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Stop Killing Baboons in Mpumalanga

Stop the killing’ of baboons in the mountains of Mpumalanga, South Africa! At least 1,914 baboons had been ‘removed’ by a controversial ‘trap and shoot’ method by FSC Certified plantation companies during the past two years. Most of the affected troops were from the Sabie, Graskop and Blyde River areas in Mpumalanga province, South Africa. GeaSphere is demanding an immediate moratorium on the killing of baboons by FSC certified companies and the de-certification of plantation companies involved in this practise. Baboons are a integral part of our environment. They perform various vital functions, such as dispersing seed of indigenous plants they naturally eat. Very little data is known about baboon dynamics in our area, or the long term consequence of removing baboons in such large numbers. Baboons damage pine trees by removing patches of bark reducing the value of the timber and in some cases killing the trees – causing financial losses to the plantation industry. This pro

The Spanish Tree

Last year My friends and I adopted a tree in Hyde Park. It was a very, very big tree. I don't know what kind. Seven of us used to sit around it using the gaps between the roots as chairs. My whole social life revolved around this tree. It's not that crazy.There is a logic behind what we did. Most of us were Spanish speakers from the Spanish School in Portobello road. If you take the 52 to Victoria then Portobello leads to Notting Hill, then you go down one big road and you are in Kensington. There is a corner of Hyde Park in Kensington and our tree was on that corner next to the entrance. We were at that tree the whole year round. It didn't matter if it was raining or snowing. We were there. The coldest day I have experienced in my life I was at that tree. In fact, on that day, the park was closed. The police came and asked us what we were doing there? Everyone else was warm at home or in a shopping centre but we couldn't leave the tree. We would stay by the tre

Henri Sellier and Lisa Steinhardt in Suresnes

  ‘L'urbanisme social se doit d'organiser un meilleur aménagement de l'humanité, vers un niveau de lumière, de joie et de santé, un meilleur rendement économique car il y a urgence à défendre la race dans tous les domaines contre la certitude de dégénérescence et de destruction que les lamentables statistiques de la natalité, maladie, mort, laissent apparaître : 18 % de la perte du revenu national est due à la maladie’ Henri Sellier   Henri Sellier, from the web site of the French senate When Lisa came back to Suresnes and Richard was gone and war had broken out and she had her little Eve to look after and the worry of Else living with them.  For a while she did not know what to do. Her savings would soon run out and she would need to work. Else, meanwhile rushed around ineffectually, looking for a way out of the country. Now that war had broken out it was almost impossible to leave it. The borders were closing. The Spanish were interring refugees from France

Isidor Steinhardt a Jewish hate figure and Muslim white slavers in Leicester

 Isidor Steinhardt and his sons flanking him: Richard and Arthur Be careful when you listen to stories of Pakistani men grooming white girls in Leicester. Be very careful. There is history there. The history of the link between accusations of white slave trade and anti-semitism and the link between white slavery and poisonous orientalism. In Mein Kampf Hitler worked himself into a frenzy of anti-semitism and at the peak of this frenzy he refers to the way young non-Jewish women were prostituted by Jewish pimps. There is a dangerous history of confusing poverty and crime with the fomentation of racist hatred. Notice the arguments made by the British National Party that say Black men are more likely to be criminals. Now we are told men of Pakistani origin are pimps and abusers because they are Pakistani.   In a sense my Great Grandfather Isidor was also a victim of this old black ops technique. Your enemy is always a baby eater, isn't he? That's what the population is tol

There are no sharks in Sharks' Bay

  Picture one of us took of Sharks' Bay in 1983 We all piled into the Land cruiser and headed for Shark's Bay, about 15 kilometres outside the city of Mogadishu. Much nearer town my father, with very occasional help from me, had taken time to do up the UN beach club, to smear plaster lovingly over the crumbling pillars and, when all the plaster had dried, to paint the club a beachy beige. The UN club was a simple, small, rectangular, flat roofed Italian house with a veranda that looked out over the sea. (Later it became a nightclub and then the property of a warlord.) While drinking and watching the sun go down UN staff sitting on the veranda had witnessed a shark attack. A young boy in the shallows was grabbed at the calf and bled copiously into the sea. He was rushed away to hospital. I don't know if he survived. So swimming on Mogadisciu's town beaches was off limits. The Soviets, guests of Siad Barre, were to blame. with typically manic disregard

Romancing Lisa in Frankfurt and Paris

 The Frankfurt branch of Bernard Moteurs Richard was very charming and sociable, he always had been.  That's how he met Granny. He went to the theatre where Heini was acting. He went backstage and then invited the whole cast to a good restaurant in Frankfurt. Lisa in Frankfurt in the early 1930s Richard lived for four years based in Frankfurt until 1935 working for the German branch of Bernard Moteurs. Heini and Granny were inseparable twins. Though granny had been training and then working as a seamstress for 5 years since the age of 19, she was always out with her brother and his friends at the theatre. Because of her beauty, kindness and joi de vivre, she was very popular. In fact she was approached by a Hollywood agent, Harry Piel, also a prolific actor. Perhaps Harry was being serious, perhaps he was trying to seduce Lisa, but certainly Lisa dreamed a little of a career in Hollywood. She accompanied her brother to the restaurant often after the play finished and

Escaping the Nazis

Richard and Lisa's friends on their way to the USA and the UK, Mom in the centre, Else smiling on the right was murdered in Auschwitz in 1942 From 1936 to 1939 friends of Lisa and Richard flowed through their Paris apartment on their way to the the safety of the UK, the USA, Canada and further afield. Most of them were rather wretched, having suffered different degrees of persecution in Germany, Austria and the Balkans. Richard's older brother Arthur and his wife Flora left too. They went to Israel where Arthur continued to work as a journalist. Arthur and Flora did not leave only out of a sense of self preservation. Arthur's father had supported the Austro-Hungarian empire and the Monarchy; partly because the emperor had resisted anti-semitism and allowed ambitious, young, nominally Jewish boys like him to enter the Staat Gymnasia and assimilate; partly because he loved Vienna one of the great cultural capitals of Europe, partly because he felt he belonged. Arthu