Dear Kitty. Some blog

Reuters reports:

Sep 28, 2005 — By Patricia Wilson

ANKARA - Turkish women challenged U.S. envoy Karen Hughes over the Iraq war on Wednesday, giving Washington’s new image shaper her second critical reception on her Middle East tour after a similar encounter in Saudi Arabia.

The guests invited to an Ankara museum by the U.S. embassy politely but firmly refused to be swayed by the encouraging message Hughes is trying to spread among Muslims in her job as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy.

“You cannot bring in war for the sake of peace.

The United States cannot interfere in the democracy problem and solve it through war,” argued Feray Sazman, a women’s rights leader.

Human rights leader Hidayet Sefkatli Tuksal told Hughes she saw fear in the eyes of women and children in photographs from Iraq every day and it left her feeling “wounded and insulted.”

“This war is really, really bringing all your positive efforts to the level of zero,” she said.

“War makes the rights of women completely erased and poverty comes after war and women pay the cost,” declared Fatma Nevin Vargun, a Kurdish activist.

Hughes, who has visited Egypt and Saudi Arabia, listened on Tuesday to criticism from Saudi women blaming the U.S. media for portraying Muslims as terrorists and Arab women as downtrodden.

An interview with [ex pro Iraq war Blairist British MP] Oona King has this answer to the question from Emma Brookes on whether her position on Iraq has changed:

“It has changed because of what happened in Louisiana. I think that it is incredibly profound; it shows that America has no grasp whatsoever on the activity needed to rebuild a destroyed city.

And if they can’t do that in their own country, then it’s obvious why they can’t do it in Iraq.

So … I regret that we went to war with a country that has shown itself to be incapable of the very basic actions required to deal with post-conflict resolution.”

(Guardian, September 12, 2005)

From the Morocco Times:

Prehistoric skeletons found in cave near Oujda, eastern Morocco

By Susan Searight-Martinet 9/27/2005

A team of Moroccan archaeologists working in the well-known Grotte des Pigeons cave at Tafoghalt, near Oujda, have recently brought to light human remains dating to around 11,000/12,000 BC, MAP news agency announced Monday.

This cave was first excavated in 1950 and indicated an occupation starting about 21,000 years ago by a population physically different from Morocco’s earlier inhabitants.

Luckily for the archaeologists, these people buried their dead in the cave.

More than 200 individuals have been revealed during the long-standing excavations, including nearly 100 children.

New research, taken up in 2003, has pushed back the dates of the early occupation of the cave to more than 100,000 years.

But the fresh discovery adds an unusual dimension to the burials: one of the skeletons had been buried with the horns of a Barbary sheep.

This animal was very plentiful in the mountainous regions surrounding the cave and was certainly hunted by these early populations.

The fact that its horns were buried with a skeleton will allow a better understanding of the funeral rites practices by these early Moroccans.

Stone and bone tools were also found beside the buried bodies.

An earlier study had shown that these people cared for their handicapped: after a serious accident, resulting in the total loss of one arm and the almost total loss of another, one woman nevertheless managed to live to an advanced age.

This showed that these cave dwellers did not throw out a useless mouth but even looked after an impotent woman for many years.

The discovery is part of a research programme directed by the National Institute for Archaeological Sciences and Heritage (INSAP) in cooperation with Oxford University.

The new series of excavations started on Sept.5 and will continue until the end of the month.

The new research in this cave is part of a vast programme of prospection and recording of archaeological sites in the lower Moulouya valley.

For instance, a series of sites, which are much younger than the skeleton-holding cave, have been discovered containing stone tools, pottery and ostrich eggshells.

The ostrich eggshells have been dated to around 5,500 BC by the Laboratory of Technical and Scientific Analyses of the Royal Gendarmerie in Temara, using the radiocarbon method.

MAP news agency added that investigations will continue in Ghafas, another Oujda cave, with a view to producing a precise chronology of the prehistoric human groups living in eastern Morocco several thousands of years ago.

Mouflon sheep: here.

Mouflons of the Kerguelen archipelago: here.

Prehistoric domestication of goats in Middle East: here.

Prehistory of domestic pigs: here

Today, from the train south of Hillegom: six great cormorants sitting on a windmill.

Later, in the national park Zuid-Kennemerland: nuthatch sounds and a robin coming close.

At the great bird lake: many coots.

Young mute swans.

A great cormorant landing on the water surface.

Later, three great cormorants standing on the bank.

They spread their wings to dry.

Though water birds, like ducks, they don’t have the ducks’ self-drying feathers.

Also on the lake bank: Egyptian geese grazing.

From the hide: tufted ducks. Gadwall. Common pochard.

And a dabchik, world’s smallest grebe species. It dives often and manages to catch a small fish.

Someone else sees a kingfisher.

From Associated Press:

WASHINGTON Sep 21, 2005 — Bush officials bristle at the suggestion the war in Iraq might look anything like Vietnam.

Yet just as today’s anti-war protests recall memories of yesteryear, President Bush’s own words echo those of President Johnson in 1967, a pivotal year for the U.S. in Vietnam.

“America is committed to the defense of South Vietnam until an honorable peace can be negotiated,” Johnson told the Tennessee Legislature on March 15, 1967.

Despite the obstacles to victory, the president said, “We shall stay the course.”

After 14 Marines died in a roadside bombing on Aug. 3, Bush declared: “We will stay the course, we will complete the job in Iraq.

And the job is this: We’ll help the Iraqis develop a democracy.”

From Craig Murray’s blog (with different links there):

With the news of the deaths two more British soldiers earlier last week and another on Sunday, people may start asking again about the true cost of the Iraq war.

In a previous post we have highlighted evidence of the high levels of casualties inflicted on the Iraqi people.

However, the cost to the people serving in the British military should also be remembered.

A posting on LFCM draws attention to the fact that British military casualties in Iraq are now in the region of one thousand.

A milestone that deserves attention.

This video from the USA is called Roundtable Discussion with Hurricane Katrina Survivors 1.

From the USA, on hurricane Katrina and after. Today’s update:

Hurricane Katrina and the meaning of September 11

and

Bush suspends Davis-Bacon Act. Wage-cutting and profit-gouging in the midst of the Katrina disaster

and

More letters on Hurricane Katrina

and

The Katrina Anomaly.

In Brussels in Belgium, there will be a demonstration in the form of a human chain, at the United States embassy on Friday 23 September.

This is on the eve of world wide demonstrations against the Iraq war.

And in the wake of the abysmal response by the Bush administration to the Katrina hurricane disaster.

The Brussels demonstration will have as its slogans:

Shame on Bush!

No money for war but to fight against poverty.

In an e-mail, organizers say:

“In the whole world, there is big indignation about the response by the Bush administration to the hurricane Katrina disaster.”

They oppose:

- people being left to their fate because of their complexion or their class
- people being treated as enemies for being black and poor
- billions of dollars going to the Iraq war, instead of to levee maintenance and social needs.

Songs about flooding in the USA (many about the flood in 1927 in Louisiana):

Sippie Wallace, The Flood Blues.
Lonnie Johnson, Broken levee blues.
Blind Lemon Jefferson, Rising High Water Blues.
Charley Patton, High Water Everywhere.
Memphis Minnie, When the levee breaks.
Randy Newman, Louisiana 1927.

Today, again along the railway.

I had seen a common blue butterfly there a few days ago, but not today.

Today, cabbage white.

And beetles, damselflies, hoverflies, grasshoppers, lots of honeybees.

A jay flying past.

His relatives carrion crow, jackdaw, and magpie were there as well.

Another relative, Clark’s nutcracker, is from North America.

Some blackberries today, though not very many.

This is a video about Greenham common women’s peace camp in 1982.

Sacrifice for peace

(Monday 05 September 2005)

Greenham by Sarah Hipperson
(Greenham Publications, £10)

PAUL DONOVAN follows the struggle of the Greenham peace activists who successfully campaigned against cruise missiles.

This book from Sarah Hipperson charts the ultimately successful struggle of a group of women during the 1980s and ’90s to get cruise missiles removed from Greenham Common.

The story is an inspiring one of hardship and success set against all odds.

Sarah Hipperson’s is a remarkable story as she went from Glasgow midwife to suburban housewife and peace activist.

Hipperson was a founding member of Catholic Peace Action (CPA) in 1982.

CPA was dedicated to opposing the British government policy of nuclear deterrence through faith and acts of civil disobedience.

Read more here.