Philip Philtrum

US Influence in Latin America Grows: Nazi-tied, Pro-Israel, Anti-China Candidate Wins Chile Election 38 minutes | The winner of Chile's presidential election, José Antonio Kast, is the son of a German Nazi official. He is a US-backed far-right extremist who loves Donald Trump, Israel, and fascist for...

www.filmsforaction.org/watch/us-inf...

TRUMP [after spending 5 minutes with Zohran]: surplus value, it’s a very wonderful thing, very wonderful, and they’re stealing it. Can you believe that?

We’re going to be looking very strongly at the bourgeoisie, what they’re up to

We had a Baltimore oriole a couple of years ago at an orange like this. I live in hopes. --------- 25N32-337-1b

It was warm enough in the sun this morning that the neighbourhood house flies were woken up and called to service. The orange is there in hopes of drawing in some fruit-eating birds. None has been seen yet this year but my fingers are crossed. Meantime, I am amused by the Musca.

#flies #Insects

The UN Embraces Colonialism: Unpacking the Security Council’s mandate for the U.S. colonial administration of Gaza The Security Council’s backing of the Trump plan for Gaza ignores international law, punishes the Palestinians, and rewards those responsible for genocide.

What kind of half- or full-Nelson has Trump pulled on Russia and China, neither of whom exercised their perfectly legal right to veto his Evil Plan for Gaza this week?

mondoweiss.net/2025/11/the-...

After about a half-hour the chickadees and goldfinches had been out a while and, finally, our nuthatch ventured out. He sat in this bush by the back deck for a few minutes before he went to the feeder.

What I think was a merlin came darting around our yard this morning and all the smaller birds went to ground. The merlin stayed less than five seconds and was gone, looking for better pickings. Our place stayed quiet for a while and slowly the little birds re-appeared.

#Birds #BirdPhotography

We've had a lot of dirty, dark, wet weather the past week or two. And this morning was one of those seven-or-eight-stops-down-from-sunny days. The kind that make you turn on all the lights in the house even at eleven a.m. Dark dark. So when, mid-afternoon, the sun burst out and made a brilliant double rainbow across the city, everyone was taken by it. Rapt. I was driving and when we stopped at a traffic light I took a couple of grab shots. I was lucky; it was gone in five minutes. But as we drove home from shopping we saw at least a dozen people pointing, staring, or taking pictures of it. When we got home, I put a picture on my social media page. In a few minutes I saw about fifty more pictures. All hands saying it was the best rainbow they'd ever seen. Small things make us all happier. ---------------- 25N27-341-1a

Everyone noticed. . .

It's the law, luh. ------------------- 25N26-265aa

Today's special guest in the apple tree, a Purple finch, though not a purple one since the Fringilline Sumptuary Law allows only the adult males to wear the purple.

#Birds #BirdPhotography #PurpleFinch

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There's not much of a room, but I think the nuthatch likes the board.

#Birds #BirdPhotography #BirdsEating

In our backyard, downtown St. John's, Newfoundland. ------------------ 25N19-194a

Sunny afternoon. Goldfinch at the beach.

#Birds #BirdPhotography #AmericanGoldfinch

So, here: a picture of one of our Tom-tits. Our special Tom-tits. [If you're so inclined, you may now start singing your favourite song from The Mikado, but I've never heard one of ours singing for seeming lack of intellect nor apparent wormic indigestion.]

The lovely Chickadee, the Tom-tit as it used to be known here in Newfoundland (being a close relative to the European tits), gets fairly short shrift from me since I see and hear the neighbourhood ones every day. "Nutten special 'bout the Tom-tits. . . ."

#Birds #BirdPhotography #Names #Words

Crows. Peanuts.

#Birds! #BirdsEating

Downtown St. John's, Newfoundland, 10/11/25.

Our new friend, a Red-breasted nuthatch that showed up yesterday, is settling in to our neighbourhood. He was back and forth to the feeder today for a couple of hours, mixing well with the local chickadees.

#Birds #BirdPhotography #BirdFeeding #BirdFeeder

Red-breasted nuthatch, probably male, in St. John's, Newfoundland. ------------- 25N8-006aa

I had not seen a nuthatch in six months in our yard. But a couple of days ago a friend who lives a km up the street told me she'd seen one in her yard that day. I kept an eye out and this morning (9/11/25) this fellow came around.

#Birds #BirdPhotography

The Empire's Dogs Are Barking at Venezuela Washington is reviving the ‘War on Drugs’ to attempt to overthrow the Bolivarian Revolution, threatening everything from military force to the assassination of government leaders.

What exactly are the options for the Caribbean pirates of Washington? Here are five possibilities; no doubt the pirates have one or two more. . .
thetricontinental.org/red-alert-20...

#venezuela #cuba

Sadly they are both dead. Harold's wife, Corky (Cordelia, but everyone even her children knew her as Corky) just died a couple of weeks ago in NS. That's where she and Harold moved in the early 1980s. They have left lots of family around and about though.

They thought seeds were blowing out from the shipments of Cannabis indica being used for rope products and they were growing freely there. But I think none ever survived a winter.

Harold Horwood and his poet brother Charlie Horwood were children in the area around the old "Ropewalk" in St. John's in the 1930s and early '40s. When I knew them in the late 1960s and 1970s, they would talk about plants they would find growing wild around the Ropewalk.

So true. Sometimes the resin smells and sometimes the leaves. Very aromatic either way.

For a half-dozen years, Canada has very sensibly allowed its citizens to grow cannabis. Some growers are failures (like me). But others are excellent husbanders of weed seeds.

Here is part of a friend's crop this year. I don't partake but I love the smell of it, and this sure smelt good.

#weed

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Moon yesterday afternoon as the sun set nearly opposite it.

#moon #moonrise #MoonriseOverBirches

--------------------- 25O49-553-1

The flicker was hunting for peanuts hidden by the blue jays in the pot my forty-year-old pet pine grows in. The sun was shining directly on the glass of the window I was stealing views through, so there was pretty substantial flare.

#Birds #NorthernFlicker #SheBird

Three trick-or-treaters at my door; one of their adults can be seen behind the smallest of the three. ------------------- 25O53-307dsta

The first arrivals, candy-beggars at Hallowe'en 2025.

#Hallowe'en #Vampires #Halloween

Lovely picture. What kind of bird is this?

Two crows overhead in a European white poplar. One crow is picking at the other's neck. The picker is leaned right into the pickee who is leaned well back. --------- 25O46-419aa

Twa corbies. Preening. Or conspiring.

#Birds #Crows #AmericanCrows

I was puzzling over how to produce pictures like so many people post to web sites these days -- super bright pictures of landscapes, even of night skies. They are all the rage. I suspect people use ready-made special effects inside their cameras (or telephones). I don't like those ready-mades myself, so I thought I'd try to do something a little simpler for me, and more controlled. I took this picture a couple of weeks ago from our deck, looking up at the WNW sky. Although it was a thirty-second exposure, it was still under-exposed, and thus flat and noisy. I tried mucking around with it, but without ready-made effects. Instead I did the old-fashioned darkroom stuff, mostly just burning and dodging. However, at the end, the noisy bits had clearly had a mind of their own through my processing and they needed much selective desaturation, which I judiciously applied. When I took the picture, it was close to pitch dark out with some light leaking out a window, and from some solar lights, all just out of the frame. The three lines in the sky, two long in one direction and one short in another, are satellites moving through the scene. The picture is pretty shaky (a deck moves a lot in thirty seconds), but it's a not-bad facsimile of at least some special effects residing in modern cameras. ------------------- [25O25-160 -1bb]

Night sky from our back door a week or two ago. Tarted up.

#NightSky #SkyPhotography #stars #satellites #FallColours #AutumnSky

Listen. I don't understand bullying and violence in the *human* world. I have even *less* understanding of the non-human social worlds. Like here, today: The red ants were all frenzied wandering around the stones that make up the steps to our backyard. A few of the wingèd black ants were landing like paratroopers among them. The red ants, if they were close by, would turn on them, but the wingèd black ants would consistently get the better of them. A few red ants would approach the fight, maybe thinking they should help out, and the red ant under the black one might get away as a result. Over and over. Just weird. They were all tiny, like 6 or 7 mm long, and my camera wasn't doing a good job of locking onto their focus. But it was enough to ponder, anthropomorphically, what seemed like gratuitous violence. ____________________________ [Grey stone surface with thin focus band across the frame. A black ant with wings is on top of a red ant and seems to be winning a punch-'em-up fight. A second red ant is off to the right and more or less out of focus.]

My anthropomorphistic pondering of seemingly gratuitous violence among ants.

See the "Alt Text."

Economic "rights" these days are much more narrowly defined as the rights of people holding capital to do with the capital what they will.

Thus there is no such thing as economic democracy as all planning and production is done for private interests, the interests of the rich.

Grrrr.

The grasses are all flowering or even going to seed now and the European skippers, who lay their eggs on them, are all very well pleased. Along the no-longer-a-railway track by the river walking distance from our house today, there were plenty of them about, dining on all the other flowers that are out. I think this is some kind of ragwort, one of the mid- and late-summer yellow flowers I used to just group together as goldenrod. (Goldenrod it ain't.) And the skippers are thick into them.

All along the no-longer-a-railway-track by the river four or five minutes' walk from our house today, there were plenty of European skippers, egging on grasses and dining on all the other flowers that are out.

We stopt mowing the grassy verge between our driveway and the next-door neighbour's driveway a few years ago (when it became apparent we owned the entire verge). It is only two metres wide and maybe five metres long, but it has an abundance of wild and feral plants; today's best is St.John's wort.