many of Australia’s forests are “locked up”.

“We have quite enough national parks. We have quite enough locked up forests already. Why should we lock up as some sort of World Heritage sanctuary, country that has been logged, degraded or planted for timber?”

Abbott also reaffirmed his commitment to removing part of Tasmania‘s forest from World Heritage listing, made under the forest peace deal. This is the first time a government has ever sought to delist a World Heritage area when its heritage values are still intact. The forest is home to areas, like the Weld, Styx and Upper Florentine Valleys, and the World Heritage Committee has already rigorously assessed these places as being of Outstanding Universal Value to all of us who inhabit the planet.

“Getting that 74,000 hectares out of World Heritage Listing, it’s still going to leave half of Tasmania protected forever,” said Abbott. “But that will be an important sign to you, to Tasmanians, to the world, that we support the timber industry.”

His attack has not surprisingly provoked anger among conservationists.

“Tony Abbott has blown it with that call,” said William Laurance, a professor at James Cook University and director of ALERT, the Alliance of Leading Environmental Researchers and Thinkers. “Australia has some of the world’s most desperately endangered ecosystems and species, which direly need better protection.“

As an example, the scientists cite the mountain ash forests of Victoria, which have been devastated by over-logging and fires, with just 1.2 per cent of the old-growth forest remaining. “The Leadbeater’s possum relies entirely on these old-growth forests and is critically endangered,” said Corey Bradshaw, a professor at the University of Adelaide. “There’s a dire need to create a new national park for this iconic species and ecosystem.”

The scientists say the Prime Minister’s actions will hurt Australia’s reputation. “Australia is hosting the World Park Congress this year,” said Laurance. “If a relatively wealthy country like Australia won’t protect its environment, what kind of message does that send globally?”

Related articles

• Why we don’t need a reboot of the forest wars
• Australian PM says too much forest ‘locked up’
• Tasmania: a death warrant against pristine forests Abbott has never seen
• Heritage site on chopping block
• Tony Abbott has that rare ability to be incredibly stupid

Bahrain, Formula One racing and human rights violations

This video is called Former CNN journalist Amber Lyon & Joe Rogan talk about Bahrain dictatorship.

From the Committee to Protect Journalists:

Bahrain racing in circles

By Jason Stern/CPJ Middle East and North Africa Research Associate

Thursday, the official Bahrain News Agency announced the “final 30-day countdown [to] the Formula One extravaganza” to take place the first week of April. Every year the race acts as a lightning rod for criticism of the Bahraini government, which seeks to use high-profile international events like the F1 to gloss over human rights violations in the country.

So perhaps it’s all too predictable that another journalist was arrested in Bahrain only a few hours before the BNA article went to press. Freelance photojournalist Sayed Baqer Al-Kamil was arrested at a checkpoint west of Manama sometime in the early morning hours, according to news reports and his colleagues. It is not clear why he was arrested, but Al-Kamil has meticulously documented the protest movement in Bahrain.

In another recent case, Bahraini security forces arrested photographer Sayed Ahmed Al-Mosawi and his brother in a house raid the morning of February 10, according to news reports.  Al-Mosawi was transferred to the Dry Dock prison after several days of interrogation about his work. The journalist, who has won international recognition for his photographs, told his family in a phone call from prison that he had been tortured through beatings and electrocution, according to the Bahrain Center for Human Rights.

Al-Kamil and Al-Mosawi join at least three other journalists behind bars in Bahrain, the second worst country in the world for journalists imprisoned per capita, according to CPJ research.

…

The blast came as Al Sinan was covering clashes between riot police and protesters from a funeral procession of a Bahraini inmate who died last month in custody. The government said the inmate, Jaffar Al-Durazi, died from complications of sickle cell anemia, but opposition groups said he was subjected to torture and medical negligence.

It is not clear who carried out the attack on the security forces, with at least two groups claiming responsibility on Facebook, according to Bahrain scholar Marc Owen Jones. Bahrain’s major opposition and human rights groups condemned the attack and urged Bahrainis to end the cycle of violence.

In a photograph of the attack captured by EPA photojournalist Mazen Mahdi, riot police grimace from tear gas as one of their comrades lay wounded in the street. A few days prior, on February 26, Mahdi accused the police of aiming deliberately at journalists after he had been shot in the leg by a teargas canister while covering protests in Daih. He was not seriously injured.

Mahdi and other journalists have faced consistent harassment from security forces attempting to limit coverage of opposition demonstrations, according to CPJ research. The independent Bahrain Press Association reported that Associated Press photographer Hassan Jamali has been unable to cover protests since his press credentials were confiscated by security forces on February 12.

…

None of this is new for Bahrain. In the past three years, CPJ has documented the arrest, torture, assault and sadly even death of journalists. …

Yet the pace of violations seem to be accelerating, especially as the Bahrain government collects more local freelance journalists in its prisons and frustration on the street grows stronger. As Gulf expert Christopher Davidson recently tweeted, “Bahrain looking more tense now than for a long time.” With a political solution no closer, despite repeated rounds of political dialogue since 2011, I fear those tensions will lead to even greater restrictions on the press.

It appears not only F1 cars are racing in circles in Bahrain.

Related articles

• No Formula 1 in dictatorial Bahrain, activists say
• Stop torture in Bahrain
• Bahrain dictatorship jails photographer
• Anonymous Operation Bahrain: Tamarrod Bahrain Action
• Bahrain – Joint appeal to the UN against ill-treatment and torture of detained human rights defenders, activists and photojournalist in Bahrain
• Foreign journalists deported as Bahrain engulfed by pre-F1 protests

Flying snakes, new research

This video is called Flying Snakes – The Physics Of Snakes That Fly.

From Wildlife Extra:

Flying snakes intrigue scientists

They glide through the air with the greatest of ease…

March 2014: Forget Snakes on a Plane, there are some species of snakes in the world that are at home in the air. Three species of snake in the genus Chrysopelea are known to glide, and one, Chrysopelea paradisi, has even been seen turning in mid-air. They can travel as far as 100ft through the air, jumping off tree branches and rotating their ribs to flatten their bodies and move from side to side.

Animal flight behaviour is an exciting frontier for engineers to both apply knowledge of aerodynamics and to learn from nature’s solutions to operating in the air. Flying snakes are particularly intriguing to researchers because they lack wings or any other features that remotely resemble flight apparatus.

Before you envision flying snakes raining down from the sky, the ones involved in this study are small — about 1m in length and the width of your thumb — and live in the lowland tropical forests of Asia and Southeast Asia.

Virginia Tech Assistant Professor Jake Socha, renowned for his work with flying snakes, recently teamed with Boston University and George Washington University researchers to explore the snakes’ lift and wakes using computer simulations.

Previously, experiments in a wind tunnel had returned an unexpected finding: the snake’s shape is not only good at generating a force of lift, but it also gets an extra boost of lift when facing the air flow at a certain angle.

“After experiments uncovered this, we decided to use computer simulations to try to explain it,” says Lorena Barba, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the George Washington University.

So much of the aerodynamics of animal flight — especially that of flying snakes — remain a mystery. Scale is important, but also the manner in which flight is achieved.

“Rather than fixed wings, animal fliers have flapping wings,” explains Barba. “In the case of gliders, their small scale means they’re always in a flurry of whirling winds. By understanding how they can be graceful and efficient under these conditions, we can in turn use that knowledge to create small flying machines that are equally graceful.”

Whirls of wind can be particularly useful: these little vortices “can give flying snakes an extra lift,” notes Barba. “The shape of the snakes in flight — which is a flattened version of its shape at rest — gets help from little vortices around it.”

Next, the researchers would like to include more elements of the snake’s real gliding conditions into their computer simulations, such as its full body forming an S-shape, rather than working with just a section.

“This will be more difficult to do in a computer model, but it will probably reveal more about the complicated flow patterns snakes take advantage of to be such gifted gliders,” Barba says.

Related articles

• The Elegant Secrets Of Flying Snakes
• A new understanding of flying snakes may lead to advances in technology
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• ScienceShot: The Secrets of Flying Snakes
• Flying Snake Morphs into UFO Shape to Glide
• Scientists show how snakes can fly distances of up to 100ft
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Happy International Women’s Day today!

From the New Statesman in Britain:

We mustn’t forget the revolutionary roots of International Women’s Day

Now marked with Google doodles and special shopping displays, in the early 20th century, International Women’s Day was a fierce, worldwide campaign for worker’s rights.

by Rebecca Winson

Published 8 March, 2014 – 10:00

International Women’s Day: a day, according to the UN, to “reflect on progress made”, to “celebrate acts by ordinary women”. Few would say that it fails to do this. Last year Google marked it with a doodle, and there were events from streets marches to window displays of Selfridges, who marked it with a short film showing famous female designers and presenters.

Yet all this fails to reflect exactly what the day means. Amid pastel Gifs and shop windows full of well-off women, barely a whisper could be heard about those who brought the day into being. Perhaps it’s not surprising: next to them, modern feminists look a little wet. They forged International Women’s Day (IWD) in the midst of fire, bloody strikes, starving workers and revolution.

Luise Zietz and Clara Zetkin were the first to come up with the idea. Inspired by growing numbers of female activists, in 1910 they proposed to the second Socialist International the organisation of a day worldwide dedicated to promoting women’s rights.

Against a backdrop of ambivalence from male unions, women had been organising for decades. Cap-makers, match girls and laundresses had all picketed at the turn of the 20th century, and as Zetkin and Zietz made their proposal, the “Uprising of the 20,000” was drawing worldwide attention. A bloody strike by New York’s garment workers, it was led by Clara Lemlich, a 23-year-old Ukrainian-Jewish immigrant who rallied tens of thousands of women to the picket lines even after thugs hired by her employers broke her ribs.

The first IWD took place on 19 March 1911. Over a million women across Europe took to the streets calling for equal rights. Jubilation at the day’s success was short-lived: less than a week later fire ripped through the sweatshop where Clara Lemlich worked, killing 146 workers who had been locked inside by their employers. Lemlich lost a cousin to the flames, collapsing in hysterics when she was unable to find her body. The tragedy – still one of the worst industrial disasters in US history – brought universal condemnation, focusing future IWD campaigning fiercely on worker’s rights.

IWD was just solidifying into a proudly left-wing tradition when the First World War broke out in 1914, and socialist organisation collapsed in chaos. In 1917, however, IWD took on significance again, when a group of Russian women triggered one of the most monumental events of the 20th century. Marching in St Petersburg, they were unexpectedly joined by workers from surrounding factories, supporting their calls for “Bread and Peace”. Within hours a full scale revolution had broken out. Tsar Nicholas abdicated, a new government was set up, and six months later, the Bolsheviks took control.

We all know what happened next, and it may well be distaste at the system of government that the event kickstarted which is responsible for its revolutionary roots being swept under the carpet. Some historians claim its origins were deliberately hushed up in the McCarthy era, some see it as changing politics – but whatever was responsible, the disparity between what the day was then and what it is now shouldn’t pass without comment.

From being a day devoted to campaigning for the poorest women, to becoming one on which Walmart can claim to promote equality: IWD is a perfect example of feminism’s failure to connect with the poor. Get up in arms about that accusation all you want (and please do, it would be great to see some mass mobs in feminism), but the fact remains that, for all the grasps at intersectionality and the spat-ridden Twittering of recent years, there are still women who find themselves in the same position that Clara Lemlich did in 1910: scrabbling through rubble for the body of a loved one. We consistently fail to connect with the whole embarrassing mess of it.

Sweatshops still exist across the world, as do trafficking, slavery, horrendous working conditions and unsanitary living conditions. On our own doorstep, women are bearing the brunt of the cuts. Single mothers, poor teenagers in inner-cities, ordinary working women who struggle to put food on the table. What do we debate on Twitter, on our much-fought-over platforms in the press? Pink toys, boobs in newspapers and women on banknotes: none of which is unimportant, but which have all risen to the top of the debate because of our reluctance to deal with anything filthier.

International Women’s Day – and perhaps feminism in general – now veers dangerously close to paint-by-numbers protest. Femen have called for an international women’s strike on IWD 2017, which might have been heartening had they not chosen to wait three years in order to coincide with the headline-grabbing centenary of the February Revolution.

When Clara Lemlich died, aged 96, she was organising her care workers into a union. International Women’s Day shouldn’t just be about the poor in order to respect women like her, but because of what she knew to the last: that to make society better for everyone, you have to start with the ones who have it worst. On 8 March, that’s what we should be reflecting upon.

Haitians on International Women’s Day: here.

It’s March 8, International Women’s Day and the eighth day of women’s history month and so I have decided to blog about the work I do in celebration of women’s history, present and future: here.

International Women’s Day: ‘When a man gives his opinion, he’s a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she’s a bitch’ – feminist quotes from female icons to inspire you: here.

15 Works of Art Depicting Women in Science [Photo Essay]: here.

Five female mathematicians you’ve probably never heard of, but should know: here.

Inside Alaska’s New “War on Women”: here.

Lebanese march against domestic violence in rare non-partisan protest: here.

March 3, 1913: A historic moment in the fight for women’s voting rights: here.

Related articles

• Clara Zetkin and International Women’s Day
• Equality for Women is Progress for All …
• Women’s Work; A post for International Women’s Day
• November 22: Clara Lemlich
• International Women’s Day 2014: Inspiring Change
• Tomorrow – March 8th, 2014 – Is “International Women’s Day”.
• International Women’s Day celebrated in Google doodle
• Happy International Women’s Day!
• Celebrating women
• International Women’s Day (IWD) and Human Rights 2014

Good whale news from Japan

This video is called Humpback Whales – BBC documentary excerpt.

After bad news from Japan about taxpayer-funded killing of whales … and good news about Japanese demonstrating against whaling … now some more good news.

From Wildlife Extra:

Japan saves humpback breeding grounds

March 2014: It’s good news for humpbacks as Japan has designated the Kerama Islands and surrounding waters in Okinawa Prefecture as the country’s 31st national park and the first in three decades. These waters are also famed as a breeding ground for whales, including humpbacks who migrate to the tropical waters for mating between December and April every year.

The designated area includes 30 islets and reefs, and covers 3,520 hectares of dry land and 94,750 hectares of ocean. It lies 35 kilometres west of Okinawa Main Island and is famous for its rich aquatic environment. It is home to 248 species of coral.

A report in the Japan Times says that the ministry will also designate surrounding waters shallower than 30 metres as a marine park and will strictly restrict development within them, such as the extraction of sand. It also plans to build coral restoration facilities to counter the damage done in the past.

March 2014: The future of Japan’s whaling activities in the Antarctic could be reviewed as the International Court of Justice in The Hague has announced that it will deliver its preliminary judgment in the case between Australia and Japan at the end of the month: here.

Related articles

• With whale watching & coral reefs, Japan’s first national park in 27 years named in Okinawa
• Okinawa’s Kerama Islands designated Japan’s 31st national park
• Kerama Islands in Okinawa
• Are Japan’s Scientific Whaling Programs Bogus?
• Study finds 5 distinct humpback whale populations
• Photos: An ‘epic’ humpback encounter in the NW
• Humpback whale beaches on Dutch island
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United States Justice Department nominee rejected for supporting Mumia Abu-Jamal’s rights

This video from the United States Senate says about itself:

Democrat Calls Adegbile Vote Lowest Point in 30-Year Career

6 March 2014

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, on Wednesday called the Senate’s rejection of President Barack Obama’s nominee to lead the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division the “lowest point” of his 30-year career.

“I don’t say that lightly,” Harkin said. “I was here during the impeachment process, trial for President [Bill] Clinton. I kind of thought that was a sham, but that didn’t compare to what happened today.”

Read the full story here.

By Eric London in the USA:

Senate Democrats reject Justice Department nominee over Abu-Jamal case

8 March 2014

Seven Senate Democrats voted against the nomination of Debo Adegbile to lead the civil rights division of the Department of Justice on Wednesday, defeating his appointment.

The seven Democrats rejected the nomination because Adegbile served as the litigation director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund when the organization legally represented political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal in a 2011 appeal from the death penalty.

The move is a clear signal that admission into the highest echelons of the American government is available only to those who have no connection whatsoever to any effort to defend the democratic rights of the population of the United States.

Abu-Jamal, a former leader of the Black Panther Party in Philadelphia and an advocate against widespread police brutality, was convicted over 30 years ago for the 1982 killing of police officer Daniel Faulkner. Abu-Jamal was kept on death row for decades despite significant evidence of his innocence.

Since the trial, prosecution witnesses have admitted that they were coerced by police under threat of death into testifying against the defendant. Moreover, a man named Arnold Beverly signed an affidavit admitting that he himself had been ordered by crooked police officers to kill Faulkner. In a blatantly illegal move, the prosecution also withheld exculpatory evidence, including the results of Faulkner’s autopsy, which showed that the policeman was shot by a .44 caliber weapon. Abu-Jamal’s .38 could therefore not have been the murder weapon.

In 2011, the Third US Circuit Court of Appeals ordered that state prosecutors conduct a new sentencing hearing for Abu-Jamal on the grounds that the manner in which the death sentencing instructions were given to jury members was unconstitutional. According to the Third Circuit, the judge in Abu-Jamal’s trial unconstitutionally rammed through the death penalty sentence without properly considering whether there were any mitigating circumstances that should have been considered.

State prosecutors ultimately backed away from their threats to defend the death penalty in renewed sentencing hearings, ending the threat of Abu-Jamal’s execution. He remains in prison, serving life without parole.

It was the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, led at the time by Adegbile, which argued the case before the Third Circuit. Even then, Adegbile’s involvement in the case was attenuated at best. The NAACP only became involved in Abu-Jamal’s legal defense in 2006, when it challenged efforts by the prosecution to remove black members of the jury. Even after filing “friend of the court” briefs periodically, the NAACP only became directly involved in 2011. At no point was Adegbile part of the legal team that prepared the case on appeal.

Yet simply for belonging to an organization that attempted to reduce a political prisoner’s sentence from death to life imprisonment on clear constitutional grounds, Adegbile has been barred from heading the Department of Justice’s civil rights division.

It should go without saying that, given he was selected for the position by President Obama, the former NAACP lawyer is far from a political radical. And if the Senate had approved his nomination, Adegbile would simply have become another cog in the machinery of the capitalist state, working under the direction of Attorney General Eric Holder, the defender of a presidential “right” to assassinate any American citizen, using drone-fired missiles, without trial or any other form of judicial review.

This makes the Senate action all the more extraordinary. This vote to punish a lawyer for his legal representation of political prisoners underscores the deeply anti-democratic character of the American ruling elite. By the logic of this action, those accused of offenses against the state should be denied legal representation, or even trials of any kind, and railroaded straight to prison.

In other words, the type of “justice” being meted out to detainees at Guantanamo Bay should become the norm for all those who run afoul of the American police apparatus.

The contempt with which the American political establishment view democratic rights is expressed in the comments of those senators who voted against Adegbile’s nomination. They are particularly incensed because of Abu-Jamal’s unwavering stance that he is innocent and the victim of a frame-up.

Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware defended his “no” vote with the statement that “the decades-long public campaign by others to elevate a heinous, coldblooded killer to the status of a political prisoner and folk hero has caused tremendous pain to the widow of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner and shown great disrespect for law enforcement officers and families throughout our region.”

Senator Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said that Adegbile had “inserted his office in an effort to turn reality on its head, impugn honorable and selfless law enforcement officers, and glorify an unrepentant cop-killer. This is not required by our legal system. On the contrary, it is noxious to it.”

Contrary to the proclamations of McConnell (himself a lawyer), the protection of criminal defendants from being put to death by the state when there are serious questions as to their innocence is unquestionably required by the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments of the Constitution. That the government’s highest ranking political figures can state point-blank that such a right does not exist underscores the reality that the Constitution is a dead letter to the political representatives of the financial aristocracy.

Related articles

• Mumia Abu-Jamal Triggers Controversy on Floor of US Senate. …
• Senate Aide Says It’s ‘Impossible’ to Get Obama’s Black Nominees Past Senate Republicans
• Senate Rejects Obama Pick For Justice Department Because of Abu-Jamal Case
• US Senate blocks Obama nominee
• Spineless Democrats Killed Obama’s Civil Rights Nomination

Lost English cuckoo found again in Africa

This video from England says about itself:

21 August 2013

Discover more about the story of cuckoos on Dartmoor and hear about an exciting project that will be tracking their migration to Africa.

From Wildlife Extra:

Lost cuckoo makes dramatic reappearance

March 2014: One of the migrating cuckoos being tracked by the British Trust for Ornithology on its migration to and from sub-Saharan Africa has been located after a three-month silence. Tor, the cuckoo that was fitted with its tracking device in Dartmoor National Park last May had ‘gone dark’ and was feared dead.

Tor’s satellite signal, that transmits for 10 hours every couple of days to reveal the location of the bird and, occasionally, its body heat measurement, was last received on 4 December, at which time he was on the Gabon/Congo border. It is not unknown for the transmitters’ batteries to degrade or for the birds to be under dense cover for extended periods which prevents the devices’ solar panels from charging them up, but usually there is only a period of a week or two before they spring into life again.

In this case, Tor stayed under the radar for an unprecedented amount of time until he resurfaced in early March in the Central African Republic.

The BTO has been satellite-tracking cuckoos on their migration since 2011 in order to find out their important stop-over sites and wintering destinations to and from Africa and so discover why we have lost more than half of our breeding cuckoos in the past 25 years. Last spring 15 cuckoos were tagged, most of which are now on their way back to the UK. Information from the project will help to form conservation strategies and initiate action.

To find out more about the project and follow the progress of this year’s cuckoos as they return to the UK, visit here.

You can also sponsor a cuckoo and help finance the research here.

Related articles

• Cuckoos stay on course
• VIDEO: Cuckoo tagging provides new clues
• Birds’ migration secrets to be revealed by space tracker
• A call for the cuckoo: how to help an endangered bird
• British cuckoos’ Sahara spring migration
• Cuckoo takes European holiday
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• Four Cuckoos today!