Dear Kitty. Some blog

This is a video about a young hoopoe, just out of the nest.

From Reuters:

Israel names biblically banned Hoopoe national bird

Thu May 29, 2008 11:22am EDT

JERUSALEM - It may not be kosher, but the Hoopoe was chosen Thursday as Israel’s national bird.

The Hoopoe, or “Duchifat” in Hebrew, is listed in the Old Testament as unclean and forbidden food for Jews.

President Shimon Peres declared the pink, black and white-crested bird the winner of a competition timed to coincide with Israel’s 60th anniversary. It beat out rivals such as the Yellow-vented Bulbul and the Palestine Sunbird.

The Book of Leviticus groups the Hoopoe with birds such as the eagle, vulture and pelican that are “abhorrent, not to be eaten.”

Israel is a main crossroads for birds migrating between Europe and Africa. Some 155,000 Israelis cast ballots in the national bird vote.

(Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Julian Rake and Ibon Villelabeitia)

This video is called Ninoy Aquino: Worth Dying For (the last interview). About a Filipino politician assasinated on government orders.

This is an unofficial translation from the original in Dutch, an article by Folkert Jensma in Dutch daily NRC.NEXT 30 May 2008, pp. 10-11, paper edition:

ASSASSINATION BY HIRED KILLERS FAILED TWICE

The Philippine government tried to get rid of Communist leader Sison in Utrecht

The Philippine government sent hired killers to The Netherlands to kill the Communist Sison.
Details are coming out now

By FOLKERT JENSMA

The Hague. They stayed in the Amsterdam budget tourist hotel Tourist Inn at the Spui [downtown Amsterdam], the members of the Filipino ‘hit team’ which came to The Netherlands in October 1999 in order to perpetrate a political murder. Their target was Jose Maria Sison, the rather elderly Filipino Communist leader who has resided in Utrecht as an exile since 1987. Two men, with several thousand dollars cash and travelers checks. They had landed in Frankfurt and travelled by train to Amsterdam. There they bought two prepaid mobile cards and rented a car at Avis.

But the assassination of Sison was not committed. A second attempt with a second team, a few months later, also failed. The aspirant-killers first had difficulty in finding Sison. When they had found out his home, office and routes, they almost came into action twice. One time against the wrong person. Another time they got afraid and withdrew because Sison was walking, holding a child. Their rented car was also broken into – luggage gone. They gave a notification of this to the local police because of the insurance.

The killing was supposed be carried out with a knife and an axe. But it took so long The teams lost courage, felt literally cold in The Netherlands and they got worried about home. They also found that they were conspicuous. The Utrecht people walked around in the cool spring weather just in T-shirts. They had thick jackets. And they had to hide therein the axe. Why did Manila anyway want that it had to be done with a knife? A real gun, that’s what they wanted!

The details come from the interrogation conducted by the Nationale Recherche [National Criminal Investigation] in the end of February 2008 at the American army base, Clark, in the Philippines with Jose Ramos (53). This person stayed for weeks over seven years ago in The Netherlands with the objective to kill Sison. He dropped out because he heard that back home he had been put on record as “deserted” [AWOL “away without leave”]. That made him afraid. He feared that the secret service would kill him after the assassination.

Sison himself had in the meantime found out about everything. His sources in Manila had informed him by letter. And he gave a detailed notification to the Utrecht police. This latter warned the AIVD [General Intelligence and Security Service], and after this everything remained still. No one was arrested. “Too few reference points,” says the Public Prosecutor’s Office later.

Until last week. Then the current lawyer of Sison, Michiel Pestman, came back from vacation. He found six new folders with testimonies on his desk. It looked like “the nth installment” in the procedure of the Public Prosecutor’s Office to get Sison in jail for a double murder in the Philippines. For against Sison there are the necessary complaints (see sidebar). But in the dossier there was a little gift: the curious declaration of Ramos – who appeared to incriminate himself, and so delivered the first proof that the attack [assassination attempt] earlier was real.

Ramos had kept the hotel bill and gave this willingly to the Nationale Recherche. The witness Ramos had contact with the [Philippine] secret service, from whom he received money and travel papers. And thus there was a connection with the Philippine government. Even a failed attempt at political assassination, according to Pestman, is a violation of the Dutch sovereignty by a foreign power. Since when does a friendly country send death squads, to Utrecht, by the way?

The new information is for him also a chance to give a new turn to the Sison case. This Ramos and his travel companions must be extradited to The Netherlands. Or at least, in his estimation, they should be prosecuted in the Philippines. The Public Prosecutor’s Office says that the assassination was not carried out and thus it is not criminally punishable. But Pestman rejects the juridical argument of ‘voluntary withdrawal” [“vrijwillige terugtred”]. A ‘defective attempt’ remains criminally punishable if it is a grave crime which is committed ‘in association’. That was the case here. He now demands criminal prosecution.

In the dossier there was still something crazy. In one of the murders of which Sison is suspect, the police have discovered another suspect. A certain Edwin Garcia, also with connections to the secret service, who was supposed to also be in Utrecht. This man is supposed to have been recognized at the assassination of a renegade member of the party of Sison, a certain Kintanar. This person had gone over to the government side and appears to have organized the attack in Utrecht.

In that way, the ‘James Bond film’ was complete. The killing of Kintanar in the Philippines could have been organized in order to put the blame on Sison. Sison is supposed to then have a double motive. Revenge against a traitor from one’s own circle who also tried to kill him in Utrecht.

Did Sison really do it or was he caught? There is no concrete proof for this. Only indications. Pestman points to official Philippine requests to The Hague to have Sison prosecuted. The suspicion against Garcia precisely takes the burden off his client. Just like the attack [assassination attempt] in Utrecht, it proves that the Philippine state wants to go very far to put Sison out of the way. However, the Public Prosecutor’s Office sees no connection between the cases.

Pestman calls the whole case a “stinking game” [“onwelriekend spel”]. Pestman is still making complaints against all the steps that the Public Prosecutor’s Office takes against Sison. Up to now, he is declared correct by the judges. Against Sison there were insufficient serious complaints to seriously consider him a suspect. Pestman thinks that the case of the state is so weak that he would consider an interim dismissal disappointing. He prefers most a complete acquittal.

On June 10 the judge will issue a ruling on his complaint against the ‘notice of further prosecution’. Depending on that, the spokesman of the national office of the prosecutor says, “we are again evaluating the case”.

[Sidebar] Sison on the EU-terror list

Jose Maria Sison causes a headache to the US and the Philippines already for decades. Since last year, the national office [of the Public Prosecutor] in Rotterdam tried to get Sison behind bars for the killing of two renegade members of his party in the Philippines.

The national office acknowledges that Sison was not in the Philippines during the time of the killings and that he has not spoken with the actual perpetrators. But because of his leading political role, it finds Sison to be ‘functional perpetrator’ [‘functioneel dader’].

The Nationale Recherche, with American and Philippine support, carried out extensive investigation in the Philippines. Sison is since 2002 on the US and EU terror list. His bank account was blocked.

The EU Court of First Instance, part of the European Court of Justice, decided in 2007, that the listing on the terror list is unjust. The Council of Ministers however keeps him [on the list]. Sison was refused asylum in The Netherlands, but is tolerated because he cannot be expelled.

This video is called Clouded Monitor - Varanus bengalensis nebulosus. Recorded at Taman Negara national park, Malaysia.

From DPA news agency:

Malaysian illegal wildlife traders charged with torturing pythons

Kuala Lumpur, May 31

A Malaysian court has charged two men allegedly involved in illegal wildlife trading with torturing 70 pythons by keeping them in a sack and sealing their mouths shut with tape, a news report said Saturday.

The two men, aged 38 and 40, were also charged with being in possession of several clouded monitor lizards and a dead black leopard, both of which are protected animals.

The duo, who pleaded not guilty to the charges, also allegedly had crocodile meat, deer meat and deer hide in their possession, the New Straits Times daily said.

Wildlife officers discovered the animals during a raid at a home in the capital Kuala Lumpur Sunday.

This video from the USA is called Asteroid 2007 TU24 Close Approach.

From the BBC:

Record spin for newfound asteroid

The fastest spinning natural object in the Solar System has been discovered by a British amateur astronomer.

The compact stony asteroid 2008 HJ - completes a full rotation once every 42.7 seconds, according to its discoverer Richard Miles.

That measurement smashes the previous record held by the asteroid 2000 DO8, which spins once every 78 seconds.

The new finding was made by the amateur astronomer while operating the Faulkes Telescope South in Australia.

2008 HJ is estimated to be some 12m by 24m in size - smaller than a tennis court. Yet it probably has a mass in excess of 5,000 tonnes.

It was moving at almost 162,000km/h (100,000 mph) when it hurtled past the Earth in late April. Despite being classified as a “near-Earth asteroid”, it came no closer than one million km and never posed a threat to our planet.

But the discovery adds to astronomers’ sparse understanding of very small asteroids in near-Earth orbits.

Dr Petr Pravec, an astronomer at the Ondrejov Observatory in the Czech Republic, and an expert in the field, commented: “A period of 42.7 seconds for an asteroid with a size of about 20 meters is perfectly consistent with theory.

“There may be a significant population of asteroids measuring up to a few tens of metres across, rotating in less than a minute, that have not been observed until now.”

Mr Miles made the discovery while operating the Australian telescope remotely, via the internet, from his home in Dorset.

This video is called Pinochet’s crimes in Chile.

From British daily The Independent:

My Secret Life: Saffron Burrows, Actress, age 35

Interview by Charlotte Philby

Saturday, 31 May 2008

…

The moment that changed me for ever … was the death of [Clement] Blair Peach [the New Zealand-born teacher who, during a demonstration [against nazis] in London in 1979, was killed allegedly as a result of police brutality]. My family were in some way connected to him; I was only seven, but it was a major event even for me. I can clearly remember seeing the posters with the images of the policeman.

My greatest inspiration … is love.

My real-life villain … is Augusto Pinochet. Of course, he’s not the only dictator who behaved in such an extraordinary way – there have been many regimes that have been pretty objectionable in the last century – but his legacy has survived. I have a few Chilean friends in London who have been very much affected by the way the government operated. …

My life in seven words … Big, tall, reckless, precipitous, straddling two centuries.

A LIFE IN BRIEF

Saffron Dominique Burrows was born in London on 21 October 1972. The actress and former fashion model is also known for her political activism. Having joined an anti-racism group aged 11, she later became vice-president of the National Civil Rights Movement. Following her relationship with director Mike Figgis, she announced she was bi-sexual in 1999. Burrows’ films include Circle of Friends, Miss Julie, Frida and Troy. She lives in Los Angeles and currently stars in Dangerous Parking, in cinemas now.

This video from the USA is called TPMtv: McCain Can’t Quit John Hagee.

From British daily The Guardian:

Karma comedians

Stone’s claptrap about China is of a piece with a thriving industry dealing in unscientific nonsense

* Saturday May 31 2008

So Sharon Stone thinks the Sichuan earthquake was caused not by friction between tectonic plates on the Longmenshan fault, but by Beijing being “not nice” to the Dalai Lama. Given that Tibet has been under Chinese rule since 1951, karmic retribution must have a 57-year time lag, but that didn’t stop Stone musing on the seismic catastrophe: “I thought, ‘Is that karma?’ When you are not nice, bad things happen to you.”

Sharon Stone’s nonsensical statement became extra bitter because Sichuan province, where the earthquake struck, is close to Tibet, and many Tibetans live there.

Bad things did happen: within 24 hours of her statement, the Xinhua news agency had dubbed Sharon the “public enemy of all mankind”, perhaps an epithet more suited to US televangelist John Hagee, who in 2005 announced that God unleashed Hurricane Katrina because He was cross after a “homosexual parade”. And, to prove that retribution-based stupidity hasn’t bypassed the UK, Glenn Hoddle also asserted in 1999 that “some people have not been born [with two hands and two legs and half-decent brains] for a reason … the karma is working from another lifetime. It is not only people with disabilities. What you sow, you have to reap.”

Worryingly, though all this lunacy generated the ridicule it deserved, the last few years have seen a spate of new age “self-help” books blaring out an identical, if less targeted, message: that everything in an individual’s life is created by them. From infamous bestseller The Secret (DVD excerpt: “everything that’s coming into your life, you’re attracting into your life”) to weirdo-manual Ask And It Is Given, which channels “the teachings of the non-physical entity Abraham” (sample chapter title: “Unwanted things cannot jump into your experience uninvited”), the philosophy is the same: whatever is happening to you, it’s your fault.

It’s religion for the non-religious, with all the shame, guilt and illogical pronouncements but none of the community. Instead of acts of God, we are told there are no accidents; instead of God’s will, all happenings are manifestations of our own consciousness. And many people accept either the religious or new age explanations because, given the devastation caused by disasters and traumatic events, it’s less scary to think they are a response to wayward human behaviour. That way, if we just change our actions, we won’t have to fear pain and suffering in the future.

In truth, we can only make sense of the world by rejecting these ideas and the more pervasive “everything happens for a reason” mentality, and by accepting that life is random and unjust. Bad things happen to kind people every day, for no reason at all. Our chances in life are largely predetermined by our place of birth, and religious people are as likely to die in tragedies as atheists. Earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes hit for scientific reasons alone; to attribute them to the wrath of God or “the universe” is to deny the victims of these catastrophes their innocence.

Paradoxically, though Stone apologised for her errant statement - which seemed more an ill thought-out comment on China’s treatment of the Dalai Lama than an intentional slur on the victims of the disaster - she has been pulled from the country’s billboards, and her films are now banned in its cinemas. The authors of books like The Secret have profited from pushing sinister anti-scientific nonsense on to the disadvantaged, sick and desperate, but have never been forced to deliver an acknowledgement or apology, let alone been penalised. And homophobe John Hagee has become a millionaire by driving the fear of God into the weak and gullible while also endorsing John McCain, who might just become the next US president.

“Is that karma?” No, Sharon. It’s anything but.

· Ariane Sherine is a television comedy writer

From British daily The Independent:

Such is the relentlessness of Tony Blair’s public immersion into matters of faith these days that Alastair Campbell’s “we don’t do God” assertion in Downing Street has now been fully exposed for what it was: a skilful piece of diversionary spin.

See also here. And here.

This video from Britain is called John McDonnell MP: The Ideological Battle Against Globalisation and Privatisation.

From British daily The Morning Star:

Mass rip-off of the poor

(Friday 30 May 2008)

THERE are many misnomers in capitalist liberal democracies such as our own. Phrases and titles such as “Ministry of Defence,” “communications unit” or “government consultation” abound.

Much of the time, this tactic is designed to conceal the true nature of the institution in question.

Thus the Ministry of Defence concerns itself largely with perpetuating war - with the only “defence” noticeable being the defence of corporate interests overseas - and the government’s “communications units” are primarily about hiding the true nature of policy pronouncements behind a blizzard of spin.

Another such misnomer is “government regulator” - and never more so than when these so-called regulators are charged with regulating the privatised utilities or big business.

Over the past decade, the new Labour government has sat back and allowed the ever-shifting sharks who now own Britain’s gas, electricity and water supplies to drastically increase prices for essential utilities while turning the screw on Britain’s poorest people through such methods as the widespread use of prepayment meters.

Such meters are now present in over five million households and cost them some £400 a year more than better-off households which can afford to pay by direct debit. Not only are they paying more, these five million households are also forking out a substantially larger proportion of their income - often with dire effects on their monthly budgets.

A recent study by the National Housing Federation found that, over the last year, some 640,000 households with prepayment meters had to go without power because they could not afford it.

The so-called energy regulator Ofgem’s response to this mass rip-off has been supine, to say the least. Not only has the “regulator” refused to rein in the superprofits of the energy privateers, it has even parroted their specious claim that, as “prepay meters cost more, retailers are entitled to charge a premium for their use.”

Instead of the decisive action needed, the toothless watchdog has, after the usual meeting with energy bosses to seek their agreement, published its long awaited fuel poverty action programme, in the wake of mounting anger from pensioners, disability campaigners, housing groups and unions.

This “action programme” - another misnomer - proposes allowing the privateers to share information on low-income households so that they can better “target” the poor for means-tested grants and tariffs.

History of syndicalism in Britain: here.

This video from the USA is called Howard Zinn: “On Human Nature and Aggression.”

From Socialist Worker in the USA:

Review: Books

Howard Zinn, Mike Konopacki and Paul Buhle, A People’s History of American Empire. Metropolitan Books, 2008, 273 pages, $17.

Picturing resistance to empire

Zach Zill reviews a book that sets Howard Zinn’s history from below in a new form–the graphic novel.

May 29, 2008

OVER THE past 25 years, anyone coming to radical conclusions about the U.S. and its history has likely traveled through the pages of at least one Howard Zinn book. A People’s History of the United States is undoubtedly the most popular, widely read radical analysis of U.S. history.

First published in 1980, it has sold more than 1.7 million copies, become required reading in many high school and college classrooms and spawned several offshoot projects–most notably, the primary source reader Voices of a People’s History of the United States.

Now, Zinn, along with cartoonist Mike Konopacki and historian and activist Paul Buhle, has delivered a new book that is sure to delight and enlighten activists, radicals and those newly come to left-wing ideas.

A People’s History of American Empire is the first attempt to recreate Zinn’s history in a new form–that of the graphic novel. Like the theatrical performances of Voices and the forthcoming documentary The People Speak, A People’s History of American Empire uses a new medium to spread Zinn’s basic message to a wider audience.

The book provides an animated, bottom-up telling of U.S. history, with a focus on U.S. military interventions and their repercussions at home.

Here, the reader discovers one of the most consciously disguised historical facts: the U.S. was not born “the world’s greatest democracy,” destined to spread its message of freedom around the globe. Rather, from early in its history, it has striven to become a new form of empire, time and again playing an anti-democratic role in the world.

Zinn’s version of history draws out the social forces whose interests have driven the American empire–major corporations, the U.S. military, the ultra-wealthy American elite and politicians of both major parties.

From the 1890 massacre of Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee, to the funding and training of contras in Nicaragua and the predecessors of the Taliban in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the book depicts the major battles and military machinations of a U.S. ruling class bent on increasing its power and wealth, no matter what the human cost.

Zinn, Konopacki and Buhle show how the promise of American democracy has been realized only as a result of struggle against these interests, locating the source of progressive historical change where it rightly belongs–with the millions of people around the world who resisted the encroachment of U.S. empire.

Another Howard Zinn video: here.

This video from the USA is called WAL-MART: The High Cost of Low Price — teaser trailer.

From Socialist Worker in the USA:

Buying friends and influencing politicians

Elizabeth Schulte reports on the latest scandal at Wal-Mart–and shows that the retail giant is far from the only corporate offender when it comes to buying political influence.

May 30, 2008

THE HEADS of retail behemoth Wal-Mart knew they’d found a great way to buy influence in Washington–by using a company employee charity trust to increase donations to their political action committee (PAC).

But when they described the process at company management meetings, they never thought the video would end up on the Internet.

The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) unearthed the tapes and released them at the end of April, after Flagler Productions, the video production company Wal-Mart hired to film its management meetings, made the tapes public. The videos provide a seldom-seen glimpse into how corporations like Wal-Mart buy political power and influence.

According to the scheme Wal-Mart was encouraging its managers to take part in, for every dollar they gave to the Wal-Mart PAC, Wal-Mart would give two to the Associates in Critical Need Fund, a tax-exempt affiliate of the Wal-Mart Foundation that is supposed to provide support for employees or their dependents during medical or extreme hardships.

“I like to call it a two-fer,” smirked company spokesperson Jay Allen during a 2001 meeting in Houston.

“Wal-Mart is not, by federal law, allowed to contribute to the Wal-Mart PAC,” Wal-Mart executive Tom Coughlin tells the management audience. “You are. I am. But Wal-Mart is not.” Since that time, Coughlin resigned after accusations that he misappropriated as much half a million dollars in reimbursements and the improper use of gift cards. He later pled guilty on federal charges to defrauding the company. …

What else to read

The Center for Public Integrity’s report, “Wal-Mart’s ‘PAC mentality‘”, details how the world’s-largest retailer transformed its once-tiny political action committee into one of the nation’s biggest corporate PACs.

A story on Dan Rather Reports, “Wal-Mart goes to Washington,” features video of the 2001 Wal-Mart managers’ meeting.

The Huffington Post’s David Nassar details the latest Wal-Mart scandal in his piece “Wal-Mart plays politics with charity.”

Detailed information about the amount of money corporations and industries contribute to candidates and political parties is available at the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Another video about Wal-Mart: here.

This video is called U.S. ‘turned blind eye’ to torture of Afghan prisoners.

According to Dutch NOS TV:

30 May 2008

Soldiers critical about Uruzgan

Half of the soldiers think the mission in Afghanistan does not make sense.

This became apparent during a poll by TV program NOVA of 261 members of four military trade unions.

The chairman of the [officers] union NVO, ex commander of the Dutch army Couzy, thinks that this is worrying. “Top brass shout that this makes sense and that things are going well. However, if asked about it anonymously, most think it has no use”, Couzy says.

According to NOVA TV, the poll was

representative research among commissioned and non-commissioned officers of the Air Force, Army, and Navy.

See also here.

And here.