by The Walrus shared with thanks

By tracking amphibian songs, citizen scientists are helping us understand what’s happening to our environment by Caitlin Stall-Paquet
Photography by Jeremie Stall-Paquet Updated 16:32, Sep. 17, 2020 | Published 15:19, Sep. 16, 2020

It’s an hour after sunset, one night in early April, and I’m standing on the side of a dirt road in my hometown of Frelighsburg, Quebec, with my hands cupped around my ears. I’m listening for the calls of anurans—amphibians without a tail, so frogs and toads. I am here, more specifically, to hear the croaks of wood frogs, which are one of the first species to peek their little brown heads out after a long winter of hibernation.

🎧 TURN ON YOUR SOUND TO HEAR THE FROG SONGS: 🎧

Jeremie Stall-Paquet Photographer / Videographer instagram.com/jeremiestall | https://vimeo.com/jeremiestall

This isn’t just recreational listening, mind you—this is also for science. I am a volunteer observer, one of several who are gathering data about dwindling amphibian populations in this region.

For the parcours d’écoute (“listening pathways”) project I am on, participants each choose a quiet eight-kilometre stretch of road and go out listening along it, noting the frog and toad species they hear and the volume of their calls, returning to record these observations in the same spots once more, later in the season, ideally year after year.

It’s called the Amphibian Population Monitoring Program, a long-term citizen-research project created in the 1990s by the Saint Lawrence Valley Natural History Society—part of a provincial-government push that came about when the International Union for Conservation of Nature highlighted worldwide declines of amphibian populations.

Continue reading “What Frogs Can Teach Us about the State of the World”

Posted on September 18, 2020 by enough14 —Originally published by Red & Black Notes. Written by Percy Hill.

Image above: A tram in CNT colours, Barcelona, 1936. In an anarchist system the trams ran on time without bosses.

Political economy is the study of production and distribution of the material means necessary for society to function [1].

Anarchist communism specifically advocates for a stateless, classless society featuring democratic control of the means of production, where goods are distributed by the principle “from each according to ability to each according to need” [2].

The key organisational structures are community controlled industries and communes with decentralised planning of production and distribution. Furthermore, when larger scale coordination is required these organisations form federations. Federations are controlled from below with democratically elected, recallable delegates. 

Continue reading “Anarchist Communist Political Economy and the Spanish Revolution”

Pompeo threatens to light the fuse in Persian Gulf

by M. K. Bhadrakumar at The Iranian shared with thanks

The US Fifth Fleet announced on September 18 that a Carrier Strike Group comprising USS Nimitz passed through the Strait of Hormuz with the guided-missile cruisers USS Princeton and USS Philippine Sea and guided-missile destroyer USS Sterett. After a gap of some ten months, a US aircraft carrier is being deployed to the Persian Gulf.

This news will fuel speculation that a military flare-up involving Iran is in the making. In an article on September 16, Trita Parsi, the well-known expert on Iran who heads the Washington-based think tank Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, has written that a “first direct clash (with Iran) may take place as early as this coming Monday (September 21).”

In Parsi’s estimation, if President Donald Trump’s campaign for the US presidential election in November fails to make headway, he might resort to some desperate gimmicks that gives him mileage in the news cycle and help whip up jingoism among the gullible American public who would rally behind their commander-in-chief and, therefore, Trump’s Plan B might well be to engineer a military flare-up in some form involving Iran in the few weeks remaining between now and the November 3 election in the US. 

Trump, Pompeo and Netanyahu trying to murder these people for profit

Continue reading “Pompeo threatens Iran war to boost Trump.. Nimitz ..GO HOME, Leave Iran Alone!”

Incredibly the Paraguayan President Mário Abdo Benítez praised the killers of the evil terrorist girls when visiting the site of the murder, posing with a gun by the corpses of the 11 and 12 year olds, dressed up in oversize uniforms

By Ed Dalton https://tribuneofthepeople.news/

El presidente paraguayo, Mario Abdo Benítez, durante un operativo contra la guerrilla del EPP.

Marria Carmen Villalba, 11, and Lillian Mariana Villalba, 12, were killed at a birthday celebration in Yby Yaú, Paraguay by a joint task force of the Paraguayan Army and State Police in an attack against the Paraguayan People’s Army (EPP) on September 3. One of the children was the daughter of a lawyer who had defended accused EPP guerrillas in the past.

The joint task force was formed to fight the EPP, who has been waging an armed struggle against the state from its base among the indigenous people since 2008.

According to the Center for Peoples Solidarity Brazil (Cebraspo), the Army ordered the girls be buried in a secret grave in an attempt to conceal the evidence, which also serves the purpose of preventing the local people from creating memorials for the girls and against the state.

Their killers also staged photos of the girls’ bodies dressed in military uniforms that were distributed to the press.

The murder of the two young girls was at first proclaimed a “great success” by the joint task force of the old Paraguayan state. Paraguayan President Mário Abdo Benítez praised the work of the team when visiting the site of the murder, posing with a gun before his government attempted to lie about the girls’ age, claiming they were 18 and 19.

Relatives of the young girls have demanded the state return their bodies so that funerals can be held.

Continue reading “State Murders Two Children, Claims they were Terrorists Guerillas Retaliate .. English/Spanish”

By La Coperacha

Five mega mining concessions in process total 140 thousand hectares.

by La Coperacha
Mexico City // August 20, 2020

One of the main green lungs of Mexico, the Chimalapas jungle, located in the center of the Isthmus of Oaxaca, also considered one of the 10 biodiverse forests on the planet, is threatened by mining.

This habitat with several endangered species has an area of ​​595 thousand hectares, settled in the indigenous municipalities of Santa María Chimalapas and San Miguel Chimalapas, it has two mining concessions for the exploitation of gold, silver and copper totaling about 7 thousand hectares .

But the greatest danger for the community members and inhabitants of the region are four mega concessions that are pending before the Ministry of Economy despite the fact that the current federal government announced that they would not be delivered in this six-year term. The sum of these concessions is 104 thousand hectares, when San Miguel Chimalapas has only 134 thousand hectares. of communal lands.

If the concessions are materialized, the impact and contamination would be lethal for the Zoque territory, for water and for biodiversity, said Josefa Sánchez Contreras, defender of the territory and a native of San Miguel Chimalapas.

Continue reading “The entire territory of Chimalapas at risk from mining projects”

Home / Spain / #Madrid: First attempt to evict the #AteneoLibertario in #Vallekas stopped. The struggle continues Posted on September 19, 2020 by enough14 —

Madrid. On September 16, it was again made clear that solidarity and direct action are the best weapon we have as a means of defense against the state and repression.

About 150 people from Vallekas and other neighborhoods of the city gathered at the door of the Ateneo Libertario de Vallekas to prevent the eviction of the space.

This is not just the eviction of a space, it is the defense of squatting as a tool of struggle in the social war, as a tool to create with our own hands, outside of parties and institutions, spaces of struggle, meeting and learning.

Originally published by A Las Barricadas. Translated by Squat Net..

Continue reading “#Madrid: Attempt to evict the #AteneoLibertario in #Vallekas stopped. struggle continues .. Eng/Esp”