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What, you may well ask, do 13 foot-tall New Zealand birds that have been extinct for 500 years and modern Wyoming trout species have in common? And what, you may also ask, since you’re in the asking mood, do snails have to do with any of it? Well, the answer is “quite a lot, really”. It’s a bit complicated, but bear with me.

In something like the year 1500 C. E. the Polynesian ancestors of the Maori peoples arrived in what is known today as New Zealand. They were a brand new species to the islands, with no previous place in the ecosystem. As a result the local prey species, most notably the enormous native birds called Moa, had no natural defenses against them. Moa were not only flightless, they were completely wingless. Their only natural predator on the island was a 30-pound eagle (also later hunted to extinction by the proto-Maori), so the weren’t that fast on their feet, since there’s not much point in running from an 80-MPH flying killing machine. Their only defense against ground-based predation was their great size, which humans have traditionally not given much of a damn about (island peoples can hunt whales in wooden canoes; over-grown chickens are hardly scary to them). The end result is that all of New Zealand’s giant flightless birds are currently on display at several fine natural history museums around the world.

But what’s that to do with snails?

Enter Potamopyrgus antipodarum, the New Zealand Mud Snail. These tiny, aquatic, freshwater mollusks are migrating out of New Zealand, not into it, but their impact on an ecosystem they had no previous place in could have similar repercussions for native species. Carried by us world-trotting humans, these critters made their North American debut in the 1980’s in the Snake River, and have been drifting west ever since. They are now present in Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park.

How do these diminutive invaders hop from river to river, lake to lake, establishing an almost unshakeable presence as they go? Humans again, I’m afraid. The New Zealand Mud Snail is prone to hitchhiking on boats and fishing gear. So a careless or messy angler on an extended fishing trip can spread the little devils far and wide.

Mud Snails are quite hardy enough to make the trip as well. They’re so small ( 6mm long, maximum, and sometimes as small as a grain of rice), and they so much resemble tiny flecks of mud, that they often go undetected. They can survive out of water for several days, and can live in many kinds of freshwater environments. They’re even resilient enough to handle low temperatures (anything above freezing) and can pass unharmed through the digestive tract of most fish. Moreover, they reproduce asexually, and are “livebreeders”, meaning they produce a number of perfectly formed little clones, so even one can spawn a colony.

New Zealand Mud Snail densities of more than million snails per square yard have been found in Yellowstone Park. With no natural predators to keep it in check there’s every possibility native snail species will be out-competed into extinction and native plant species overwhelmed. Such an unbalancing presence can decimate other species, such as trout, something that gives the Colorado Fish and Wildlife Department and dedicated Wyoming fishing enthusiasts reason for pause.

Efforts are being made to curb the New Zealand Mud Snail invasion. Let’s hope the trout have more luck than the Moa.

Looking for more information on Wyoming Rivers check out visitusa.com your outdoor adventure travel guide

The Civil War (1861-5) has spawned numerous myths and falsities.

The Republicans did not intend to abolish slavery - just to “contain” it, i.e., limit it to the 15 states where it had already existed. Most of the Democrats accepted this solution.

This led to a schism in the Democratic party. The “fire eaters” left it and established their own pro-secession political organization. Growing constituencies in the south - such as urban immigrants and mountain farmers - opposed slavery as a form of unfair competition. Less than one quarter of southern families owned slaves in 1861. Slave-based, mainly cotton raising, enterprises, were so profitable that slave prices almost doubled in the 1850s. This rendered slaves - as well as land - out of the reach of everyone but the wealthiest citizens.

Cotton represented three fifths of all United States exports in 1860. Southerners, dependent on industrial imports as they were, supported free trade. Northerners were vehement trade protectionists. The federal government derived most of its income from custom duties. Income tax and corporate profit tax were yet to be invented.

The states seceded one by one, following secession conventions and state-wide votes. The Confederacy (Confederate States of America) was born only later. Not all the constituents of the Confederacy seceded at once. Seven - the “core” - seceded between December 20, 1860 and February 1, 1861. They were: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas.

Another four - Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas - joined them only after the attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861. Two - Kentucky and Missouri - seceded but were controlled by the Union’s army throughout the war. Maryland and Delaware were slave states but did not secede.

President James Buchanan who preceded Abraham Lincoln, made clear that the federal government would not use force to prevent secession. Secession was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court only in 1869 (in Texas vs. White) - four years after the Civil War ended. New England almost seceded in 1812, during the Anglo-American conflict, in order to protect its trade with Britain.

The constitution of the Confederacy prohibited African slave trade (buying slaves from Africa), though it allowed interstate trade in slaves. The first Confederate capital was in Montgomery, Alabama - not in Richmond, Virginia. The term of office of the Confederate president - Jefferson Davis was the first elected - was six years, not four as was the case in the Union.

Fort Sumter was not the first attack of the Confederacy on the Union. It was preceded by attacks on 11 forts and military installations on Confederate territory.

Lincoln won only 40 percent of the popular vote in 1860. Hence the South’s fierce resistance to his abolitionist agenda. In 1864, the Republicans became so unpopular, they had to change their name to the Union Party. Lincoln’s vice-president, Johnson, actually was a Democrat and hailed from Tennessee, a seceding state.

He was the only senator from a seceded state to remain in the Senate.

Reconstruction started long before the war ended, in Union-occupied Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee. Slave tax was an important source of state revenue in the South (up to 60 percent in South Carolina). Emancipation led to near bankruptcy.

The Union states of Connecticut, Minnesota, and Wisconsin refused to pass constitutional amendments to confer suffrage on black males. The Union army consigned black labor gangs to work on the plantations of loyal Southerners and forcibly separated the black workers from their families.

Contrary to myth, nearly two thirds of black families were headed by both parents. Slave marriages were legally meaningless in the antebellum South, though. But nearly 90 percent of slave households remained intact till death or forced separation. The average age of childbirth for women was 20.

Segregation was initiated by blacks. The freedmen lobbied hard and long for separate black churches and educational facilities. Nor was lynching confined to blacks. For instance, a white mob lynched, in September 1862, forty four Union supporters in Gainesville, Texas. Similar events took place in Shelton Laurel, North Carolina. The Ku Klux Klan was the paramilitary arm of the Democratic party in the South, though never officially endorsed by it. It was used to “discipline” the workforce in the plantations - but also targeted Republicans.

The Democrats changed their name after the war to the Conservative Party. By 1877 they have regained power in all formerly Confederate states.

Sam Vaknin ( samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Global Politician, Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.

Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia.

Visit Sam’s Web site at samvak.tripod.com

After seizing power in a bloody CIA-backed coup, General Augusto Pinochet ruled Chile with a rod of iron for two decades, during which human rights violations became the norm of Chilean life.

Hailing from an upper-middle class background, Pinochet entered the military academy in Santiago at the age of 18, graduating three years later as a second lieutenant. By 1968 he had risen to the rank of brigadier general.

In 1970, Salvador Allende, a Marxist, became president of Chile with the backing of the Christian Democrats, and began restructuring Chilean society along socialist lines. In the process he expropriated the US-owned copper-mining companies, alienating the US government and foreign investors. He further annoyed Washington by establishing relations with Cuba and Communist China, which the United States did not recognise at that time. As a result, America imposed tough economic sanctions and the CIA spent millions of dollars destabilising the Allende regime, much of it going into Pinochet’s pockets.

By 1972, the Chilean economy had collapsed. With no foreign investment, production had come to a standstill. There were widespread strikes, inflation, food shortages and civil unrest. With the backing of armed forces, Pinochet staged a military coup on 11 September 1973. It was bloody even by Latin American standards. The navy seized the key port of Valparaiso, while the army surrounded the presidential palace in Santiago. Allende refused to step down. When the palace was overrun a few hours later, he was found dead. It appears that he shot himself rather than face inevitable torture and execution.

A junta took over and declared marital law. Those who violated the curfew were shot on sight. Pinochet was named president two days later. He broke off relations with Cuba - Nixon had staged his famous rapprochement with China by then - and moved against Allende’s supporters. Some 14 000 would be tried and executed or expelled from the country, while Pinochet claimed he was only trying to ‘restore institutional normality’ of Chile.

In June 1974 Pinochet assumed sole power, with the rest of the junta relegated to an advisory role. Under Pinochet’s tyrannical rule, it is estimated that 20 000 people were killed and torture was widespread.
While Pinochet continued to maintain tight control over the political opposition, he was rejected by a plebiscite in 1988. He eventually stepped down in 1990 after immunity from prosecution in Chile. He stayed on as army chief of staff. However, during a shopping trip to London in October 1998, he was arrested on a Spanish warrant charging him with murder. He was later accused of torture and human rights violations. For 16 months, he fought his extradition through the British courts, and then in January 2000, Home Secretary Jack Straw decided that he was too ill to stand trial and sent him back to Chile.

More info about Augusto Pinochet

Written by Vassil Dimitroff

The Weimar Republic was established in February 1919 in defeated Germany and lasted until March 1933, when it was replaced with Hitler’s Third Reich. The Constitution of the Weimar Republic was adopted in August 1919. It created a bicameral house of representatives: the Reichstag, a national assembly, and the Reichsrat, comprised of the representative of the various Lander (states).
The Reichsrat could reject laws passed by the Reichstag. The Lander sported their own state parliaments, local police forces, and judiciary. During states of emergency, Lander assemblies and governments were suspended and they were ruled directly from the center.

Elections were supposed to be held every 4 years and anyone over 20 years of age could vote. A system of proportional representation gave voice and presence in the Reichstag to even the smallest political parties. One tenth of the population could force a referendum on draft legislation rejected by the Reichstag.

The President, elected by universal suffrage, was the head of state and served a term in office of seven years. He appointed and dismissed the Chancellor (prime minister) and commanded the Republic’s much-reduced armed forces. He had the right to veto laws passed by the Reichstag, dissolve it and call early elections and referenda. He could also rule by decree, having declared a state of emergency.

The Weimar Constitution guaranteed the right to local self-government, a “dignified existence”, economic and religious freedoms, freedoms of speech, press, and assembly, and the right to form trade unions.

The Weimar Constitution was never abrogated or replaced. it remained in force until 1949 - throughout the 12 years of the Third Reich.

But on February 28, 1933 - a day after the Reichstag building was set on fire, allegedly as part of a “Communist plot” - Hitler submitted to von Hindenburg, the ailing and octogenarian German president, an emergency decree titled “For the Protection of People and State; to guard against Communist acts of violence endangering the state”.

Article 1 of the decree suspended all rights guaranteed by the Weimar Constitution. It read:

“Thus, restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press, on the right of association and assembly, and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic, and telephonic communications, and warrants for house-searches, orders for confiscations, as well as restrictions on property rights are permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.”

Article 2 of the decree allowed the Reich government to take over the power of the Lander governments in order to restore security and order.

The Weimar Constitution was a dead letter.

The 13,000 word Constitution, adopted in 1949, by West Germany, was patterned after its Weimar predecessor but contained safeguards against its own suspension by a willful dictator and against the declaration of aggressive war. The Land of Bavaria - an important constituent of West Germany - refused to ratify it because it deemed it too “centralistic” (not enough power was granted to the Lander).

The first elections under this revamped document took place in August 14, 1949.

Sam Vaknin ( samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Global Politician, Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.

Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia.

Visit Sam’s Web site at samvak.tripod.com

Charles Augustus Lindbergh was the first person to cross the Atlantic in a nonstop flight. This made him an instant celebrity. When, in 1932, his 19-months old son was kidnapped and murdered, the nation was appalled.

Finally, a German carpenter, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, was apprehended and, following a much-publicized trial, executed.

The police chief who arrested Bruno Richard Hauptmann was the father of Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of the American forces in the Gulf War in 1991.

The affair had many repercussions, both personal and national.

The Lindberghs, revolted by the media’s unrelenting prying, moved to live in Europe in 1935. Lindbergh became a fan of Adolf Hitler and in 1938 received from him a decoration for having praised the German Luftwaffe as superior to all other air forces. In 1939, upon his return to the USA, Lindbergh embarked on a cross-country tour of antiwar and pro-Nazi speeches. Consequently, he was ousted from the air corps reserve and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.

Still, when war broke out, Lindbergh served as a civilian consultant to aircraft manufacturers. Later, the US Army sent him on clandestine missions to the Pacific and Europe. But he never regained his stature in the eyes of the American public.

He won the Pulitzer prize in 1953 for his tome, The Spirit of Saint Louis and died in 1974 in Hawaii.

The kidnapping and gruesome murder of his son prompted lawmakers to pass the Lindbergh Act in 1932. The Encarta: “The statute made it a federal crime, punishable by life imprisonment, to kidnap a person and transport that person to another state. This law was amended in 1934 making conspiracy to commit a kidnapping also a federal crime. In 1968 the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated that section of the Lindbergh Act that gave the jury the power to recommend the death penalty for kidnapping.”

Sam Vaknin ( samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Global Politician, Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.

Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia.

Visit Sam’s Web site at samvak.tripod.com

The Flag of Mexico is rich with historic symbolism. The tricolors of green, white and red with the coat-of-arms centered in the white middle stripe were adopted by Mexico following their independence from Spain during the War of Independence in 1821.

There have been changes to the flag during history but the coat of arms has always featured a majestic eagle holding a serpent on top of a cactus. The current coat of arms was designed in 1968 by Helguera. Legend says that the Aztecs, then a nomadic tribe wandering throughout Mexico, were waiting for a sign from the gods telling them were to build their capital city. Their god, Huitzilopochtli told them to search until they found a place where they saw an eagle, devouring a serpent while perched on a prickly pear tree, growing out of a rock submerged in a lake. After wandering for two hundred years, they saw this mythical eagle on a small island in Lake Texcoco and built their capital, Tenochtitlan, where the main plaza in Mexico City is now located.

Over the years the three colors of green, white and red on the flag have remained the same but the meaning of the colors has changed. The green stripe represents Independence from Spain or can signify Hope. The white stripe represents purity of the Catholic faith or Unity. The red stripe represents Heroes blood or Religion.

When the flag of Mexico is paraded in front of a crowd, bystanders raise their right arm, place their hand on their chest parallel to the heart. The hand is flat with the palm facing the ground. This salute is known as the El Saludo Civil de la Bandera Nacional. On February 24 each year a national celebration, Dia de la Bandera, Flag Day is held. This commemorates this day in 1821, when all the factions fighting in the Mexican War of Independence joined together to form the Army of Three Guarantees.

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September 11, 2001 was not the first time an airplane crashed into a skyscraper. Actually, such tragedies are more common than is thought.

On July 28, 1945, for instance, a U.S. Army B-25 bomber traveling at 200 miles (c. 370 kilometers) per hour in heavy fog crashed into the Empire State Building in New York City. Luckily it was a Saturday, though dozens were injured and 14 killed. People thought the city was being bombed:

Doris Pope, Boynton Beach, Fla. told The Palm Beach Post in 1999:

“We heard this terrible noise, and the building started to shake. … As we looked out our third-floor window, we saw debris fall on to the street. We immediately thought New York was being bombed.”

Another eyewitness, Helen J. Hurwitt, from Greenacres, Fla., told the Post:

“I heard a horrendous noise. My husband and I were in a building directly opposite the Empire State Building. … Large plate-glass windows looked out onto 34th Street. The floor we were on was pretty high. At some point, we heard a horrendous noise and rushed to the windows. … We were horrified to see a B-25 half in and half out of the Empire State Building.”

“The building shuddered, realigned itself, and settled. Probably instantly, although several witnesses said there seemed to be a moment’s interval, came the explosion, and the top of the fog-shrouded Empire State Building was briefly seen in a bright orange glow. High-octane airplane fuel spewed out of the ruptured tanks and sprayed the building…The heat was so intense that partition frames within offices disappeared, and the shattered glass from windows and lamp fixtures melted and fused into stalactites….One engine, part of the fuselage, and a landing gear tore through the internal office walls, through two fire walls and across a stairway, through another office wall and out of the south wall of the building, with the parts coming to a fiery rest at 10 West Thirty-Third Street in the penthouse studio/apartment of sculptor Henry Hering, who was off playing golf in Scarsdale at the time”

John Tauranac, The Making of a Landmark, New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1997, (originally printed in hardcover by Scribner, 1995)

One of the massive aircraft’s engine crossed the entire skyscraper, from north wall to south wall, and landed on the roof of another building nearby. The damage was estimated at $1 million (that’s 1945 dollars). It took 3 months to repair the 78th and 79th floors.

But the September atrocities provoked a wave of copycats and renewed awareness of such risks.

On April 18, 2002 a small airplane ran into the 26th floor of Milan’s tallest building, the Pirelli Tower. Three people were killed, dozens injured and the building was severely damaged.

On January 5, 2002, a 15-year old deliberately crashed a small, single engine, craft into the 28th floor of the Bank of America Plaza in Tampa, Florida. The pilot dies. There were no other casualties.

At the beginning of May 2002, an Indian air force jet hit crashed into a bank building in northwestern India. Eight died in the ensuing fire.

Sam Vaknin ( samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Global Politician, Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.

Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia.

Visit Sam’s Web site at samvak.tripod.com