Dear Kitty. Some blog

See, on the research which this video is about, also here. And here.

Stunning footage has been captured of three cheetahs cooperating to hunt and bring down an adult ostrich: here.

Herd of oryx defend calf from group of cheetahs; video here.

Cheetahs may make return to age-old hunting grounds in India: here.

The world’s fastest man adopted the animal kingdom’s fastest sprinter Monday, as Usain Bolt welcomed a new baby cheetah named Lightning Bolt into his life: here.

From British daily The Guardian:

Bernie Ecclestone says Hitler was a man who got things done

• ‘I prefer strong leaders,’ says Formula One supremo
• Max Mosley could be a good Prime Minister, he adds

*Saturday 4 July 2009 01.35 BST

The Formula One commercial rights holder, Bernie Ecclestone, has stoked up controversy by claiming that Adolf Hitler was a man who “was able to get things done”, that democracy has not worked out for Britain and that his colleague Max Mosley would make a good Prime Minister.

Ecclestone had previously stirred outrage when he suggested in 2008 that racist comments on a website about the British driver Lewis Hamilton had “started as just a joke”.

Yesterday a spokesman for the board of Deputies of British Jews said: “Mr Ecclestone’s comments regarding Hitler, female, black and Jewish racing drivers are quite bizarre. He says ‘Politics are not for me’ and we are inclined to agree.”

Ecclestone … added: “I prefer strong leaders. Margaret Thatcher made decisions on the run and got the job done. … Max would do a super job, he’s a good leader.” Apparently referring to the fact that the president of the FIA,

ex president

the sport’s ruling body, was the son of Sir Oswald Mosley,

and a candidate for his father’s fascist party

leader of the British Union of Fascists, he added: “I don’t think his background would be a problem.”

See also here.

Ecclestone-Tony Blair 1997 corruption scandal: here.

Campaigners gathered at the International Brigade memorial in London’s Jubilee Gardens at the weekend to be warned about the recent EU electoral success of the far-right and fascist parties across Europe: here.

British Conservative leader David Cameron has apologized for his party’s history of support for racist apartheid in South Africa. Late; but better late than never. However, Mr Cameron then “forgot” to come clean about his own links to the late apartheid regime.

British Conservative leader David Cameron has apologized for his party’s involvement in the expenses’ scandal. Better late than never. However, Mr Cameron “forgot” his own part in this.

British Conservative leader David Cameron has now apologized for his party’s homophobia. From British daily The Guardian:

David Cameron apologises to gay people for section 28

* Nicholas Watt
* Thursday 2 July 2009

David Cameron has embarked on another major step in the modernisation of the Conservative party by offering a public apology for section 28, the notorious legislation which banned the “promotion” of homosexuality in schools.

…

The Tory leader, who voted against the repeal of section 28 as recently as 2003, reached out to the gay community on Tuesday night at a Tory fundraising event linked to Gay Pride this weekend.

“Yes, we may have sometimes been slow and, yes, we may have made mistakes, including Section 28, but the change has happened,” Cameron said of the repeal of the legislation originally passed in 1988 when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister.

In remarks reported by the Pink Paper, he admitted that he did not have a “perfect record” on gay rights, a reference to his decision in 2003 to vote for the retention of section 28. …

Cameron’s apology shows how far the Tory party has moved in the past decade. Shaun Woodward, now Northern Ireland secretary, defected to Labour after he was sacked from the Tory frontbench by William Hague in 2000 for rebelling against the party’s support for section 28.

Cameron, who succeeded Woodward as MP for Witney at the 2001 general election, mocked his opposition to section 28. “Did Mr Woodward order a survey of local opinion about the issue that triggered his resignation – clause 28 and the promotion of homosexuality in schools?” Cameron wrote in a letter to the Daily Telegraph in September 2000.

The future Tory leader voted to retain Section 28 in the 2003 Commons vote which led to its abolition. …

However as recently as last year, Cameron alarmed gay and lesbian campaigners by voting to restrict access for lesbian couples hoping to conceive children through in vitro fertilisation (IVF).

To the surprise of Tory modernisers he supported a Commons amendment by the former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith that would have strengthened existing laws to make IVF clinics consider the “need for a father and a mother” before allowing women to begin fertility treatment. The amendment was defeated.

See also here.

Tories accused of hypocrisy as they seek the gay vote: here.

1960s Tory racism: here.

The conservative party’s decision to support Michal Kaminski as leader of the Tories’ new Euro-grouping had provoked “real cause for concern” among Britain’s Jewish community – said Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Miliband in an interview for the British weekly “Independent on Sunday”: here.

Hard-right Roger Helmer joins Tory spin-doctors in frantically re-writing Kaminski’s past: here.

Peter Tatchell: Brown should not be boasting about his gay-friendly credentials when he supports the ban on same-sex marriage: here.

A gay astronomer who was fired for his sexuality in 1957 has finally received a formal apology from the US government: here.

Gay and lesbian athletes usually wait until after they retire to come out of the closet, but that doesn’t have to be the case: here.

By British ex-miner and 1984-85 striker, Norman Strike [not a pseudonym]:

Tuesday 30 June 2009

Obituary
Steven Wells 1960 -2009

A great man died in the US last week. The things he said and wrote entertained, amused and angered a lot of people.

This man was a real revolutionary socialist, poet, wit, class warrior and a great writer, and his death has left a huge gap in countless peoples’ lives.

Steven Wells (aka Seething Wells aka Susan Williams aka Swells) was born in Swindon in 1960 – and I wish I’d known that so I could have called him a “soft southern shite” like I’d heard him call so many others born south of Yorkshire!

Swells first came to my attention as a so-called “ranting poet”, alongside others such as Attila the Stockbroker, Joolz and Porky the Poet. I saw him supporting some of my favourite bands – the Fall and the Mekons.

I really liked his poem, Tetley Bittermen, which I think I’d heard on John Peel’s radio show, so I was pleased when I got to know him during, and especially after, the Miners’ Strike of 1984-5.

We even shared a house for a brief period and attended Socialist Workers Party meetings in Willesden, though we both struggled with party discipline.

He was also a stalwart of the Anti Nazi League and had the arrowed logo tattooed on his arm.

An old friend of his from those days, Paul Sillett, recalls a Redskins gig in Brixton where they were collecting for the miners and Swells viciously verbally attacked a famous Radio One DJ for giving nothing and almost had him in tears.

He added, “Funnier still that at the same gig, try as he might, Swells collected hardly a penny for the miners as everyone gave generously to every bucket that was proffered apart from Swells own one.

‘Fer Chrissakes,’ he yelled, ‘Why am I the only bugger that can’t get money for the miners?!’”

Swells took no prisoners in either his poetry or his journalism and wrote many memorable articles in the music paper NME during the 1980s.

As his long time friend and ex-Redskins bassist, Martin Bottomley, said, “He was one of the most intolerant people you could ever meet – he hated racists, sexists, homophobes and Tories, and as a journalist he continued to persecute these people with all his wit!”

Swells, in recent years, wrote a brilliant sports column for the Guardian. …

I loved Swells’ writing but reading the three articles about his battle with cancer finally made me realise just what a great writer he was.

His death made me cry hot salty tears, and reading those articles just added to the flow.

“And suddenly it hits me. I’m poleaxed, sobbing uncontrollably. I feel very vulnerable and very, very scared.

“This is followed by 24 tedious hours of horribly gothic adolescent introspection during which almost every line of thought concludes with, ‘But what’s the point if you’re going to die anyway?’”

Who’d have thought that post traumatic shock would have so much in common with being a Radiohead fan?

Ah Swells, so bloody talented, vitriolic, scathing. I am really going to miss you but console myself with the fact that your writing will live forever.

And how bloody apt that your very last written words were: “Me? I blame it on sunshine. I blame it on the moonlight. I blame it on the boogie.”

Michael Jackson grabs all the headlines but Steven Wells grabs your soul! RIP Swells.

See also here. And here.

From British daily The Guardian today:

Formula One breakaway averted as teams agree deal with Max Mosley

• Max Mosley: ‘I will not stand for re-election now we have peace’
• Parallel Formula One championship headed off at key meeting

…

As a result of the deal Mosley said he would not seek to extend his time in office: “I will not be up for re-election now we have peace,” he said. The 69-year-old has been under pressure amid the disagreements emanating from the proposed budget cuts but had announced over the weekend that he was seriously considering running for a fifth term as head of F1’s governing body. …

It is apparent a trade-off has unfolded - with the current teams now due to be on the grid for 2010, and without Mosley as ruler. It has to be remembered though that five years ago, in June 2004, Mosley announced he would stand down from his position in October of that year - only to rescind his decision a month later.

Earlier, Max Mosley was an election candidate for his father Sir Oswald Mosley’s fascist party. Last year, he nearly was kicked out as sports boss because of a prostitution scandal with nazi undertones.

Tennis and Fred Perry: here.

From British daily The Guardian:

Now for South Korea? North Korea reaches World Cup finals

Forty-three years after success in England, North returns to football’s big stage

* Justin McCurry Tokyo
* Friday 19 June 2009

It could be a genuine game of two halves. Forty-three years after they stunned the world by reaching the quarter-finals in England in 1966, North Korea have qualified for the World Cup finals - setting up the tantalising possibility of a match with South Korea.

Having played out a 0-0 draw in Saudi Arabia, the North Korean team is now preparing for next summer’s finals in South Africa.

A North Korean victory over the old enemy or its other great nemesis, the US - who are on the verge of qualification - would be exploited for every last ounce of propaganda value in Pyongyang. …

When in Pyongyang, Jong Tae-se, a Japanese-born forward who plays for the J-League team Kawasaki Frontale, travels to training by subway and trolleybus.

Jong, who was born to South Korean parents, is regarded as something of a socialist poster boy after rejecting offers from Japan and South Korea to represent the North. …

Yet North Korea’s only previous appearance in the World Cup suggests the Italians [current world champions] have reason to fear the men they called the Red Mosquitoes.

At their last meeting, at Ayresome Park, Middlesbrough, in 1966, North Korea stunned the football world with a 1-0 win. While the Italians dodged a hail of rotten tomatoes on their arrival in Rome, the victors endeared themselves to their hosts during the tournament.

In the quarter final against Portugal, North Korea went 3-0 up, only to lose 5-3 after a Eusebio-inspired comeback.

Few believe the current team will revisit those heady days: bookmakers are offering odds of 750-1 on North Korea to lift the World Cup. The best they can hope for is another famous victory, perhaps against the US or South Korea.

Japan: Communists Protest Call for Using SDF to Inspect North Korean Cargo Ships: here.

North Korea to restart exchanges with South: here.

South Korea is poised to launch its first rocket into orbit, just four months after Pyongyang launched its own and was immediately slapped with UN sanctions: here.

From Reuters news agency:

Stanford, flamboyant Texan, faces criminal charges

Fri Jun 19, 2009 2:05am EDT

By Jason Szep

BOSTON, June 19 - Allen Stanford, the once high-flying Texas billionaire with a Caribbean knighthood and a penchant for publicity and cricket, has been brought down to earth with a thud after surrendering to the FBI.

The founder and chairman of Stanford Group once credited his grandfather with giving him “the inspiration to dream” and “an unwavering desire to build a business that is second to none.” Since February, that business has all but evaporated.

On Thursday, the flamboyant 59-year-old financier turned himself in to the FBI to face criminal charges, four months after U.S. regulators accused him and three of his companies of a “massive ongoing fraud.”

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission says Stanford and two fellow executives fraudulently sold $8 billion in high-yield certificates of deposit issued by Stanford International Bank Ltd in Antigua.

In those civil charges, the SEC said the bank reported “improbable” high returns.

Many burned investors have been clamoring for criminal charges, accusing Stanford of being cut from the same mold as Bernard Madoff, who admitted in March to orchestrating the biggest financial swindle in Wall Street history.

The criminal charges and the SEC’s revelations of Stanford’s empire — stretching from the Caribbean island of Antigua to Houston, Miami and Caracas — complete the picture of a finance king who lost his Midas touch along the way.

In an April interview with Reuters, Stanford said he did not run a Ponzi scheme as U.S. regulators alleged. He asserted, in what may be a preview of his defense, that his companies were well-run until the government seized them in February.

Just last year, the man known as “Sir Allen” in Antigua since being knighted there in 2006 was providing fodder for British tabloids by flying in by helicopter to bankroll international cricket matches in a blaze of publicity. Since February, he has been largely out of sight.

‘FUN BEING A BILLIONAIRE’

Stanford has often walked a fine line between critics and admirers in a business and sporting empire that reaches to Europe and across the Caribbean.

A fifth-generation Texan, Stanford made his first fortune in Houston, snapping up distressed real estate in the early 1980s before inheriting the insurance and real-estate company his grandfather founded in 1932.

Forbes put his personal wealth at $2.2 billion last year and his list of wealth-management clients once included professional golfer Vijay Singh.

Before the scandal surfaced, Stanford credited his success in part to avoiding investments in subprime mortgages that snowballed into a global financial crisis.

Asked by CNBC television in September if it was fun being a billionaire, he smiled and replied: “Yes, yes, yes. I have to say it is fun being a billionaire. But it’s hard work.”

With dual U.S. and Antiguan-Barbudan citizenship, Stanford has homes sprinkled across the region — from Antigua to St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands to Miami. Those residences and other assets have been frozen by court order since February.

A generous patron of several sports, Stanford financed a $1 million-per-player Twenty20 tournament in November in which his “Stanford Superstars” side of West Indian cricketers became instantly wealthy when they beat England’s team at his Stanford Cricket Ground in Antigua.

Back in the United States, he stirred controversy by claiming family ties to Leland Stanford, who founded Stanford University in the 1890s. The university says there is no genealogical connection between the two and sued Stanford Group in October for infringing on its trademark. (Additional reporting by Pascal Fletcher in Miami and Chris Baltimore and Anna Driver in Houston; Editing by John O’Callaghan)

Maybe renaming Allen Stanford “Allen Stanfraud” will help avoiding confusion with the Stanford of Stanford University.

See also here.

Stanford faces years in jail over ‘$7.2bn pyramid fraud’: here.

This video from England (in English; here with a brief introduction and subtitles in Swedish) says about itself:

MacIntyre Undercover - Chelsea Headhunters [a football hooligan gang in London]

Chelsea Headhunters were infiltrated by investigative reporter Donal MacIntyre for this documentary screened on the BBC on November 9, 1999, in which MacIntyre posed as a wannabe-member of the Chelsea Headhunters. He even had a Chelsea tattoo applied to himself for authenticity. He confirmed the racist elements to the Headhunters and their links to Combat 18, including one top-ranking member who had been imprisoned on one occasion for possession of material related to the Ku Klux Klan. In 2000, Jason Marriner, a member of the Chelsea Headhunters was sentenced to six years in prison for his part in organising a fight with supporters of a rival team, based on evidence captured by Donal MacIntyre and his team. This programme led to arrests and several convictions.

From the British Broadcasting Corporation:

Thursday, 18 June 2009 16:09 UK

Combat 18 slogans daubed on plot

A republican plot in Miltown cemetery in west Belfast has been desecrated with Combat 18 slogans, according to Sinn Féin MLA Paul Maskey.

“Overnight, racist and sectarian slogans, along with Combat 18 graffiti, were daubed on the republican plot in the cemetery,” said Mr Maskey.

“A considerable amount of damage has been done to the graves.”

A PSNI spokeswoman said officers were not aware of the attack, but added they would follow up any reports made.

See also here.

Romania’s ambassador has held talks with senior ministers at Stormont over a series of racist attacks that have forced more than 100 Roma people to flee their homes: here.

Attacks on Romanians in Belfast: here. And here.

Anti-fascist and human rights campaigners are to stage a demonstration in London tomorrow to condemn the sickening race attacks in Belfast which have forced over 100 Romanian immigrants to flee their homes: here.

One hundred Romanian Gypsies who have been subjected to a campaign of racist abuse and intimidation in Northern Ireland are quitting the six counties to return home: here.

Homophobia and racism on rise in Northern Ireland, survey shows: here.

British Labour Party in Northern Ireland? See here.

Saturday, 16 May 2009.

Just before the train reaches Weesp, two hares in a meadow.

A bit further, a tufted duck in a pond.

Later, the plane flies across Gooimeer lake and the fields of Flevoland.

The weather is sunny.

Later, over Germany, half of the sky gets cloudy.

Over Poland, the whole sky gets cloudy.

This is a video from a rookery in Kazakhstan.

12:25: outside Warsaw airport, a big rookery in a bush. Hundreds of rooks‘ nests. Recent research claims that rooks are as intelligent as chimpanzees in tool-making; see also here.

Rooks Use Stones to Raise the Water Level to Reach a Floating Worm: here.

Below the trees, wood pigeons and magpies on the ground.

It is cloudy, but it does not rain.

Swifts flying around high rise buildings.

Legia Warsaw soccer club grafitti on a wall.

Dandelion flowers on lawns.

Jackdaws sitting on the tops of market stalls.

A kestrel.

It starts raining as the bus passes forests.

Barn swallows on wires.

Three white storks in a meadow.

We arrive in Bialowieza village, close to the famous national park of the same name. Stay tuned, as more entries on nature in Poland will appear on this blog.

Journalists of British daily The Guardian have made a list of protest songs. All of them in the English language.

I ‘ll reproduce some of that list on this blog. Not exactly in the same way as they did. Eg, they have options to listen to songs on Spotify, which is not available in all countries.

And I have added links. And grouped the songs according to themes. The theme of this entry is racism in North America.

(What Did I Do To Be So) Black And Blue, by Louis Armstrong, Live in Ghana.

Friend to the world he might have been, but Pops didn’t hide behind that smile. Listen to this 1929 performance of a Fats Waller number, on which he sings “I’m white inside but that don’t help my case,” and “My only sin is in my skin.” Little wonder that the protagonist of Ralph Ellison’s classic novel Invisible Man dreamt of listening to five versions of the song simultaneously. CLS

Alabama John Coltrane 1963.

The murder of four girls in the Ku Klux Klan’s bombing of the Sixteenth Street baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama, on 15 September, 1963, proved a turning point in the civil rights movement in America, and inspired Nina Simone’s Mississippi Goddam, Richard Farina’s Birmingham Sunday and this elegiac masterpiece. Coltrane apparently patterned his saxophone playing on Martin Luther King’s funeral speech, and Elvin Jones’ drumming rises to a crescendo that sounds like the surging tide of the struggle. CLS

Hurricane Bob Dylan 1975.

Co-written with theatre director and Rolling Thunder Revue collaborator Jacques Levy, this hit single and track from the 1976 Desire album tells the tale of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, a black boxer imprisoned for a triple murder that he and his supporters insisted he didn’t commit. Written in a richly cinematic style, the song highlighted a campaign that finally saw Carter released in 1988. Denzel Washington played Carter in Norman Jewison’s 1999 film. GM

Respect Aretha Franklin 1967.

When Otis Redding wrote it, he was asking for respect, and a little female succour. When Aretha Franklin sang it, she was demanding respect for an entire put-upon gender and, indirectly – thanks to the backdrop of the civil rights movement of the late 60s – an entire race. But there’s plenty of the naughty in the mix too, as Franklin’s sisters whoop it up on backing vocals and this polyvalent soul classic canters breathlessly to a close. KE

Strange Fruit Billie Holliday 1939.

The central metaphor of black lynch-mob victims hanging like fruit from blood-stained trees, with their “bulging eyes and twisted mouth” remains unforgettable and genuinely haunting. Adapted to music by Jewish academic Abel Meeropol from his own poem [see also here], Billie Holiday’s spellbinding original is run a close second by Nina Simone, whose 1965 version from her Pastel Blues album, recorded at the height of the civil rights struggle, displays a near-perfect mix of sorrow and anger. GT

The video below here is the Nina Simone version.

To Be Young, Gifted and Black Nina Simone 1970.

Composed by Simone - with lyricist Weldon Irvine - as a posthumous tribute to her friend, the black playwright Lorraine Hansberry, this is a heady hymn of affirmation, urging the world’s black youth population to view their ethnic heritage as a blessing rather than a curse: “There are a billion boys and girls/ Who are young, gifted and black/ And that’s a fact!” Later covered, somewhat bizarrely, by Elton John. GT

The Bourgeois Blues Leadbelly 1938.

Invited to Washington at the behest of Alan Lomax in order to contribute to Lomax’s project at the Library of Congress, Leadbelly and his wife were greeted with both condescension and racial discrimination by the city’s residents. This much-covered song, not least by Leadbelly himself, tells of that event with especial emphasis placed on the class of those he met, the word “bourgeois” being repeated 15 times in five verses. While eight other Leadbelly recordings now reside in Congress, this one does not. PMac

Now That The Buffalo’s Gone Buffy Sainte-Marie 1964.

Herself a Cree, Buffy Sainte-Marie has written a whole raft of superb songs about the plight of the First Nation and Native American peoples – but this painful yet poetic account of a history of broken treaties and promises ranks as the best. Sainte-Marie’s naturally tremulous voice and the simplicity of the melody add further poignancy to the shame loaded into the song and the plea for help and understanding she demands to right the wrongs. CI

Buffy Sainte Marie: The Hidden Story of Uranium on Indian Land: here.

We Shall Overcome Pete Seeger 1963.

Pioneering folkie Pete Seeger helped popularise We Shall Overcome – which had already evolved from an old slave chant into a Methodist hymn – as a civil rights anthem, belting it out in 1963 to a crowd of 300,000 during Martin Luther King’s March on Washington. The simple message of hope and endurance retains its power. When Bruce Springsteen recorded his 2006 album of protest songs made famous by Seeger, this was a shoe-in as the title track. GT

Long Walk to DC The Staple Singers 1968.

[Unfortunately, I could not find a video of this song]

Starting in gospel, culminating in soul via folk and protest songs, the Staple Singers were the civil rights movement made music. Long Walk to DC was a celebration of Martin Luther King’s 1963 March on Washington (five years after the event, but never mind) and their first record for Stax. Although the singing family hailed from Chicago, the guitar intro was pure Delta blues and the chugging rhythm exhibited the resolution and optimism that the group embodied so perfectly. SY

Slavery Days Burning Spear 1975.

Named for an African freedom fighter – Jomo Kenyatta – Burning Spear are roots reggae incarnate and Slavery Days is less a pop song than a Rasta military chant. There’s neither bridge nor chorus, just lead singer Winston Rodney detailing the suffering of the slaves, the other members answering him with a question: “Do you remember the days of slavery?” The uplifting brass section is there as reminder that it’s not an invitation to self-pity, but a call to action. SY