Dear Kitty. Some blog

This video from the USA says about itself:

Clueless Gov. Sarah Palin is interviewed in front of an ongoing turkey slaughter immediately following her pardon of the only lucky turkey. Caution: Dont let kids watch.

Sarah Palin, until recently Governor of Alaska, probably had an expensive Christmas dinner, with lots of turkeys, moose, and other dead animals.

Meanwhile, on the streets of Anchorage, the biggest city of Alaska, like elsewhere, the world economic crisis rages, and hits the poor especially … from Anchorage Daily News:

Woman found dead in city homeless camp

Published: December 26th, 2009 10:53 PM
Last Modified: December 26th, 2009 10:54 PM

A 50-year-old woman died early Christmas morning at a homeless camp in Mountain View, apparently of natural causes, Anchorage police said.

A friend had left Malorie Dora Pete at the camp in Davis Park earlier in the evening, and said she seemed fine at that time, police spokeswoman Marlene Lammers said. When he returned later, he found her unresponsive and called 911 from a nearby gas station shortly before 2 a.m., saying he thought she was dead.

Responding officers found the woman dead when they arrived, Lammers said. Her body was in a tent at the camp, near the 400 block of North Pine Street.

It appears she died of natural causes, Lammers said. The temperature was about 31 degrees.

Pete is the 14th homeless person found dead in Anchorage this year, an unprecedented series of deaths in parks and along trails and city streets.

Talking about Alaska: Fresh spill at Exxon Valdez site creates three-mile-long oil slick.

This video says about itself:

Dennis Brutus on current lawsuit against corporations that illegally benefited from Apartheid.

By Patrick Bond in South Africa:

Dennis Vincent Brutus, 1924-2009

World-renowned political organizer and one of Africa’s most celebrated poets, Dennis Brutus, died early on December 26 in Cape Town, in his sleep, aged 85.

Even in his last days, Brutus was fully engaged, advocating social protest against those responsible for climate change, and promoting reparations to black South Africans from corporations that benefited from apartheid. He was a leading plaintiff in the Alien Tort Claims Act case against major firms that is now making progress in the US court system.

Brutus was born in Harare in 1924, but his South African parents soonmoved to Port Elizabeth where he attended Paterson and Schauderville High Schools. He entered Fort Hare University on a full scholarship in 1940, graduating with a distinction in English and a second major in Psychology. Further studies in law at the University of the Witwatersrand were cut short by imprisonment for anti-apartheid activism.

Brutus’ political activity initially included extensive journalistic reporting, organising with the Teachers’ League and Congress movement, and leading the new South African Sports Association as an alternative to white sports bodies. After his banning in 1961 under the Suppression of Communism Act, he fled to Mozambique but was captured and deported to Johannesburg. There, in 1963, Brutus was shot in the back while attempting to escape police custody. Memorably, it was in front of Anglo American Corporation headquarters that he nearly died while awaiting an ambulance reserved for blacks.

While recovering, he was held in the Johannesburg Fort Prison cell which more than a half-century earlier housed Mahatma Gandhi. Brutus was transferred to Robben Island where he was jailed in the cell next to Nelson Mandela, and in 1964-65 wrote the collections Sirens Knuckles Boots and Letters to Martha, two of the richest poetic expressions of political incarceration.

Subsequently forced into exile, Brutus resumed simultaneous careers as a poet and anti-apartheid campaigner in London, and while working for the International Defense and Aid Fund, was instrumental in achieving the apartheid regime’s expulsion from the 1968 Mexican Olympics and then in 1970 from the Olympic movement.

Upon moving to the US in 1977, Brutus served as a professor of literature and African studies at Northwestern (Chicago) and Pittsburgh, and defeated high-profile efforts by the Reagan Administration to deport him during the early 1980s. He wrote numerous poems, ninety of which will be published posthumously next year by Worcester State University, and he helped organize major African writers organizations with his colleagues Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe.

Following the political transition in South Africa, Brutus resumed activities with grassroots social movements in his home country. In the late 1990s he also became a pivotal figure in the global justice movement and a featured speaker each year at the World Social Forum, as well as at protests against the World Trade Organisation, G8, Bretton Woods Institutions and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development.

Brutus continued to serve in the anti-racism, reparations and economic justice movements as a leading strategist until his death, calling in August for the ‘Seattling’ of the recent Copenhagen summit because sufficient greenhouse gas emissions cuts and North-South ‘climate debt’ payments were not on the agenda.

His final academic appointment was as Honorary Professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society, and for that university’s press and Haymarket Press, he published the autobiographical Poetry and Protest in 2006.

Amongst numerous recent accolades were the US War Resisters League peace award in September, two Doctor of Literature degrees conferred at Rhodes and Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in April - following six other honorary doctorates – and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the South African government Department of Arts and Culture in 2008.

Brutus was also awarded membership in the South African Sports Hall of Fame in 2007, but rejected it on grounds that the institution had not confronted the country’s racist history. He also won the Paul Robeson and Langston Hughes awards.

The memory of Dennis Brutus will remain everywhere there is struggle against injustice. Uniquely courageous, consistent and principled, Brutus bridged the global and local, politics and culture, class and race, the old and the young, the red and green. He was an emblem of solidarity with all those peoples oppressed and environments wrecked by the power of capital and state elites – hence some in the African National Congress government labeled him ‘ultraleft’. But given his role as a world-class poet, Brutus showed that social justice advocates can have both bread and roses.

Brutus’s poetry collections are:

* Sirens Knuckles and Boots (Mbari Productions, Ibaden, Nigeria and Northwestern University Press, Evanston Illinois, 1963).
* Letters to Martha and Other Poems from a South African Prison (Heinemann, Oxford, 1968).
* Poems from Algiers (African and Afro-American Studies and Research Institute, Austin, Texas, 1970).
* A Simple Lust (Heinemann, Oxford, 1973).
* China Poems (African and Afro-American Studies and Research Centre, Austin, Texas, 1975).
* Strains (Troubador Press, Del Valle, Texas).
* Stubborn Hope (Three Continents Press, Washington, DC and Heinemann, Oxford, 1978).
* Salutes and Censures (Fourth Dimension, Enugu, Nigeria, 1982).
* Airs and Tributes (Whirlwind Press, Camden, New Jersey, 1989).
* Still the Sirens (Pennywhistle Press, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1993).
* Remembering Soweto, ed. Lamont B. Steptoe (Whirlwind Press, Camden, New Jersey, 2004).
* Leafdrift, ed. Lamont B. Steptoe (Whirlwind Press, Camden, New Jersey, 2005).
* Poetry and Protest: A Dennis Brutus Reader, ed. Aisha Kareem and Lee Sustar (Haymarket Books, Chicago and University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, Pietermaritzburg, 2006).

He is survived by his wife May, his sisters Helen and Dolly, eight children, nine grandchildren and four great-grandchildren in Hong Kong, England, the USA and Cape Town.

See also here. And here.

This video is called Leatherbacks: Litoghahira, Solomon Islands.

From the University of Exeter in England:

Turtles‘ Christmas journey tracked by scientists

December 23, 2009

The journeys of two marine turtles around the world’s oceans will be available to view online this Christmas, thanks to a new research project launched by the University of Exeter.

Noelle and Darwinia are two adult female leatherback turtles that nest in Gabon, Western Central Africa. The research team has fitted each turtle with a small satellite tracking device, which enables the scientists to monitor their precise movements and observe where and how deep they dive. The tracking began on 7 December 2009 and so far the turtles have travelled 800 miles between them.

Their progress can now be viewed online: www.seaturtle.org/tracking and people can also get the latest news on the turtles by signing-up for daily email alerts. Noelle and Darwinia are members of the world’s largest nesting population of leatherback turtles, but their environment is threatened. The waters around Gabon are increasingly subject to industrial fishing and oil exploitation, particularly from nations outside West Africa, including countries in Europe.

Leatherbacks are of profound conservation concern around the world after populations in the Indo-Pacific crashed by more than 90 percent in the 1980s and 1990s. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists leatherback turtles as critically endangered globally, but detailed population assessments in much of the Atlantic, especially Africa, are lacking.

This video is about Maui forest birds, including the Maui parrotbill.

By Chris Hamilton in The Maui News in Hawaii:

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Survey shows endangered Maui parrotbill population doing well

WAILUKU, Maui - The critically endangered Maui parrotbill is apparently doing quite well, perhaps even thriving, in the The Nature Conservancy of Hawaii’s Waikamoi Preserve, according a report issued this week.

Nature Conservancy scientists estimated there are about 20 of the chunky yellowish, insect-eating birds per square kilometer in the windward preserve near the summit of Haleakala. That means the estimated population of about 500 is holding steady or possibly even increasing, said Nature Conservancy of Hawaii spokesman Grady Timmons on Friday.

“It was very encouraging because they only have a natural habitat of about 19 square miles, all located in East Maui,” Timmons said.

How much the parrotbill population increased is difficult to say, the scientists said, since the last survey was not as extensive. But they said they are certain that the numbers are as good or getting better.

The bird, which is a member of the Native Hawaiian honeycreeper species, has been relegated to the higher elevations since its natural habitat has been damaged over the years by agriculture and development, he said. Avian flu, malaria and rats that eat the birds’ eggs also have taken a toll, Timmons said.

Ornithologist Dusti Becker, who is project coordinator for the Maui Forest Bird Recovery Project, said she was surprised by the results of the population survey, which she led.

“I didn’t expect that there would be that many birds there,” she said.

A previous study had placed the density of the bird population at about half of what the most recent survey found. However, scientists cautioned that the findings were limited to a two-week survey done in September.

Still, the survey area is 400 acres between the Waikamoi Stream and Koolau Gap, and the two-person teams reported hearing or seeing dozens of parrotbills, including juvenile birds.

“We can say with confidence that Waikamoi hosts a breeding population,” said Nature Conservancy Maui Director Mark White.

The scientists hypothesized that Nature Conservancy efforts in recent years to fence off the preserve from wild pigs and goats and remove invasive plants and replace them with native species likely contributed to the parrotbill population hike. For instance, native shrub cover in Waikamoi has tripled in the past 15 years.

And the parrotbills mostly eat grubs found in the shrubs’ fruit, according to the report.

The Waikamoi Preserve is 5,230 acres. The Nature Conservancy of Hawaii has been managing the property, which is owned by Haleakala Ranch, since the nonprofit received a permanent conservation easement from the ranch in 1983.

About 25 percent of the parrotbill population is found in Waikamoi and most of the rest is in the Hanawi Natural Area Reserve in East Maui, also on the slopes of Haleakala.

The birds were once found throughout Maui and Molokai. The parrotbill is only 5 to 6 inches long and gets its name from the parrot shape of its bill. The birds are olive green on top and have a yellowish belly and distinctive yellow stripe over their eyes.

The bills, which Timmons compared to can openers, are incredibly strong and able to pry open bark to reach insects and grubs.

“The typical story line with endangered forest birds is one of decline,” said Sam Gon, The Nature Conservancy’s senior scientist and cultural adviser. “To have an endangered bird maintain its population and perhaps even show signs of increasing is very encouraging and cause for celebration.”

Nature Conservancy scientists noted that the po’ouli bird, which lived in the same preserve, may be extinct. The last pair of po’ouli birds was last seen in 2004.

For more information, go online to mauiforestbirds.org.

This video is called Copenhagen Climate Demonstration - Combo of Street Interviews.

The UN-sponsored global climate summit in Copenhagen staggered toward a finish Friday night, with representatives of the major world powers hoping to salvage a brief statement of principles, without a single binding commitment, before bringing the two-week conference to an end: here.

Low targets, goals dropped: Copenhagen ends in failure: here.

Copenhagen: `Imperial’ climate deal rejected by poor-country delegates: here.

Greenpeace: Copenhagen a cop-out.

ALBA and G77 Denounce Copenhagen Sham: here.

New Scientist on this: here.

See also here.

Evo Morales: Trillions for war, peanuts to save the planet: here.

Artists and the Copenhagen conference: here.

Greenpeace: Copenhagen, Denmark — Four of our activists face the prospect of Christmas in jail this year over charges relating to our crashing of the Head of State dinner at the Copenhagen climate summit, while the leaders who did practically nothing about the greatest threat to our planet got away scott free: here. And here.

Environmentalists have denounced the results of the two-week climate conference in Copenhagen as “toothless” and “half-baked”: here.

Hugo Chávez writes on `The battle of Copenhagen’: here.

Godfather of global warming deniers US Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) and Copenhagen: here.

Conservatives Continue Their Assault on Climate Science — And Reason: here.

Despite the urgency of finding a solution to global warming, the representatives of 193 states at the world climate conference in Copenhagen last week were utterly incapable of agreeing on any effective steps to reduce global levels of greenhouse gases: here.

U.S.-Led Copenhagen Accord Decried as Flawed, Undemocratic: here.

CLIMATE CHANGE AND SINOPHOBIA: here.

BirdLife comments on Copenhagen: here.

Developing countries and unions globally have branded the Copenhagen climate summit as a “farce” and insisted that the threat posed by global warming required rich states to commit to binding emissions reductions: here.

Dr. Helen Caldicott, the pioneering Australian antinuclear activist and pediatrician who spearheaded the global nuclear freeze movement of the 1980s and co-founded Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), has joined with left-leaning environmental groups here in an uphill fight to halt nuclear power as a “solution” to the global warming crisis: here.

From Associated Press in the USA:

San Francisco plant thought extinct for nearly 70 years found near Golden Gate

Posted: 12/14/2009 01:36:27 PM PST
Updated: 12/14/2009 01:45:20 PM PST

SAN FRANCISCO — A San Francisco native plant thought extinct by botanists has been discovered near the Golden Gate Bridge.

The last, wild Franciscan Manzanita was believed to have perished in the 1940s when the city cemeteries where it grew were moved south to allow for neighborhood expansion.

But when construction crews recently cleared eucalyptus trees in the city’s Presidio area, it exposed the only specimen known to exist in the wild.

Botanist Daniel Gluesenkamp spotted the manzanita shrub as he drove over the Golden Gate Bridge. He later visited the site to confirm his sighting — the first in nearly 70 years.

The Wild Equity Institute has filed a petition with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect the plant under the Endangered Species Act.

This video is called Copenhagen Demo Against Climate Catastrophe: Stop Planet Destruction.

From the Huffington Post in the USA:

The UN international climate change conference is in chaos as the G77, which represents 130 developing countries “pulled the emergency plug” suspending the talks over wealthy countries’ reluctance to discuss a legally binding emissions treaty.

John Vidal, environment editor, on five hour halt to climate change negotiations in Copenhagen and continuing difficulties: here.

Key Copenhagen policy on forest protection hangs in balance: here.

The brutal measures employed by the Danish police in Copenhagen on Saturday must serve as a warning to the working class and youth in Europe and internationally: here.

Connie Hedegaard resigns as president of Copenhagen climate summit: here.

This video is called Macaroni penguin facts - David Attenborough.

From British daily The Morning Star:

Penguin mapping plan to aid climate scientists

Monday 14 December 2009

Genetic “featherprints” are being used to map the movements of penguins to see how they are affected by global warming, scientists have said.

Scientists have found genetic markers in DNA from collected feathers that can help them track Antarctic penguins as they migrate between colonies.

They hope the technique will reveal whether climate change is driving the birds from their favoured breeding sites.

The DNA allows scientists to determine the relatedness of birds within a colony, enabling them to follow the movements of individuals and populations.

The markers have already been used to make a population map of macaroni penguins around South Georgia.

Genetic tracking is now being extended to all penguin species on the Antarctic peninsula.

Zoological Society of London scientist Dr Tom Hart said: “Knowing how penguins are responding to climate change is vital to conservation efforts.

“If we understand how their populations are changing, we can do something about it, such as making sure that our protected areas are in the right place for penguins in 100 years’ time.”

New pictures reveal rich Antarctic marine life in area of rapid climate change: here.

A proposal aimed at saving the world’s tropical forests has suffered a major setback after negotiators at the UN climate talks had to ditch plans for faster action on the problem because rich countries aren’t willing to finance it: here.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 21, 2009) — All insect-eating migratory birds who winter in Africa and breed in the Dutch woods have decreased in numbers since 1984. This has been revealed by research conducted by the University of Groningen, the SOVON Dutch Centre for Field Ornithology, Statistics Netherlands (CBS), Radboud University Nijmegen and Alterra, published on 16 December in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences: here.

Danish police arrest nearly 1,000 protesters at climate conference: here.

Climate activists have criticised Danish police for employing draconian tactics after nearly 1,000 people were arrested in Copenhagen during climate change protests at the weekend: here.

About the Copenhagen conference: Climate justice campaigners have condemned Britain for being the only country to ask developing nations to repay “aid” given to tackle environmental change: here.

This video from the USA is called Berkeley Student PROTEST againt tuition hike- beaten by police!!!!!

California police are engaged in a major crackdown on student protests against budget cuts, tuition increases and the attack on public education: here.

Britain: David Miliband has launched an unprecedented attack on a High Court ruling which would force the government to disclose information relating to the detention and torture of Binyam Mohamed, branding it “irresponsible”: here.

US ORDERED BINYAM TORTURE –accepted by Washington District Court: here.

The resort to martial law in the Philippines is directed against the working class and highlights the political consequences of the deepening global economic crisis and rising class tensions internationally: here.

This video from England says about itself:

Red Crowned Parakeet - A LONG WAY FROM HOME !

They are only found living wild in New Zealand. However I found this one sitting on my bird feeder thousands of miles away, here in Wolverhampton…in the UK !

From Wildlife Extra:

Kakariki breeding on Auckland Island for first time in 100 years

09/12/2009 16:34:42

They’ve been gone for more than 100 years, but last week, a family of red-crowned parakeets was spotted flying down from the trees in a peaceful gully on Motutapu.

Luis Ortiz-Catedral, parakeet specialist and Massey University PhD student, says one of the birds was clearly a recently fledged juvenile that must have hatched on the island.

“I estimate it fledged about two weeks ago considering the size of the tail, the colouration of the beak and also because it was still being fed by its parents,” he says.

Red-crowned parakeets - one of five main species of kâkâriki - were recorded on Motutapu in September by the Ornithological Society of New Zealand (OSNZ). The OSNZ conducts bird surveys for the Motutapu Restoration Trust every year. Mr Ortiz-Catedral joined them last week to look for signs of breeding parakeets.

Only the male of the pair was banded, and had been released on nearby pest-free Motuihe eight months ago.

Pest eradication

Motutapu and Rangitoto are on their way to becoming pest-free after the Department of Conservation began a two-year campaign to rid the islands of seven remaining mammalian pests in June this year.

Richard Griffiths, project manager for the Rangitoto and Motutapu restoration project, says it’s exciting to see kâkâriki back so soon - but says we must look after them. “Now that native birds are nesting on the islands, it’s more important than ever before for visitors to ensure they don’t accidentally bring any pests with them,” he says.

While parakeets like to forage in open areas with bush close by to provide cover, the one factor that influences their survival the most is the presence or absence of predators, says Mr Ortiz-Catedral. He says the fact that parakeets have made their own way to Motutapu so quickly after most of the pests were removed will attract international attention.

Natural colonisation unusual

“Natural colonisations of islands by parrots are not common. The Hauraki Gulf is becoming a worldwide example of how restoring key sites can help surrounding islands too - it happens so often here that we tend to lose perspective.”

The red-crowned parakeet

The red-crowned parakeet was widespread on the mainland last century, but today is very rare on the mainland and only common on pest-free islands. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has recently classified parakeets as a species vulnerable to extinction.

In the Auckland region, red-crowned parakeets are found on Tiritiri Matangi, Little Barrier, Great Barrier, Motuihe, Tawharanui Regional Park and now Motutapu. They are also found on the Mercury Islands, the Hen and Chickens Islands and the Poor Knights Islands.