New spider species gets fashion designer’s name

This October 2015 video says about itself:

Jotus remus, an Australian species of spider I discovered on 30 December 2014 when I came home from a camping trip and found it sitting on my luggage when unloading the car. Perhaps interesting to note that I had intentionally left my camera gear at home so I would not be tempted to look for spiders.

This spider was named and described in a paper that David Hill and myself published in the journal Peckhamia.

The courtship behaviour of this spider is extraordinary. Both play a kind of cat and mouse game and when I published this video I still did not know why they behaved in that way. It took almost a year to solve the puzzle and it happened when bringing together virgin females and males, you can see what happens then in the sequel to this video, Spid-a-boo2.

I watched female and males engaging in this way for many hours and regardless of how long the male tried a female that attacked him would not mate. This behaviour is NOT to tire out the female, tiredness plays no role here. The aim is to find a female that is receptive, one that has not yet mated. Instead of chasing the male with his paddle receptive females become calm and placid almost immediately when seeing the male’s paddle appearing over the edge of a leaf and it only takes a couple of minutes for them to decide to mate.

The clips I used in this video are only a fraction of what I originally shot. You can find many more scenes in my album on Vimeo.

The music for this clip was composed, played and recorded by cellist Kristin Rule. I love her work and I am glad she agreed to help me with this little clip. Research, camera, editing: Jurgen Otto Camera gear used: Canon C100 and 100mm macro lens For more on my work visit me on Facebook.

And now, newly discovered relatives of this spider species.

From ScienceDaily:

Trendy on eight legs: Jumping spider named after fashion czar Karl Lagerfeld

July 2, 2019

New to science species of Australian jumping spider was named after Hamburg-born fashion icon Karl Lagerfeld (1933-2019) after the arachnid reminded its discoverers of the designer. Intrigued by its distinct ‘downplayed’ black-and-white colours, the Hamburg-Brisbane-Melbourne team likened the spider’s appearance to Lagerfeld’s trademark style: his white hair and Kent collar that contrasted with the black sunglasses and gloves.

Thus, the curious species, now officially listed under the name Jotus karllagerfeldii was described in the open-access journal Evolutionary Systematics by Dr Danilo Harms of the Center for Natural History of the University of Hamburg (CeNak), Dr Barbara Baehr, Queensland Museum (Brisbane, Australia) and Joseph Schubert, Monash University (Melbourne).

When compared with other members in the ‘brushed’ jumping spider genus Jotus, the novel species clearly stands out due to its black-and-white legs and tactile organs (pedipalps), whereas the typical representative of this group demonstrates striking red or blue colours.

“The animal reminded us with its colours of the reduced style of Karl Lagerfeld. For example, we associate the black leg links with the gloves he always wore,” Danilo Harms explains.

In fact, what was to be now commonly referred to as Karl Lagerfeld’s Jumping Spider was identified amongst specimens in the Godeffroy Collection. Kept at CeNak, the historical collection was originally compiled by the inquisitive and wealthy tradesman from Hamburg Johann Cesar Godeffroy, who financed several expeditions to Australia back in the 19th century. Here, the research team identified another link between Australia, Godeffroy, Hamburg and Jotus karllagerfeldi.

Besides the tiny (4 to 5 mm) arachnid, whose pedipalps resemble a white Kent collar, the scientists describe another seven new to science species and add them to the same genus. Two of those, Jotus fortiniae and Jotus newtoni, were also named after inspirational figures for their hard work and creativity: educator, molecular biologist and science communicator Dr Ellen Fortini (Perth College, Western Australia) and keen naturalist and photographer Mark Newton. All novel species were found either in the Godeffroy Collection or amongst the jumping spiders housed at Queensland Museum.

Surprisingly, even though the genus Jotus comprises numerous species found all over Australia, there is not much known about these spiders. An interesting feature, according to the scientists behind the present study, are the huge telescopic eyes, which allow for spatial vision. The Jotus species need this ability in foraging, since they do not weave webs, but rather hunt in the open. Thus, they have evolved into extremely fast and agile hunters, capable of jumping short distances.

Curiously, back in 2017, the team of Barbara and Danilo, joined by Dr Robert Raven from Queensland Museum, described another previously unknown, yet fascinating species: a water-adapted spider, whose sudden emergence at the coastline of Australia’s “Sunshine State” of Queensland during low tide in January brought up the association with reggae legend Bob Marley and his song “High Tide or Low Tide.” The species, scientifically known as Desis bobmarleyi, was also published in Evolutionary Systematics.

Spiders start out social but later turn aggressive after dispersing and becoming solitary, according to a study publishing July 2 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Raphael Jeanson of the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France, and colleagues: here.

United States flight attendants’ uniforms cause illness

By Brian Brown and Tom Hall in the USA:

US flight attendants speak out over uniforms that cause illness

12 June 2019

Body rashes. Burning throat and eyes. Coughing and headaches. These are just some of the medical symptoms American Airlines flight attendants have been dealing with since the rollout of new uniforms for more than 70,000 airline employees in September 2016.

Many Delta Air Lines workers are reporting similar health issues with their work uniforms, which were produced by a different manufacturer.

“They rolled out three years ago, and when I opened the box, this awful fishy, chemical smell hit me,” one American Airlines flight attendant told the World Socialist Web Site.

“I washed everything several times. My house stunk. I tried to wear it, and it gave me rashes, headaches, chest tightening, dry cough,” she continued. “I figured out it was the uniform. I quit wearing it and was better, but if I was around others wearing the uniform, I got the symptoms. I would get rashes on my chest, neck and arms. I wore the skirt that was lined. My arms would get a rash because they would brush against the skirt. It’s been going on three years.”

After discussing her symptoms with co-workers, she realized that her physical ailments were widespread and that their uniforms were likely the cause. “We just sort of figured it out. That was the only common denominator, and you felt better when you took it off within an hour,” she said. Over 5,000 American Airlines employees have filed complaints that their uniforms have made them ill.

The company is preparing to replace the uniforms with those provided by a different supplier. However, this change will not be completed until 2022. In the meantime, American Airlines is allowing workers who experienced illness to choose alternative clothing until the new line of uniforms is completed sometime in 2022. However, uniforms from the new manufacturer, Lands’ End, have been the source of almost identical complaints from flight attendants at Delta.

American Airlines and the company that supplied the uniforms—Twin Hill, a subsidiary of the company Tailored Brands, which also owns clothing outlets Men’s Wearhouse and Jos. A. Bank—have stated, “The uniforms are safe and designed with the appropriate levels of chemicals used to sustain the quality of the work uniforms.” American Airlines insists that its uniforms are safe to wear and have spent millions on tests to prove that the uniforms are safe.

Twin Hill has been dealing with lawsuits from other airline industry workers making similar complaints about the safety of their uniforms. Around 10 percent of employees at Alaska Airlines reported adverse reactions when it rolled out Twin Hill uniforms in 2011. Alaska Airlines later dropped Twin Hill as its uniform vendor, but not before flight attendants filed a lawsuit against Twin Hill in 2013. A similar suit by American Airlines flight attendants filed last year is still pending.

Independent studies have found high levels of carcinogenic material in the uniforms’ fabric. However, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA) union conducted its own research on the uniforms and found that one piece of the uniform, a collar, was found to have levels of cadmium higher than the acceptable textile industry standard. The APFA’s test also determined the uniforms contain formaldehyde, nickel, and tetrachlorophenol, a corrosive chemical known to cause eye irritation.

A Harvard study from 2017 also found a high correlation between the introduction of Twin Hill uniforms at Alaska Airlines and self-reported symptoms such as rashes and irritated skin, shortness of breath and blurred vision.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), a unit of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, issued a health hazard evaluation of symptomatic reactions believed to be tied to uniforms supplied to the tens of thousands of American Airlines employees.

“We are the new Radium Girls,” Heather Poole, a flight attendant and published author who has detailed working conditions facing flight attendants, told the World Socialist Web Site. This refers to female factory workers in the early 20th century poisoned by the radioactive material in the self-luminous paint they used to paint watch dials. The companies lied to their workforce, claiming the paint was harmless, even as their employees suffered from anemia, necrosis of the jaw and other symptoms of radiation poisoning.

“It took them years to get sick, so the company would deny responsibility. But they had tumors on their faces and other horrific injuries. Their bones would disintegrate from the inside out and their jaws would fall off. And the company was able to legally deny it when it was so obvious. It was mostly women workers, who considered it a highly desirable job. It’s the same with us.

“You have to understand that these uniforms are not resale clothing. At Lands’ End, the shirt you wear is not the same as my uniform. That’s part of our problem because the airline, in public statements, compares our uniforms to retail items by the same companies. But they put chemicals like formaldehyde in our uniforms, and a lot of other things we don’t know about, to make it durable.”

Heather took medical leave in August 2018 after she began to experience symptoms such as shortness of breath, elevated heart rate and fatigue. “Then I started having anxiety. I almost dreaded going to the airport. Why was I having these feelings? And this young flight attendant said that the heart monitor on her watch saw heart-rate spikes.”

She says that, to her knowledge, not a single worker has successfully obtained workers’ compensation benefits due to adverse reactions to their uniforms. American Airlines uses the infamous claims administration company Sedgwick to handle its workers’ comp cases. The World Socialist Web Site has interviewed Delta flight attendants and Amazon workers who have suffered serious workplace injuries only to be systematically denied care by Sedgwick and even harassed by Sedgwick’s private detectives.

“Sedgwick spins it by claiming that it is just allergies, meaning they don’t have to cover it,” Heather said. “How do you find a doctor? When you do, how does he know what the chemicals are when the company keeps insisting it is safe?

“The union is doing nothing,” she added. “They are just counting numbers. Twin Hill got to them, I think, because they are not helpful at all anymore.”

The widespread health problems reported by airline workers come in the context of a regime of brutal cost-cutting and exploitation by management at major air carriers, the result of years of consolidation and layoffs in the industry. Delta Air Lines recently was exposed attempting to lock a flight crew into their aircraft as it sat at the gate. The crew was approaching the company’s maximum duty hours, the most they can be required to work without a break.

Fearing a delay or cancellation if the crew insisted on taking their break, and without a backup crew available, Delta management instructed the gate agent to keep the door to the jet bridge closed.

“A lot of flight attendants are afraid to speak,” Heather said. “They will just fire you. It’s like an abusive relationship. Because of seniority, you don’t just start over where you left off, you start off at the bottom at less than $20,000 per year. If you speak out, they’ll find a reason to fire you. There are so many loopholes that it’s easy to fire.

“At first, I felt so hopeless. I felt like, ‘they’re just going to get away with it.’ But I decided to publicize it. Every day I write about it and tweet about it. My co-workers hear me and are going to learn about it. Before social media, they could bury this kind of stuff. Now, they can’t make it disappear.

“It’s criminal what they’re doing and they think they can get away with it, and they have for so long. But then it gets to be too big. And then they get caught. They’ve gotten so cocky they can’t cover it up anymore.”

Are you an airline worker, flight attendant or a pilot facing poor working conditions or health issues? Contact us to tell your story.

Flight attendants from Taiwan’s EVA Air are on strike demanding higher wages as well as a reduction in long working hours. The action is just one of numerous walkouts and protests being held by airline and airport workers around the world in response to attacks on wages and working conditions in one of the most globally interconnected industries in the world: here.

11,000 US airline catering workers vote for strike: here.

Japanese government, bosses force high heels on women

This 5 June 2019 video says about itself:

#kutoo no more! Japanese women take a stand against high heels

Thousands of people have signed a petition calling for Japan to end dress codes that require women to wear high heels in the workplace.

From Kyodo news agency in Japan, 5 June 2019:

Labor minister opposes banning female dress codes with high heels

TOKYO – The labor minister indicated Wednesday he will not support a drive to ban dress codes that force women to wear high heels at work.

“It’s generally accepted by society that (wearing high heels) is necessary and reasonable in workplaces”, Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Takumi Nemoto said during a Diet committee session.

His comments came after a group working against gender-based workplace discrimination submitted a petition with 18,800 signatures to the labor ministry on Monday calling for the government to ban companies from requiring women to wear high heels in the workplace, citing health and other issues.

The group is part of the #KuToo movement — an amalgam of “#MeToo“, and the Japanese words for shoes, “kutsu”, and pain, “kutsuu”.

Nemoto was responding to Kanako Otsuji, a member of the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, who said forcing women to wear high heels at work is “outdated.”

Can your boss make you wear a bra to work?

French Islamophobes threaten shop workers with gas chambers

This 19 August 2016 video is called France burqini ban: Muslim swimsuit’s creator speaks out.

By Will Morrow:

France’s ruling parties launch anti-Muslim campaign against sports veil

28 February 2019

On Tuesday evening, the French-based sports clothing retailer Décathlon announced that it could not proceed with plans to place on sale an Islamic sports veil, designed to be worn while jogging, at stores in France. The cancellation came in response to a three-day-long campaign of racist and anti-Muslim hysteria by the French political establishment, demanding the banning of the item. It resulted in the mobilization of fascist layers to threaten the company and its employees.

Lydia Guirgous, a spokeswoman for the right wing The Republicans (LR), launched the campaign on February 24, after a marketing blogger announced the upcoming release of the veil. Guirgous tweeted: “Décathlon is submitting itself to both #Islamism that only tolerates women whose heads are covered by a hijab to secure their place in the Ummah, and to men. Décathlon is thus renouncing the values of our civilization upon the altar of the market and communalist marketing.”

The Tweet triggered a deluge of anti-Muslim statements in the political establishment, some employing the same absurd and fraudulent pretext that they were seeking to defend women by banning the sale of a religious garment.

Valérie Rabault, the Socialist Party (PS) deputy in the National Assembly for Tarn-et-Garonne tweeted: “Boycott Décathlon in France?” …

The PS, the French Socialist Party, collapsed in recent elections because of their policies while in government of austerity and adapting to extreme right xenophobia. A major role in that played Blairite right-wing Prime Minister Valls, with his hatred of Roma and Islamophobic persecution of another sporting garment, the so-called ‘burkini‘. The PS supporters rejected Valls as their presidential candidate. He then tried, and failed, to join the new president Macron‘s party. He then moved to Spain, where he marched jointly with the Vox neonazi party against the social democrat government; joining a right-wing party that wants a coalition with the Vox fascists after the coming elections.

Unfortunately, it seems that the PS has not learned the lesson of their catastrophic election defeat, and that even though Valls is gone, some of his Islamophobic miasma remains.

Valérie Boyer, the LR deputy for Bouches-du-Rhone, said she was “revolted to see this French company choosing to prolong the sexual apartheid imposed on women in public spaces.”

The attacks escalated the next day, after Décathlon tweeted in reply to Guirgous that “the hijab was needed by certain runners, and we responded to this sporting demand.” The item is already on sale in Morocco.

The Macron government publicly joined the campaign on Tuesday morning. Solidarity and Health Minister Agnes Buzyn said, in an interview with RTL, “I would prefer that a French brand not promote the veil. It’s not outlawed, but nonetheless, this is a vision of women that I don’t share. I find that it does not correspond to the values of our country.” Another spokesperson for the governing party in the National Assembly, Aurore Bergé, tweeted that she would “no longer place trust in a brand that breaks with our values.”

The same morning, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, of the right-wing Stand Up France! party, was invited for a TV interview on France2, where he declared that he did not intend to allow his two young daughters to grow up in a country like Saudi Arabia, and demanded a boycott of Décathlon.

Mr Dupont-Aignan: if you don’t like the regime in Saudi Arabia, then you should ask President Macron to stop selling French weapons to the Saudi absolute monarchy for waging genocidal war on the people of Yemen. And you should criticize the right-wing ‘republican’ authorities for closing down a Riviera public beach to the public, reserving it for the Saudi royal family. You should not take it out in women on France who have nothing to do with the Saudi royals; who just happen to like clothes which you dislike. Maybe they dislike your clothes as well; but that should not give them the power to ban your favourite garments.

Just a week ago, Stand Up France! was forced to withdraw the candidacy of Emmanuelle Gave in the European elections, after news outlets published her social media posts, one of which said there were “too many blacks in the 100 meter race” and the other that “Muslims are totally unacceptable as housekeepers or nannies.”

The extreme-right National Rally of Marine Le Pen published a communiqué the same day, denouncing the “latest intrusion of Islamic communalism into public spaces.” While welcoming the anti-Muslim crusade by the Socialist Party and others, it demanded an end to what it called the “policies of massive immigration that are the most undoubted causes of sectarianism.”

The outpouring of filth had its intended effect, with a mobilization of fascistic layers to threaten the company and its employees. Décathlon tweeted that “Our customer services have received over 500 calls and emails since this morning. Our staff have been insulted and threatened, sometimes physically.”

Décathlon published extracts of various anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic messages it received. One stated: “Rotten gang. Money has no smell. You betray the values of the French Republic. Shame on you for contributing to the Islamist invasion. You’ll end up like the riff-raff in the ovens in Poland.”

Meaning that this Islamophobe advocated mass murder of shop workers like happened in World War II to Jews in concentration camps like Auschwitz and Sobibor To this French death threat fascist, these Jews were ‘riff-raff’ who deserved mass murder.

Not politicians or neonazis threatening shop workers with mass murder in Auschwitz should decide what clothes women wear. Only the women themselves should decide that. Whether it is about women wearing headscarves, ‘burkinis‘, bikinis, miniskirts, maxishirts, trousers, shorts; about short hair or about long hair; etc. etc.

Another asked whether the company planned on marketing “explosive belts”.

On Tuesday evening, Décathlon announced it was withdrawing the product indefinitely “in the face of the violent polemic it has triggered” and “out of concern to guarantee the safety of our staff.”

The Republicans deputy Lydia Guirons tweeted gleefully in response that the “mobilization of citizens” who uphold “the values of our civilization has won. I am happy that Décathlon is retreating from the sale of the hijab. It is a wise decision. The struggle against Islamism is a fight at every moment.”

This disgusting operation exposes the fraudulent character of the official campaign against “anti-Semitism” mounted by every one of the parties who are whipping up this anti-Muslim propaganda. It has nothing to do with opposing anti-Semitism, and everything to do with slandering growing left-wing opposition to social inequality in the working class as anti-Semitic and fascistic.

An effort is underway to downplay the indissoluble connection between anti-Semitism and fascism, and to associate anti-Semitism with socialist opposition to capitalism. As the past week’s events demonstrate, the campaign over anti-Semitism is being used to strengthen Le Pen’s National Rally and other fascistic forces with the promotion of anti-Muslim hysteria.

The entire political establishment is shifting rapidly to the right in response to a leftward movement of the working class, which has found only an initial expression in the “yellow vest” protests.

In a speech last Wednesday, Macron repeatedly warned about the growth of “radical Islam” and called for stepped up policing of working-class neighborhoods. “This ideology grows like gangrene in certain suburbs”, he said, calling for a “Republican conquest of these territories.”

The French political establishment has long utilized campaigns against the Muslim veil as a means of inciting anti-Islamic xenophobia and justifying attacks on democratic rights directed against the entire working class. In 2010, two years after the onset of the global financial crash and the initiation of austerity across Europe, President Sarkozy introduced a ban on full facial coverings.

Islamophobic death threats against French sports shops workers

Translated from Dutch NOS TV today:

A sporty headscarf for jogging Muslim women will not yet come to the shops in France. The plan has been canceled by sports retailer Decathlon because of serious threats.

“All women have the right to exercise, regardless of their culture”, said the store chain earlier. In the meantime, Decathlon has reversed that decision because of threats received by (shop) workers. “We suspend the project to guarantee the safety of our employees”, a statement says.

On Twitter, the store chain showed examples of what threats it got. “You are contributing to the invasion by Muslim extremists and should all die in the ovens in Poland“, someone wrote.

Meaning that this Islamophobe advocated mass murder of shop workers like happened in World War II to Jews in concentration camps like Auschwitz and Sobibor.

Previously, most French politicians had reacted disapprovingly to the intention to include a sporty hijab in the collection. …

The socialist opposition publicly wondered whether Decathlon should not be boycotted. …

The PS, the French Socialist Party, collapsed in recent elections because of their policies while in government of austerity and adapting to extreme right xenophobia. A major role in that played Blairite right-wing Prime Minister Valls, with his hatred of Roma and Islamophobic persecution of another sporting garment, the so-called ‘burkini‘. The PS supporters rejected Valls as their presidential candidate. He then tried, and failed, to join the new president Macron‘s party. He then moved to Spain, where he marched jointly with the Vox neonazi party against the social democrat government; joining a right-wing party that wants a coalition with the Vox fascists after the coming elections.

Unfortunately, it seems that the PS has not learned the lesson of their catastrophic election defeat, and that even though Valls is gone, some of his Islamophobic miasma remains.

That idea even got support from the right-wing radical Nicolas Dupont-Aignan: “I do not want my two daughters to grow up in a country where the place of the woman will soon be the same as in Saudi Arabia.”

Well, Mr far-rightist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, if you don’t like the regime in Saudi Arabia, then you should ask President Macron to stop selling French weapons to the Saudi absolute monarchy for waging genocidal war on the people of Yemen. And you should criticize the right-wing ‘republican’ authorities for closing down a Riviera public beach to the public, reserving it for the Saudi royal family. You should not take it out in women on France who have nothing to do with the Saudi royals; who just happen to like clothes which you dislike. Maybe they dislike your clothes as well; but that should not give them the power to ban your favourite garments.

Not politicians or neonazis threatening shop workers with mass murder in Auschwitz should decide what clothes women wear. Only the women themselves should decide that. Whether it is about women wearing headscarves, ‘burkinis‘, bikinis, miniskirts, maxishirts, trousers, shorts; for short hair or for long hair; etc. etc.

The ruling party LREM of President Macron said they no longer have confidence in the sports retail chain. …

The sports headscarf is not new anymore. Sports brand Nike produced it already in 2017, that is for sale in France.

But now that a French brand wanted to sell the garment in a large sports chain and the sports headscarf would become more visible to the French public, many politicians considered it a step too far.

Chanel fashion stops using fur, snakeskin

This video says about itself:

The Medan Connection (2011): The grisly truth behind fashion’s reptile skin trade

This shocking report has already been forcing change at the highest levels of Swiss politics. Travelling to Indonesia, it reveals the brutal roots of the world’s luxury reptile skin industry.

“Move over leopard, the star animal print this year is snake!”

For the image-conscious elite, snake-skin handbags come at a price, but not with a conscience. Tracing the supply chain back to its violent origins, it appears even protected reptiles are not safe. In the rudimentary slaughterhouses instant death is not guaranteed and often the snakes are skinned alive. Laws exist to prevent this, but they are easily circumvented. With illegal snake-skin supplying the major fashion houses the industry has a lot of power, which the UN regulating body has failed to control. “Overall the policy makers involved in this trade must accept that there are a range of major problems”.

Translated from Dutch NOS TV today:

Chanel makes much use of snakeskin, crocodile leather and fur in the current collections, but according to the company, this is changing. The fashion house will stop using exotic animal skins. How revolutionary is that step by the French fashion house? …

Yet this is a big step for Chanel, says the fashion expert [Aynouk Tan]. “Chanel has always profiled itself with elitist clothing and French chicness, and that they now throw that status overboard indicates that they succumb to pressure by environmental and animal rights organizations.” …

“The pollution and cruelty for animals which elitist fashion brands whitewash by being ‘luxurious and a status symbol’, that may have stopped now.”

Egyptian actress five years in jail for dress?

Translated from Dutch NOS TV today:

An Egyptian actress has to appear in court because of immorality. During the closing ceremony of a film festival in Cairo, Rania Youssef wore a dress whose skirt was translucent. As a result, her legs were completely visible.

That is considered obscene in Egypt …

One might think that the Egyptian military dictatorship is so indebted to the money of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that they not only give Egyptian islands away to Saudi Arabia and help the Saudi absolute monarchy in its bloody war on the people of Yemen, but that they also copy the Saudi government’s oppression of women by denying them the freedom to dress the way they want as well.

On the other hand, there is a similarity to other friends of the Egyptian dictatorship: NATO countries like France. In France, mainly Muslim women are persecuted for wearing, eg, ‘burkinis’ or maxiskirts. Which seems different at first: but is based on the same denial of women’s rights to wear what they want as in Saudi Arabia or Egypt.

Youssef may get up to five years in prison. Her trial starts on 12 January.

See also here.

TV PRESENTER JAILED FOR INTERVIEWING GAY MAN An Egyptian court has sentenced a TV presenter to a year in prison for interviewing a gay sex worker on his show. [AP]

Saudi women protest with clothes inside out

#العبايه_المقلوبه
مستمتعة بنظرات الذهول pic.twitter.com/Y93GxlS5ZI

— Shafa (@Shafax6) November 11, 2018

This photo shows a Saudi woman wearing her clothes inside out as a protest; with the Twitter hashtag #AbayaInsideout.

Translated from Dutch NOS TV today:

Saudi women rebel on social media against wearing an abaya, a long traditional garment. …

In 2016, a woman was arrested by the religious police in the capital Riyadh because she removed her garment. And last year a woman was arrested about whom a movie had surfaced online in which she wore a miniskirt. …

Upon his appointment as Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman was seen as a reformer. But that image soon showed cracks because he wants to only have those reforms under his conditions. Many critics have been arrested and some of his relatives have been detained at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh …

Khashoggi

One of his critics, the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, had to pay for his attitude with death. Khashoggi, who had moved to the US for fear of the Saudi authorities, disappeared at the beginning of October when he visited the Saudi consulate in Turkish Istanbul. It is now clear that he was murdered in the consulate by a Saudi death squad.

Experts about Saudi Arabia deem it unlikely that the crown prince knew nothing about the operation in Istanbul.

One should hope that these courageous Saudi women won’t be arrested and threatened with beheading, like happened to the Saudi women who had made the right to drive cars possible.

Grey heron in perfume shop, video

Deze reiger liep een Goudse parfumerie binnen, keek rustig om zich heen en sloeg zijn vleugels uit voor een vlucht dwars door de winkel, rakelings langs de luchtjes en make-up, en vlak over de hoofden van de klanten. → https://t.co/oKZu5YOEb2 pic.twitter.com/EXLtKRbxrm

— NOS (@NOS) October 20, 2018

This 20 October 2018 is about a grey heron, which walked into a perfume shop in Gouda city in the Netherlands, flew around, and flew out again without causing any damage.

Extreme right in Germany and elsewhere

This photo shows a man glueing a poster reading “burka free zone — stop Islamisation” at a meeting of the far right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, in Neuenhagen near Berlin, earlier this month.

Very probably, the AfD racists mean with ‘burka’ the dress so often wrongly called ‘burqa’. The poster looks like according to the AfD, women are only welcome in ‘Aryan‘ Germany if they wear both miniskirts and high heels. High heels, also mandatory according to some corporate bosses and to some other men in authority; but not good for women’s health. As for miniskirts: the AfD’s extreme right colleagues in Poland, the USA, Italy, etc. want to ban them. Whatever women wear, sexist right-wingers will find a way to try to oppress them.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Thursday, September 13, 2018

Germany’s racism row has implications in this country too

LINKS between Germany’s security services and the far right are nothing new, but the left across Europe should be watching the growing scandal over intelligence chief Hans-Georg Maassen’s seemingly cosy relationship with racists and xenophobes with care.

The far-right riot that exploded in the Saxon city of Chemnitz over the last weekend of August was not gone unchallenged. Giant counter-protests have been mobilised and Germany’s left and trade union movements are increasingly alert to the fascist threat.

Nor have German authorities done nothing. Chemnitz district court is fast-tracking criminal cases linked to the anti-immigrant unrest. One man was fined and given a suspended sentence today for making a nazi salute at the riot, with another case due to be heard tomorrow.

But Maassen’s questioning of a video that shows thugs chasing and attacking an immigrant and his rare public rebuke of Chancellor Angela Merkel — saying he had no evidence that foreigners had been “hunted” in the streets of the city, when the chancellor had said just that — are ominous political interventions.

And as Die Linke’s Martina Renner remarks, it is at least unusual for the head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, a sort of German answer to the FBI that monitors extremist groups, to hold a meeting with an MP from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) opposition party and hand it a preview copy of its annual report weeks before other politicians are allowed to see it.

The German government has no appetite to slap down its top spook. Questioned about the difference over whether immigrants had been “hunted” in Chemnitz, Merkel offers the cop-out that there is no point in quibbling over semantics.

Her Interior Minister Horst Seehofer sides more openly with Maassen, expressing full confidence in him. Perhaps unsurprising for a man who boasted of his joy that 69 asylum-seekers had been deported on his 69th birthday, and ignored calls for his resignation when one of the number — a young man who had arrived in Germany as a child — killed himself on being returned to war-torn Afghanistan.

Seehofer hails from Bavaria’s Christian Social Union (CSU), which replaces Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union in the southern state and has adopted a harsher anti-immigrant line than the central government of which he is now a part.

Proponents of the CSU’s immigrant-bashing say it is a convenient way of seeing off the threat from AfD. But history shows us that pandering to the prejudices of the far right does nothing to impede its growth and can corrode an entire political culture.

This week’s [British] Trade Union Congress assessed the results in Britain this week, looking at the normalisation of racist language by politicians including Boris Johnson and David Cameron and the construction of the “hostile environment” by Theresa May.

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady slammed Johnson for “playing with fire” by flirting with the far right — but the former foreign secretary is not the one who’ll get burnt. Unable to challenge the positive, socialist vision of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour, Johnson’s gamble is that an olive branch to Tommy Robinson and his Islamophobic street thugs can lay the groundwork for a reactionary counterattack.

The far right have friends in high office internationally now — in Italy, Austria, Poland, Hungary, Ukraine and, most obviously, the United States. They are being courted by some of the most powerful politicians in this country too. And they will be listening to the sympathetic noises issuing from Maassen at the heart of the German state.

All the more urgent that we welcome the TUC’s call for a movement-wide conference on fighting racism, organise for the mass demo on November 17 and work with the left across borders to build an anti-fascist movement so strong the right do not dare to raise their hands against it.