Dear Kitty. Some blog

‘God Save the Queen‘ by the Sex Pistols: video and lyrics of this song are here.

Jamie Reid, Sex Pistols’ record cover designer: here.

Sex Pistols Bill Grundy TV interview 1.12.76: here.

From London daily The Morning Star:

May Day greetings

(Monday 30 April 2007)

MAY Day greetings to all working people at home and abroad and especially to the 200,000-plus PCS members who are on strike in protest at their disgraceful treatment at the hands of what passes for a Labour government.

Government ministers, with Chancellor Gordon Brown at their heart, have chosen the public sector as their target to impress big business with their intent to force working people to pay the price of an emerging economic crisis. …

It’s not as if Britain was a poor country and could not afford better living standards for working people.

Trade unionists celebrating May Day must wonder how it is that, in the fourth-richest country in the world, we have the worst wealth distribution in Europe, the worst childhood poverty in Europe and the highest military spending in Europe.

And, in two days time, working people will be urged to show their class loyalty by voting Labour in Scottish parliamentary, Welsh assembly and some English local elections.

Many will refuse to vote for those who sack them, price them out of housing, cut their living standards and send their sons and daughters to fight imperialist wars.

Others will continue to vote Labour, because of good local candidates or specific policies such as the abolition of prescription charges by the Welsh National Assembly - or simply to keep out the Tories.

But, without a drastic change in Labour government policies, how long will this last? …

The unions must not only champion more progressive policies but also put pressure on MPs to eschew a coronation [of Gordon Brown as Blair’s successor] in favour of supporting the nomination of John McDonnell to enable an alternative socialist approach to be considered.

Bad working conditions in Britain: here.

Today, the first time of this year of open air tango dancing in the park.

On my way there, many semi wild chickens crossing the Houtlaan.

A bit further, grey herons.

Stil further, in the enclosure: a peacock (bird) and fallow deer.

I kooked for fish in the pond behind the dancefloor, but did not see any, unlike last August.

Probably as it is early in the year, and the new generation has not hatched yet.

There was already a new generation of coots, swimming with their parents.

Though it was the first time in this year, many people had come to dance the tango, in sunny weather.

From Baku Today in Azerbaijan:

WASHINGTON 30/04/2007 11:21

A top US congressional Democrat has raised the possibility of George W. Bush’s impeachment in a bid to force the president to accept a compromise that would place conditions on continued US military involvement in Iraq.

Representative John Murtha, who chairs the House Subcommittee on Defense and is close to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, made the comment Sunday in response to repeated threats by the president to veto legislation that calls for withdrawal of US troops from Iraq by the end of next March.

“There’s three ways or four ways to influence a president,” Murtha said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” program. “One is popular opinion, the election, third is impeachment and fourth is the purse.”

Asked specifically if Democrats, who now control the US Congress, were seriously contemplating the impeachment option, the congressman responded: “What I’m saying, there’s four ways to influence a president … And one of them’s impeachment.”

George Tenet, ex CIA leader, and the lies which started the Iraq war: here.

From the Daily Mail in Britain:

MoD names latest British soldier to die in Iraq

Last updated at 16:15pm on 30th April 2007

A British soldier killed by small arms fire while on patrol in Basra was named today as Rifleman Paul Donnachie, 18, of 2nd Battalion the Rifles, the Ministry of Defence said.

The latest death in Iraq has prompted fresh fears for the safety of Prince Harry.

It brings the total number of British fatalities this month to 12.

The figure is the highest in a single month since March 2003, when 27 were killed in the opening days of the war.

Associated Press reports:

Five U.S. military personnel were killed over the weekend in Iraq, including three by a roadside bomb in Baghdad, the military said Monday, pushing the American death toll past 100 in the deadliest month so far this year.

From Discovery News:

A Utah site frozen in Early Jurassic time recently yielded discoveries that include an enormous, previously unknown carnivorous dinosaur, a new shark species, at least three other new fish and three new trees.

All of the now-extinct organisms once thrived in or around a giant lake 200 million years ago, according to paleontologists who made the finds.

Anatomical features and track marks linked to the dinosaur suggest it specialized in eating and catching fish, including sharks and huge bony fish that, when consumed, would have been “like biting through chain mail,” Utah State paleontologist James Kirkland told Discovery News.

The fish-loving dino, which the researchers believe was a cousin of the crested dino Dilophosaurus, would have been a formidable adversary to its fearsome prey.

“These (dinosaurs) got up to 18-20 feet in length, 6-7 feet high at the hips, and weighed between 750-1,000 pounds,” explained Andrew Milner, city paleontologist at the St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site on Johnson Farm, Utah, where the excavations took place.

Long, sharp teeth at the front of the dinosaur’s mouth helped to keep fish from flying out, said Kirkland, while other, more slender teeth had “steak-knife serration” wear patterns between the tip and the gum line.

“The only other meat-eating dinosaurs with teeth worn like that are the spinosaurs Spinosaurus and Suchimimus from North Africa where large … fish dominated,” said Kirkland.

One of the fish species discovered at the site, now called Lake Dixie, was indeed a semionotid — an early type of fish that usually had an elongated body, gills, jaws and scales or bony plates.

“Fish in the past were more armored than they are today,” Kirkland explained.

The new shark species, named Lissodus johnsonorum, would have been an easier dinner, since its skeleton was made of cartilage and not hard bone, but the crunchy fish were more prevalent in the lake and outnumbered sharks 10 to one.

The Dilophosaurus relative also possessed nasal openings that retracted back from the end of its snout so, like today’s crocodiles and alligators, it could still breath when its mouth was underwater.

Perhaps the most dramatic finds at the site are the dinosaur track marks.

Milner said these belonged to several creatures including other dinosaur species, other reptiles and early ancestors of mammals.

And here.

Dinosaur tracks in California: here.

From US comedian Andy Borowitz:

The following is a forecast of next week’s news, for the week of April 30, 2007:

Monday, April 30: World Bank overseers will demand an investigation into Paul Wolfowitz’s girlfriend, issuing this statement: “We deserve an answer to this question: why would anyone date Wolfowitz?”

By Benjamin Sand:

Sunday 29th April, 2007

Hundreds of outraged protesters chanted anti-American slogans in eastern Afghanistan after U.S. and Afghan forces accidentally killed two female civilians.

… A young child and a teenage female were wounded during the firefight …

The incident provoked a massive protest in the area. Hundreds of local men chanted “death to Bush” and temporarily blocked the region’s main highway.

This is the second time in recent weeks that U.S. led forces are being blamed for civilian casualties in Nangarhar, one of the key battleground states in the fight against the five year old Taleban insurgency.

On March 4, U.S. Marines killed 12 people after being attacked by a suicide car bomber.

Local eyewitnesses say the American forces fired indiscriminately into groups of Afghan cars and pedestrians as they tried to escape the ambush.

The U.S. military subsequently determined the Marines used excessive force in the incident and the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission recently accused the Marines of violating international humanitarian law.

By Esther Lombardi from the USA:

Harper Lee was born on April 28, 1926.

She would become famous for her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, for which she received the Pulitzer Prize.

In this famous work of fiction, Harper Lee wrote: “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy.

They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.

That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

The theme of the novel in racism in the USA.

See also here.

Birds vs. garden pests in the USA: here.

J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye: here.

This video is called Reticulated Python/Anaconda Comparison.

From Dutch NOS TV:

In the zoo for reptiles in Vissingen, a reticulated python was born.

Probably it is for the first time ever in Europe that such a snake came out of an egg.

It is the longest snake in the world; females in nature may grow to over 9 meter.

Only a few zos keep them, as reticulated pythons bite quickly and can strangle a human within a few seconds.

The baby in Vlissingen is 80 centimeter.

In January, the mother laid 60 eggs.

Two of those were put into an incubator; one of those was successful.