Put on trial for holding rainbow flags representing the LGBTI+ community, 12 students of Boğaziçi University appeared before the judge. The court board has partly lifted the judicial control measures, ruling that international travel bans shall remain in effect.
Dilek Şen İstanbul – BIA News Desk 03 June 2021, via bianet.org shared with thanks
Taken into custody in front of the North Campus of Boğaziçi University in İstanbul on March 25 on the grounds that they were holding rainbow flags representing the LGBTI+ community and put on trial shortly afterwards, the students had their first hearing today (June 3).
Posted on from thespectrum.com Ted WilliamsWriters on the Range View Comments shared with thanks. illustrations added
Would you like to earn money and prizes by killing coyotes, foxes, cougars, bobcats, wolves, raccoons, squirrels, crows, rattlesnakes, rabbits, prairie dogs, woodchucks or skunks?
If so, you can enter any of the thousands of wildlife-killing contests permitted and sometimes promoted by 44 state game and fish agencies. Such contests are legal in all Western states save California, Washington, Arizona and Colorado.
These events have names like “Song Dog Smackdown,” “Good Ol Boy’s Fall Predator Tournament” and “Predator Palooza.”
Names of competing teams are no less evocative. Placing high in a Lone Star Predator Calling Classic were “Beer Belly Varmint Hunters” and “Team Anthrax.”
Standard equipment includes reclining chairs, electronic predator calls, tripods and other gun rests, spotting scopes, spotlights, night-vision goggles, other thermal-imaging equipment and high-capacity assault rifles equipped with telescopic sights.
Prizes include cash — $50,000 if you win the West Texas Big Bobcat Contest — and such paraphernalia as camo clothing and AK-47s.
Many contests have children’s divisions. Sponsors include gun companies, sporting-goods stores, fire departments, 4-H clubs and chambers of commerce.
Body counts are impressive. One of the 717 teams in last year’s Big Bobcat Contest turned in 94 foxes. Carcasses are piled, photographed and invariably discarded.
“Event coordinators are being hassled,” lament directors of a killing-contest support group called Coyote Contest. “Help us promote those who still understand and value the services that predator hunters provide!” Commentators on the group’s website explain these “services”: “Save a fawn; kill a coyote,” “Wanted dead or alive for the crimes of stealing fawns, turkeys, & livestock,” “Saving livestock one bullet at a time!”
It doesn’t work this way. Predators do kill game and livestock, but no game species in the United States is suppressed by predation, and overpopulated species like elk and deer lack the predators needed to maintain their health and that of native ecosystems.
He found that where coyotes aren’t persecuted, average litter size at birth is five or six, but because of competition for prey an average of one to two pups survive their first year. When coyotes are shot, trapped or poisoned, pup survival increases because competition is reduced.
So coyote “control” results in more, not fewer, coyotes.
What’s more, Crabtree has found that indiscriminate killing of predators increases livestock loss. Because coyote “control” (which, again, doesn’t approach 70 percent) reduces the number of adults able to feed young, packs tend to abandon their normal small-mammal diet mammal diet and turn instead to larger prey, like livestock.
Carter Niemeyer, a retired predator-control agent, tells the story of the rancher who phoned him after one aerial operation. “Carter,” declared the rancher, “do coyotes revenge kill? We haven’t had trouble with coyotes all winter. We saw your helicopter the other morning and heard lots of shooting. Now we’ve got coyotes killing sheep. What the hell’s going on?”
Here’s the explanation: Random shooting of predators creates chaos by removing “desirables.” Other predators fill the void including “undesirables” that do kill livestock
The public wearies of wildlife-killing contests. Three years ago they were legal in every state save California. Now they’re also banned in Washington, Arizona, Colorado, Massachusetts and Maryland. New Mexico and Vermont have banned coyote-killing contests.
Competing to kill wildlife outrages the fair-chase hunting community. “We don’t like anything that smacks of commercialization with money or prizes,” remarks Eric Nuse, a hunter educator who serves on the boards of Orion —The Hunters’ Institute and the New England Chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. “Anything that doesn’t honor the animals grates on us.”
Wildlife-killing contests can erode “the public’s view of ethical hunting,” reports the Wildlife Society, comprised of 11,000 biologists and managers.
No trained wildlife professional believes that killing contests accomplish anything worthwhile. This from the Pennsylvania Game Commission: “The agency (has) finally accepted the reality that predator control does not work.”
Yet the Commission still sanctions 27 major wildlife-killing contests that attract thousands of participants.
Why do 44 state game and fish agencies continue to allow these contests? Money. Employees are fed and clothed largely by hunting-license revenue; and wildlife-killing contestants must buy hunting licenses even though they’re not “hunters.”
More accurately, people who compete to kill wildlife are described by their critics as “assassins.”
Arms dealers inside the Brisbane Convention Centre clapped and cheered Queensland police as they arrested peace activists trying to stop more arms deals between Australia, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Protests continue today at the Land Forces Expo in South Brisbane (Meanjin). These people should be outlawed from Brisbane and their dirty deals banned. Watch the video below as the Queensland Government throws its police force behind the arms dealers.
Australian government supports arms deals
Documents released under Freedom of Information reveal Australia approved 103 military export permits to UAE and Saudi during the Yemen war – and denied just three permit applications. Michelle Fahy investigates Australia’s escalating export trade in weapons with the Saudi dictatorship, in defiance of its international commitments.
The Defence Department allowed local weapons-making companies to export to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, two countries behind the disastrous Yemen war, even as the UN was…
The decision to retain a low-yield warhead that was outfitted on submarine-launched ballistic missiles in 2019, and to initiate research into a new sea-launched cruise missile, has sparked an outcry. Politico, By LARA SELIGMAN, BRYAN BENDER and CONNOR O’BRIEN, 06/02/2021
President Joe Biden ran on a platform opposing new nuclear weapons, but his first defense budget backs two controversial new projects put in motion by President Donald Trump and also doubles down on the wholesale upgrade of all three legs of the arsenal.
The decision to retain a low-yield warhead that was outfitted on submarine-launched ballistic missiles in 2019, and to initiate research into a new sea-launched cruise missile, has sparked an outcry from arms control advocates and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, which is vowing a fight to reverse the momentum.
While thousands take to the streets in solidarity with the Palestinian people, and even more in the streets commemorating the 1-year anniversary of the brutal killing of George Floyd, it looks like it’s going to be a long, hot summer again this year.
There is still a call to #DropTheCharges against all Black Lives Matter protesters and others who have been arrested during recent conflicts with the police, so be sure to check out this toolkit and offer support if you can.
As you switch your Certain Days calendar from May to June we hope you enjoy the vibrant and timely art by Damon Locks, a Chicago-based visual artist, educator, vocalist/musician who works with the Prisons and Neighborhood Arts Project at Stateville Correctional Center.
The essay for the month—“What Surviving Prison During the AIDS Epidemic Taught Me About Coronavirus”— is written by Richard Rivera, a formerly incarcerated activist who was released in 2019.
In May comrade John Paul Wootton celebrated his 30th birthday wrongfully incarcerated in Maghaberry Gaol, North Ireland.
John Paul Wootton with his Nephew
At a time when he should have been celebrating such an occasion with his family, comrades and loved ones, John Paul instead mark yet another birthday, wrongfully imprisoned with Brendan McConville who form part of the Miscarriage of Justice case known the world over as the Craigavon Two.
Detailed proofs here of ongoing war crimes and expulsion of the 95% Kurdish Afrin, by Turkish troops. Carried out by their far right sexist Jihadist SNA militia gangs, with Russian backing. Before the invasion Afrin was a peaceful rural haven and part of Rojava, the ongoing horizontally organised multi-ethnic feminist revolution in the AANES area of Nth Syria. Most of the population now survive in Shaaba IDP camps in a small blockaded enclave. Estimated only 25% of original Afrin population remain.
Afrin: Seizing Real Estate Property After Operation Olive Branch and Operation Peace Spring
Measures must be taken by victims to restore their rights; notably preserving ownership documents
On 20 January 2018, the Turkish Army and supporting forces affiliated with the Syrian National Army (SNA), operating under the Syrian Interim Government of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, launched the Operation Olive Branch offensive against Syria’s Kurdish-majority region of Afrin.
