When Everyone Is A Blogger, Nothing You Say Is Off The Record
There’s a lot of buzz here in the Belgian blogosphere and mainstream media about an incident involving a New York-based blogger, who was fired from her job as a bartender after publishing a post on the bar visit of a Belgian politician.
Current Belgian Minister of Defense Pieter De Crem apparently stumbled into a Belgian bar in New York City on Monday evening with his entourage. Following his visit, bartender Nathalie Lubbe Bakker blogged about their visit (in Dutch), talking about how disgusted she was of how drunk De Crem was and how embarrassed she was about his behavior. Worst part, she wrote, was the fact that one of the politician’s advisors admitted to her that the meetings they were there for on taxpayer’s money were in fact canceled because the UN was meeting in Geneva (which is about 330 miles from Brussels). He reportedly told her they had decided to come to NY anyway despite being aware of the cancellation because the policital situation here was ‘calm’ and that he’d ‘never visited the city anyway’.
A couple of days later, someone from De Crem’s office had a telephone call with Nathalie’s boss, after which she was promptly fired.
Nathalie should be reinstated. De Crem (nicknamed “Crembo” because of his Rambo-like, Bush-like pro war policies) should be sacked.
Bush administration aides are rushing to pass a safety rule which would make government regulation of workers’ exposure to toxic chemicals more difficult; a rule President-elect Barack Obama opposes.
Public health officials worry the decreased protections will result in additional, unnecessary deaths.
It is just one of about 20 controversial Labor Department proposals being pushed by large business interests, according to a published report.
Other proposals would allow power plants to be built closer to parks and wildlife preserves, and further limit the role of environmental and animal experts in determining where major infrastructure projects may be carried out.
A remarkable film, The Silence of the Quandts, which won the Hans Joachim Friedrichs prize for television journalism, deals with the unscrupulous rise of one of Germany’s richest and most influential families. The Quandts own 46.6 percent of the auto manufacturer BMW, have an estimated fortune of €20 billion and are implicated in the crimes of Hitler’s Nazi regime. Today, against the background of a financial and economic crisis that evokes the events of the 1930s, the film is of particular relevance.
The Quandts owe their wealth directly to their support of the Nazi regime and the bloody exploitation in the concentration camps—something the family is unwillingly to discuss. No family member has ever been indicted for the crimes that occurred in their company-owned concentration camps, nor has the family paid any compensation to the victims who survived.
Iceland: Street protests against government and economic meltdown: here.
Iceland is facing a social and economic catastrophe. Its 300,000 people have suffered the worst and most immediate impact of the worldwide financial crisis of any advanced country: here.
Singer Björk on economy and environment in Iceland: here.
Canada: Conservatives provide austerity to workers, aid to banks: here.
KABUL - Dozens of angry Afghans pelted police with stones after a convoy of foreign troops killed one civilian and wounded three more in Kabul on Friday, the capital’s police chief and witnesses said.
“This morning a convoy of British ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) troops were passing here and they had a misunderstanding with a civilian vehicle,” said Kabul police chief Mohammad Ayoub Salangi.
“The troops opened fire and killed one civilian and wounded three more,” he said.
Witnesses said the troops opened fire on a minibus.
One body wrapped in white cloth was put into the back of a taxi and driven away from the scene as crowds chanted “death to Bush, death to America.”
“They killed my son, my son is dead,” said a weeping old man.
The rioters pelted Afghan police with stones and were chased down side-streets before dispersing.
Dozens of Afghans gathered for a peaceful protest near the United Nations headquarters in Kabul on Thursday for a peaceful protest against the killing of civilians in foreign air strikes.
…
Large-scale rioting broke out in Kabul in 2006 after a U.S. military vehicle suffered brake failure and plowed into a crowd, killing five people. Seven more people were killed in the rioting.
(Reporting by Yousuf Azimy; Writing by Jon Hemming; Editing by Valerie Lee)
A collaborative project by BirdLife and the Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF; BirdLife in Nigeria) has empowered a community to improve a local wetland. Habitat management has greatly improved the wetland, and local people are already catching more and bigger fish. The forthcoming annual waterbird count will soon reveal how birds have also benefited. …
The Hadejia Nguru wetlands are an Important Bird Area and Ramsar site in the Sahel zone of north-eastern Nigeria, and the location for the WOW demonstration project. The wetlands are an important wintering and stop-over site for waterbirds migrating between Europe and Africa. They offer respite and water for 68 species such as Ruff Philomachus pugnax and Spur-winged Goose Plectropterus gambensis. …
However, the role of the plain, as both a habitat for birds and a livelihood resource, is under threat. Hydrological changes, caused by upstream dams and other land-use activities, have slowed the water flow through the channels, and have allowed the native Typha species - a type of reed - to thrive. This has blocked the waterways; stemming their flow, reducing the flooding needed to irrigate farms, and preventing pools from forming.
The WOW demonstration project is enabling one community - Dabar Magini - to restore an area of the wetlands. A village committee has been set up and provided with basic hand-tools to manually clear the Typha, and since the beginning of the year in excess of 10km of waterways have been reclaimed.
Stone curlew reaches conservation target ahead of schedule – but dangers signs are flickering
27/11/2008 10:06:17
November 2008. The latest breeding figures for one of the UK’s most threatened birds, the stone-curlew, shows that it has reached a conservation milestone, seven years ahead of target. However, the RSPB and Natural England today are warning that the recovery may be reversed if measures to create suitable habitat for this bird are not implemented quickly.
351 pairs nested
This summer’s population count revealed that 351 pairs nested, which means that the stone-curlew has met its 2015 Biodiversity Action Plan target of 350 pairs, well ahead of time. It is one of the few species of bird achieving this level of success. This crow-sized wading bird has its strongholds in the Brecklands of East Anglia, and Wessex, centred on Salisbury Plain.
But the survey also revealed a dramatic drop in the number of young birds being fledged. This year, on average every 100 pairs between them only fledged 49 chicks, making this the lowest level of success since at least 1988. The UK’s stone-curlew population this year only fledged 172 young, compared to 238 in 2007 - an average year.
The stone-curlew likes open ground, and it is believed that the combination of a wet spring and summer, prompting grass growth and making it hard for the birds to find insects on bare ground, and the scrapping of set-aside, where farmland is left un-cropped, had a significant impact on this year’s breeding success.
“What makes it even worse is the brutality (of whale hunting),” said Tutu, a Nobel peace laureate, at the launch.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), which backs the campaign, says whales are usually hunted with grenade-tipped harpoons that explode inside the animal.
The world imposed a moratorium on all whale hunts in 1986 after many species were driven towards extinction by decades of exploitation for meat, oil and whalebone.
Chief medical officers of the Faroe Islands have recommended that pilot whales no longer be considered fit for human consumption, because they are toxic - as revealed by research on the Faroes themselves.
The remote Atlantic islands, situated between Scotland and Iceland, have been one of the last strongholds of traditional whaling, with thousands of small pilot whales killed every year, and eaten by most Faroese.
Anti-whaling groups have long protested, but the Faroese argued that whaling is part of their culture - an argument adopted by large-scale whalers in Japan and Norway.
But today in a statement to the islanders, chief medical officers Pál Weihe and Høgni Debes Joensen announced that pilot whale meat and blubber contains too much mercury, PCBs and DDT derivatives to be safe for human consumption.
Endangered Hector’s dolphins being mutilated in New Zealand: here.
Greenpeace protest against whaling and Human Rights breaches: here.
Ocean noise poses grave threat to marine mammals: here.
Navy sonar at whale birthing area worries some: here.
Blue and Sperm whale sightings off southern Sri Lanka: here.
NOAA researchers: Blue whales re-establishing former migration patterns: here.
Brazil declares whole coastline as a whale and dolphin sanctuary: here.
