The “Station Fire” fire began on Wednesday afternoon but has spread quickly, doubling in size overnight, to an area covering more than 345 square kilometres. With tongues of flame stretching about 25 metres long, the fire is only 5 per cent contained and will likely take another week to contain completely.
By Sunday evening, it had moved to within 3.2 km of Mount Wilson Observatory. On Monday, fire officials said fire had not reached the area, but they said the area still remained highly vulnerable.
Observatory staff reported at 0750 PDT (1450 GMT) on Monday that fire fighters had been ordered to withdraw from Mount Wilson, although the staff was not clear on why the decision had been made. Fire fighters were reportedly going to remain close by, within 8 kilometres away.
Throughout the day on Sunday, crews cleared tinder-dry brush from around the observatory complex and treated wooden structures to make them less vulnerable.
Historic discoveries
Located at an altitude of 1740 metres, Mount Wilson Observatory got its start in 1904 when George Ellery Hale signed a free, 99-year lease for 40 acres at the summit to build world-class telescopes.
Despite being swamped with light pollution from the 13 million residents to its immediate south and southeast, the observatory has regained much of its scientific relevance.
In recent years, Mount Wilson has served as a test-bed for adaptive-optics and interferometric imaging. It’s the main facility of Georgia State University’s Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA) and the site of the University of California’s Infrared Spatial Interferometer (ISI).
Closed NASA site
Over the weekend, the Station Fire also kept NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory closed to all non-critical personnel. Officially, JPL is in Pasadena, California, but technically it’s in the town of La Cañada Flintridge, which has been posting hourly updates about the rapidly spreading inferno.
Building observatories on remote mountaintops places them at great risk from forest fires, especially where climates have turned dryer in the last decade or two.
This is not the first time Southern California’s notoriously frequent conflagrations have threatened a major astronomical facility. In November 2007, the Poomacha Fire came near, but did not damage, Palomar Observatory. Likewise the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory had a close call during the Aspen Fire in June 2003.
Amazing New NASA Images From Hubble Telescope (PHOTOS): here.
In May 2009, the Hubble Space Telescope received its final upgrade. The billion dollar effort bore its first fruit on September 9, when NASA released the most recent pictures from Hubble, a dazzling combination of planetary nebulae, star clusters and galaxies: here.
Vintage tapes from the 1984/5 UK Miners’ strike. This one particularly looking at the previous 1970s miners’ strike and the vast support miners had from other trades unionists. Produced for the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) with financial help from groups and individuals from right across the social justice and trades union movement. It was recognised before the strike had even begun that mainstream press, newspapers, television and radio would be inherantly biased for the establishment and against the miners’ struggle.
A fresh attempt to document the turbulent history of the labour movement hits the right notes
This is an authoritative account of recent trade union and class relations in Britain, extended and updated to cover the first two new Labour governments.
It provides a valuable alternative to journalistic, class-collaborationist accounts on the one side, and simplistic ultra-left catechisms of “betrayal” by the “trade union bureaucrats” and “Stalinists” on the other.
The author succeeds in substantiating three main theses.
The first is that “Thatcherism” did not represent something entirely new or qualitatively different in British government policies.
He marshals facts and analysis to demonstrate that the post-war “Butskellite” consensus barely survived the growth of shop floor militancy and the struggle around the Wilson government’s white paper titled In Place Of Strife in the 1960s.
Then came the industrial battles of the early 1970s including two national miners’ strikes, the dockers and building workers’ disputes, defiance of the 1971 Industrial Relations Act by engineers and train drivers and the victorious campaign to release the Pentonville Five from prison.
State-monopoly capitalism has never regarded any accord with organised labour - such as the Social Contract of the latter half of the 1970s - as anything but a temporary expediency.
By 1977, the Labour government had forsaken its goal of full employment, implemented cuts in social programmes according to IMF diktat and tried to impose a discredited pay policy on the firefighters and local government manual workers.
The author insists, therefore, that the election of the Thatcher “New Right” government in 1979 merely signalled the formal termination of a truce already abandoned in practice.
His second thesis is that the 1979-90 Thatcher governments implemented a “long and carefully thought out strategy” to undermine and then confront trade unionism, restructure British industry and restore corporate profitability.
This was no spontaneous reaction to trade union militancy.
From 1975, Lord Carrington chaired a working group to consider how to overcome trade union power.
Then the infamous Ridley report, leaked in the Economist magazine in May 1978, revealed Tory plans to take on public-sector workers one section at a time, beginning with the weakest and finishing with the coal miners.
Barlow exposes the lack of political consciousness, class politics and solidarity in the labour movement’s responses. However, his claim that a written constitution might have frustrated Thatcher’s programme of anti-union legislation is as unlikely as it is unproven.
The impact of British imperialism economically, socially and ideologically, including its role in strengthening sectionalism and reformism, has been deep and long-running.
To ascribe the British labour movement’s political backwardness solely or even mainly to its leadership is childish ultra-leftist exasperation, rightly shunned by the author.
While there are strong tendencies to a reformist and class-collaborationist outlook in the full-time apparatus of the trade union movement, there are leaderships which do not “sell out” and which use their influence to support and politicise their members.
This is as true today in, say, the railway workers’ and prison officers’ unions at the moment as it was of the Communist-led electricians and firefighters in the 1950s.
Barlow’s third thesis is that the Labour Party did not have to adapt to New Right policies in order to become electable or, by implication, stay in office subsequently.
Indeed, abandoning economic planning, full employment, nationalisation and unilateral nuclear disarmament did not produce victory in the 1987 and 1992 general elections, nor did purging the party of militant and various left-wing parliamentary candidates.
Instead, Labour ended up embracing the European Community, proclaiming the feeble Social Charter and partly disarming the party by backing the disastrous entry of sterling into the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1990.
As opinion polls show, Labour’s forthcoming election victory had become inevitable by the mid-1990s, regardless of further restrictions on inner-party democracy and scrapping the socialist clause four in the party’s constitution.
Keith Barlow has produced an excellent reference book. Less of an obsession with legal cases and parliamentary statutes - important though they are - and a little more on the politics of the labour movement (there is surprisingly little about the Communist Party and other left forces) would have made it even more valuable to left and trade union activists.
The old adage of “treating others as you would like to be treated” especially holds true for certain animals that make no bones about going out of their way and caring for others. In some instances, animal kindness is a case of a species being good parents to their young; in other situations, the generosity is truly amazing and defines stereotypes. From vampire bats sharing blood with sick mates to dogs adopting kittens, the following list of nurturing animals may surprise, leave a smile on the face or even inspire. To these animals, their noble actions are not about recognition or notoriety, but just doing what’s right — a philosophy we all could do a better job of following at times. …
With their enormous girth, giant South African bulldogs [sic; bullfrogs] may look like immobile blobs, but they are actually quite agile when it comes to protecting their young tadpoles. Male African bulldogs [sic; bullfrogs] dutifully stand guard over their young tadpoles as they wade through the water and have been documented standing up to snakes and even lions and elephants that get too close. And when the swarms of tadpoles struggle to survive as stream waters become too shallow, the male frogs spring into action by digging trenches that connect nearby streams and allow the tadpoles to survive in deeper waters. Talk about a literal lifesaver. …
Arguably one of the most altruistic animal species around, dolphins have been known to help out others in need, including possible predators and even humans. A few years ago, a bottle nosed dolphin heeded the SOS calls of two beached whales in New Zealand and led them into safe waters. Without the guidance of the dolphin, the whales would have most likely perished. Also occurring in New Zealand a couple of years back, a group of swimmers were first surprised when a group of dolphins began circling around them. However, as the circle got tighter and the dolphins began splashing in the water, the swimmers became a bit nervous by the aggressive behavior. It turns out that the dolphins were warding off a nearby shark that was moving close to the swimmers, who were certainly less apprehensive and more appreciative when reaching shore and realizing the heroism of the dolphins, which have also prevented sharks from continuing attacks on humans in other circumstances. …
When a flood overwhelmed an Amazon jungle, a family of ants adapted quickly, specifically by linking their legs together and forming a raft built on teamwork and love. As the above video amazingly captures, the ants utilize the raft to guide their Queen and babies through the water. While some ants were lost along the way to hungry fish, their sacrifices didn’t go without purpose as the ants safely reached shore and lived to see another day.
In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel of the centre right Christian Democrats counted on being able to form, after the general election later this year, a majority government coalition of her party and the pro big business Free Democrats. She cannot be so sure about that after yesterday’s state elections. Her CDU lost (Germany: Big losses for the conservative CDU in state elections: here). In Saarland state, the Left Party went from 2% to 21% (see also here. And here).
At rallies held as part of the state legislative election campaign in the German state of North Rhine Westphalia, state premier Jürgen Rüttgers (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) delivered a racist tirade against Romanians: here.
Several countries say the deal threatens regional peace - a charge the US and Colombia deny.
To date, 621 cases of swine flu have been recorded in Colombia of which 34 have proved fatal, Colombia’s social protection ministry says.
I think blind chance is a better hypothesis for understanding events like this than divine wrath or karma punishing evildoers. Nevertheless, someone with so much blood on his hands as Uribe getting swine flu almost makes me change my mind.
The presidents of 12 South American nations held a special UNASUR summit meeting in Bariloche, Argentina to deal with the United States having gained access to and use of seven military bases in Colombia: here.
Secretary Clinton’s rationale for Colombian bases is misleading: here.
A Colombian opposition senator has accused the US ambassador to Bogota of lying about the terms of a deal to allow the US to use seven military bases in the south American country: here.
Colombian Trade Unions: A Target for Intimidation and Assassination: here.
A study to be released today by Education International highlights the atrocious scale of human rights violations against Colombian teacher trade unionists: here.
Colombian indigenous leader and spokeswoman of the Minga social movement Aida Quilcue was “walking the word” in Britain two weeks ago, sharing experiences with trade unionists and the Latin American community: here.
Major pharmaceuticals that contracted with the US government to provide vaccines against the swine flu have delivered only a fraction of what was anticipated, leaving thousands to wait in lines for a chance to be vaccinated: here.
The Obama administration entrusted preparations for the H1N1 pandemic to pharmaceutical corporations and stood by as state and local governments laid off public health workers. The result is an acute shortage of vaccine, and little infrastructure to deliver what is available: here.
Swine flu vaccine shortage disrupts local response plans: here.
I put this video together because I used to find it difficult to identify a gadwall amongst a flock of female mallards.
Both the male and female gadwall have a white patch at the base of the hind wing. The female mallard has a blue patch in the same place. This is the easiest way to tell them apart particularly at a distance.
If, as I hope, the young have survived, by now they are the same size as their parents, able to fly, and preparing their September migration to Africa. So, it is not surprising that I did not see Baillon’s crakes today.
Three great cormorants sitting on the windmill’s sails. One of them spreading its wings in order to dry them.
A little grebe flying just above the water, with its feet hanging behind it. It lands in the water.
No waders here at the moment. Maybe because there has been a lot of rain, making the water surface rise and making the mudflats surface smaller.
Today it is mostly sunny, with rain for a few seconds while the sun keeps shining.
Many barn swallows flying.
At the bridge where one can often see spoonbils, no spoonbills today. There are great cormorants. And, not far from the bridge, in the grass, a dead mole.
Two shoveler ducks.
A bit further, along the footpath, domestic geese plus two Canada geese.
On a mudflat, lesser black-backed gulls and black-headed gulls. And a snipe looking for food.
A female tufted duck. Three lapwings.
A painted lady butterfly on a thistle flower. The Dutch name of this species is “distelvlinder”, thistle butterfly. A bit further, thistles where the flowers have already changed to thistledown. This attracts scores of “distelvinken”, literally: thistle finches; goldfinches in English.
An adult great crested grebe with a juvenile. Two adult mute swans with six greyish youngsters.
I arrive back at the bridge. The mole, which was lying in the grass an hour ago, lies on the footpath now. Probably a magpie flying away, which may haven been eating from it, is the cause of this.
The opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) routed the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in lower house elections yesterday. The Liberal Democrats have held power in Japan since the party’s formation in 1955, with the exception of an 11-month period in 1993-94.
The result was a landslide for the Democrats. According to the Mainichi Shimbun, the DPJ has increased its presence in the lower house from 113 to 308 seats. Its two small allies—the Social Democratic Party and the Peoples New Party—won 7 and 3 respectively. As a result, the DPJ-led coalition will have 318 seats, just short of the two-thirds majority needed in the 480-seat lower house to override an upper house veto.
For the Liberal Democrats, the outcome is devastating. The party’s seat tally slumped from 300 to 119. Its coalition partner, New Komeito, dropped from 31 to 21 seats. Five cabinet ministers, including Finance Minister Kaoru Yosano, and party heavyweights such as General Council Chairman Takashi Sasagawa and former Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura lost their single-seat constituencies. Most will return to parliament via the 180 seats elected by proportional representation.
The Mainichi Shimbun estimated voter turnout at 69.3 percent—the highest since single-seat constituencies were established in 1996. An exit poll conducted by the newspaper found that about a third of people who described themselves as LDP supporters voted for the Democrats yesterday. Of those who said they supported no particular party, some 59 percent voted for the DPJ as against 23 percent of LDP.
The scale of the LDP’s defeat was underscored by the results in Tokyo. Of the single-seat constituencies in the capital, the Democrats won just one at the previous election in 2005. Yesterday, DPJ candidates took 21 of the 25.
Far from being a positive endorsement of the Democrats, the outcome reflected broad opposition to the LDP over deepening social inequality and the government’s support for the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Japan has been particularly hard hit by the global recession, which has led to sharp falls in exports and a wave of layoffs. Official statistics released on Friday put unemployment at a post-war high of 5.7 percent. Levels of poverty and homelessness are on the rise.
For the Liberal Democrats, the defeat will certainly precipitate a deep internal crisis. Prime Minister Taro Aso has already announced that he will step down as party president. “The LDP has had four prime ministers in the last four years. People’s dissatisfaction and distrust about that came to the surface all of a sudden,” he told the media. …
It is not obvious who will replace Taro Aso as party president. Whoever does become leader will confront a party in turmoil. It is quite possible that the defeat will produce another string of defections as LDP parliamentarians look to their political future elsewhere.
Japan’s opposition party won an overwhelming victory at the polls on Sunday pledging to increase social welfare, better protect workers and do away with American-style, pro-market reforms to lead the country out of its long slump: here.
The ignominious electoral collapse of the LDP amid the greatest global economic crisis since the 1930s is another sign that politics, not only in Japan but internationally, is entering uncharted and stormy waters: here.
All candidates siding with advocates of the plan to build a new U.S. military base in Okinawa lost in all four Okinawa’s single-seat constituencies, and Japanese Communist Party Akamine Seiken calling for a retraction of the plan was re-elected from the proportional representation Kyushu-Okinawa bloc: here.
Japan’s new government: Promise and reality: here.
Has Japan’s Dolphin Slaughter Been Prevented? Here.
RIGHTS-JAPAN: Women Talk: ‘We Want Greater Gender Equality’: here.
Japan peace movement: Moving toward a world without nuclear weapons: here.
US and Japanese officials said on Monday that they plan to speed up negotiations over the relocation of a key marine base before President Barack Obama’s visit to Tokyo next month: here.
AUGUST 30, 2009, SAN PEDRO SULA, HONDURAS: Congresswoman Silvia Ayala of the anti-coup Unificación Democrática (UD) Party had just returned from Mexico and was en route to the Dominican Republic, part of a trajectory aimed at strengthening international condemnation of the June 28 coup d’etat against President Mel Zelaya. She made time to speak with me at a cafeteria in the northwestern Honduran city of San Pedro Sula and arrived with her husband and two children, who alternately contributed anecdotes to the discussion, answered Ayala’s cell phone, and—in the case of her young son—drew pictures in a notebook.
A lawyer herself, Ayala announced that about 200 Honduran attorneys had actively joined the coup resistance despite the general alliance between Honduran law school faculties and the political right. The Spanish description of the alliance exploits the homophonic similarity between derecho—law—and derecha, right, with additional Spanish homophony made possible by the arrival that day of Judge Baltasar Garzón of Spain to investigate coup regime violations of derechos humanos, human rights.
Such derechos had been one focus of Ayala’s recent appearance at the Foro de Sao Paulo in Mexico City, attended by over 500 mainly Latin American delegates.
At the cafeteria in San Pedro Sula, Ayala listed what she considered to be some of the primary violations currently occurring in Honduras, including instances of assassination and torture and a general persecution of Nicaraguan nationals innocently going about their business. As for curtailment of other liberties, Ayala informed me that she had learned from a hotel television set in June that Roberto Micheletti had been unanimously voted in as coup President, a unanimity that was apparently easier to maintain when certain members of Congress [including Ms Ayala herself] were not permitted to vote and were instead reduced to watching congressional proceedings on television.
US role in Colombia and Honduras sparks Latin American criticism: here.
Honduran Military Coup Reverses Women’s Gains in Human Rights: here.
US trade unionists have called on Washington to “take all necessary steps” to facilitate the restoration of democracy in Honduras and prevent the coup regime from “brutalising” Honduran women: here.
Joseph Shansky was part of a Global Exchange delegation of activists to Honduras who went to witness the daily protests, monitor human rights violations and report back to the international community on conditions since the June 28 military coup: here.
Highlights from Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in Concord included both American and least bitterns, a little blue heron, a sora, four white-rumped sandpipers, 14 pectoral sandpipers, a stilt sandpiper, 14 Wilson’s snipe, two great horned owls, and 71 common nighthawks. Other nighthawk reports included 208 in Westminster, 142 in Grafton, 150 in Lowell, 60 at Boston’s Fenway Park during a night game, and small numbers in several other communities.
Miscellaneous reports this week included a Virginia rail and 20 bobolinks at Drumlin Farm Wildlife Sanctuary in Lincoln, and five black-crowned night-herons and 300 Bonaparte’s gulls in Newburyport Harbor.
Following the passage of Hurricane Bill, a moribund immature white-tailed tropicbird was found in Carlisle last Sunday. Because of the tropical storm this weekend, birders are encouraged to be on the lookout for seabirds and other storm-tossed vagrants.
For more information about bird sightings or to report bird sightings, call the Massachusetts Audubon Society at 781-259- 8805 or go to www.massaudubon.org.
Ken McIntire of San Bruno Mountain Watch speaking to Bay Area Virgina Tech Alumni about current threats to the Northeast Ridge and the Callippe Silverspot Butterfly.
SAN BRUNO — Monday is the deadline for county residents to speak up about likely changes to a plan that deals with protecting endangered butterflies on San Bruno Mountain, officials said.
At stake is an amendment that would allow the final stage of a decades-old plan to build housing on the northeastern ridge of San Bruno Mountain, which is home to two endangered species of butterfly: the Callippe Silverspot and Mission Blue butterflies.
The San Bruno Mountain Habitat Conservation Plan is about 27 years old, and would allow Brookfield Homes to complete a housing development by building 71 houses on 20 acres of land, which is about half the scope of the developer’s original proposal. …
Kevin McIntire, executive director of San Bruno Mountain Watch, a nonprofit that has been fighting the development plan, called habitat conservation plans “loopholes in the Endangered Species Act that allow for development in ways that damage endangered species.”
McIntire said the San Bruno Mountain plan, which was first drafted in 1982, is based on outdated research that doesn’t assess the current condition of the butterflies or their habitat, and called for additional research before any final decisions are made. …
Anyone wishing to submit a comment before the hearing can contact Sam Herzberg of the San Mateo County Parks Department at 650-363-1823, sherzberg@co.sanmateo.ca.us, or by mail at 455 County Center in Redwood City, 94063.
This video from the USA is called Biologists are lending a helping hand to the endangered Mission Blue butterfly.
The Gulf fritillary (Agraulis vanilla) is one of the showiest butterflies in California: here.
How much did the U.S. spend in 2007 to protect endangered species? Here.
Colombian trade union leader Jesús Lorenzo Brochero Erazo talks about his union Sintracarbon, the union representing workers in the Cerrejon coal mine, one of the largest open pit coal mines in the world. He is visiting Canada to highlight Colombian union and social movement opposition to the 2008 Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.
No end to assassinations of trade unionists in Colombia
Brussels, 27 August 2009: Once again the ITUC must strongly denounce and condemn the death of a Colombian trade unionist. This time the victim was Fredy Díaz Ortiz, a member of the prison workers’ union Asociación Sindical de Empleados del Instituto Nacional Penitenciario y Carcelario (ASEINPEC) affiliated to the Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT), who was killed on 22 August 2009 in the city of Valledupar, César.
The ITUC joins TUCA and its Colombian affiliates in roundly condemning this murder, which is yet another source of grief for workers and the national, regional and international trade union movement. The assassination took place as Fredy Díaz Ortiz was waiting for a lift to his place of work at the Maximum Security Prison in Valledupar. Two unidentified persons on a motorcycle fired several bullets at him and the brutal attack resulted in his death.
The Internet site of the union of murdered trade unionist Fredy Díaz Ortiz is not working at the moment. Just a technical problem; or censorship by the Uribe government in Colombia, the bosses of Fredy Díaz Ortiz, who don’t really like trade unions?
Internationally, today is not a good day for the political right.
