Where's The Modern Day Keith Anderson To Deal With This Sort Of Thing?

Terrified villagers have been forced to sleep on rooftops or abandon their makeshift homes over fears a rampaging elephant which has killed 22 people will return. The young male, which has one tusk, is still at large in the West Singhbhum district of Jharkhand, around 730 miles east of the Indian capital Delhi. The elephant – thought to be in a mating phase known as musth, a period of increased sexual libido and aggression which can last for up to 20 days – started its killing spree on January 1.

But unluckily for these Indians, there's no longer any capable Scottish Indian ex-Army officer able and willing to sort it out. These are more enlightened times. 

Indian authorities have deployed at least 80 forest officers to find the elephant and tranquilise it.

And then what? Relocate it? A huge undertaking in a Third World country with the typical transport problems they always have. 

The rampage comes as deadly human-elephant conflict is on the rise in India, attributed to rising deforestation, food and water scarcity and increased residential encroachment in areas that were once elephant corridors.

The price of human population explosion is always thus. 

Any Sympathy I Have Is For The Poor Donkey…

Another in the never-ending story of the 'Guardian' taking out a hankie for refugees:

They were huddled together on the bare floor of an abandoned house – four orphans who had travelled nearly 1,000 miles after having to flee from their home in the city when Sudan’s brutal civil war erupted.Having escaped ferocious fighting around Omdurman, twin city of the capital, Khartoum, they had arrived in Darfur...“But we couldn’t stay, it was too deadly,” says Asrar, 13, sitting beside three of her siblings, twins Mustafa and Mujtaba, nine, and seven-year-old Fatima.

I find I immediately flash on to this comment from one of Tim's regulars. 

 

Outside the house, located in the devastated West Darfur city of El Geneina, another two of Asrar’s siblings were trying to make money for them all to eat: Haroun, 21, working at a mechanic’s workshop, while Abdallah, 15, pounded the streets with a donkey selling water all day.

Poor bloody donkey. There's a recurring advert for a horse and donkey charity on tv, continually begging for money to treat these poor beasts. The day they announce they will use it to hire mercenaries to shoot the owners who mistreat them is the day I'll give them some.  

Asrar and her siblings have been alone since July last year, when their mother, Aisha, died from dysentery at their home in Omdurman. “There was nowhere to go to treat her. She got sick and was gone in two days,” says Asrar. Haroun, arriving back at the house after his workshop shift, adds: “We were devastated when she died.” Their father disappeared before the war started, leaving the house one day and never returning.

Such a familiar story. He's probably tucked up in a hotel in Kent.

Another brother who lives in Libya sent them money by phone to pay a driver to take them to El Geneina, where their parents were from and an elder sister, Israa, 30, still lived.

They paid a driver in advance but he abandoned them along the way. “He left us there with nothing,” Haroun says. “We had already paid him, and we had run out of money, so we had to sell our mother’s perfumes and clothes and survive on beans.”

It's called the Third World for a good reason. 

On arriving in the Darfur city last month, their elder sister could not be found, most likely having fled across the border to Chad. They found her house in ruins and moved into a nearby derelict house that had been left completely bare after being looted. A threadbare carpet serves as their bed. Despite escaping Omdurman, life in El Geneina is also fraught with risk. The city has witnessed myriad war crimes, including one of the worst atrocities of the war – a frenzied episode of violence, rape and looting by the RSF in 2023, in which almost 15,000 people were killed.

Clearly, the thrust of the 'Guardian' article is to drum up sympathy for refugees. Does it work? Not on me. 

Is That An Unusual Number..?

I mean, I assume they get through quite a few of the things, and...

Oh.

Mexican authorities have confirmed that 20 people were killed when a group of gunmen stormed a cockfight, in a small town in the western state of Michoacán.

Mexican army and national guard troops were deployed on Monday morning to capture the assailants, but it remained unclear which of the region’s many organized crime groups they belonged to.

When you have so many you can't keep track, you know you're a Third World hellhole! 

In A Normal Society, A Thing Like This Would Have No Future...

Authorities said they have 10 days to administer a behavioral study on the dog and determine its future, including the possibility of euthanizing it.

That it's only a possibility tells you all you need to know, doesn't it?

The 25-year-old pet owner was tying her sneakers in her bedroom when she was suddenly attacked last Thursday, Colombian media outlets reported.

What's the Spanish for "Oh, he's never done that before.."?

And did I call it yesterday, or what? Multiple surnames, hyphens, ghetto-culture aspects ('Treysharn'..? Really?) and the inevitable chavshrines being built by 'the community', who all seem to be claiming to have tried to carry out CPR on the victim....

Detective Inspector Lisa Milligan said: ‘Our officers take the issue of dangerous dogs very seriously. Over the past years we have worked proactively with the five local authorities in Merseyside to ensure prohibited dogs are taken off the streets.’

Until the people that have a fatal attraction to creatures like this stop buying them, your officers are sadly wasting their time... 

'All Cultures Are Equal', Eh...?

Really?

This is the treatment of wildlife in the First World:

This is the treatment of wildlife in the Third World:

Any questions?

Utter Loss Of Sympathy Status: Final

A petition signed by 1,500 people demanded the resignation of the entire council leadership, with resident Eve Wedderburn telling councillors: '"We do not recognise your right to govern our community.'

 That's not how we do things over here, old chap.

Relatives of those killed called for mass resignations, with survivor Mahad Egal telling councillors: ‘You have murdered us. There is manslaughter here... You have committed a crime against all of us here.’

 In this country, that's for the police and justice system to decide, not howling demagogues.

The meeting was later adjourned after Ms Jamalvatan collapsed and had to be treated by paramedics.

Earlier she had made an impassioned plea to the council for equal treatment for rich and poor in the affluent borough.

Waving the keys to her former flat in the tower, she said: ‘The UK is accusing other countries about a lack of human rights, but there are lots of people from those counties living in the UK. Why don’t you care about human rights here?’

Where have your 'human rights' not been met, here? What sort of treatment do you think you'd have got in your home countries over a fire that burned you out of your home?

That's it. Enough is enough. But if Grenfell Tower has done one positive thing, it's got to be alerting a wider audience to the totally alien culture that's grown up, unnoticed, in our midst.

Sadly, I fear it's much too late to do anything about it.

Problem Animals

Third World:

Rashmi Ranjan Nayak, Bolangir district forest officer, said: 'Actually, the main challenge was to control the mob.

'We would have captured the animal if the villagers wouldn't have created disturbance to during the operation. I am glad that we finally managed to cage the beast.'

First World:

Animal director Adrian Harland said: "The cheetah was calm and pacing the enclosure fence looking to get back in.

"Some food was thrown into the enclosure and the cheetah walked back in to get it. No vet intervention was needed.

"The full escape procedure was run because the safari lorries travel past the enclosure. This particular cheetah was no real threat to our guests.

"He only climbed out to get back with his mother after having been separated to stop him eating all her dinner.

"We have secured the enclosure's perimeter fencing to ensure that the cheetah cannot climb out again."

Any questions?

On The Tenth Day Of Christmas, Multiculturalism Gave To Me...

…Tube disruption caused by foreign disputes:

A group of more than 200 DR Congo demonstrators have caused an emergency evacuation of Oxford Circus Tube station in central London, British Transport Police (BTP) has said.

They set off a passenger alarm on a train they had boarded following an earlier protest in Whitehall over their country's political situation.

Just what you want at Christmas. And no, of course no arrests were made...

Also, 'honor killings' (otherwise known as murder), new and interesting ways to break smoking laws, names on court listings that sound like they came out of a bag of ‘Scrabble’, many interesting and lucrative jobs for lawyers, new and interesting methods of fraud, a feeling of being 'untouchable', the marginalising of our Christian heritage, the concept of victim perception of racism and a partridge in a cardboard box.

Hey, Officer Dhas….

…if you’ve any bullets left, how about giving these cretins two in the chest?

Once people realised the animal was a leopard they panicked and chaos reigned.

‘There was pandemonium like we've never witnessed before,’ said one woman.

The animal managed to sneak into an empty house, but locals upset him by throwing rocks through the doors and windows.

Top drawer animal management there! I'm so delighted we UK taxpayers give these people billions in aid...

And the authorities weren’t any better:

Local police turned up and fired two rounds in the air to scare the leopard.

‘When this did not help, they used sticks and stones to attack the leopard,’ said another villager who watched the drama that lasted over 30 minutes.

/facepalm

So, Is It Charity, Or Blackmail?

Nick Clegg seems to be hedging his bets a little:

Nick Clegg has mounted a robust defence of the foreign aid bill and claimed that the coalition will commit Britain by law to spend billions overseas every year.

Oh, really? And why?

Mr Clegg insisted that the aid bill was in our ‘self-interest’ and linked the plight of the poor abroad to terrorism and immigration problems at home.

Ah, it’s ransom money, then, ‘don’t hurt us too badly!’ money, is it?

He admitted he had a ‘job to explain to people back home’ why the UK would put into law its promise to spend 0.7 per cent of national income on aid.

I’ll say!

After all, it’s not like others haven’t reached different conclusions:

Germany slashed its aid budget by 12 per cent to divert spending to priorities at home.

We should have emulated them.

Mr Clegg stressed that, ‘while we are experiencing hardship on our own shores, it does not compare to the abject pain and destitution of others’.

I daresay it doesn’t, but we aren’t responsible for that! The only responsibility UK politicians should have is to the UK taxpayer.

Mr Clegg will today meet U.S. Vice President Joe Biden in the White House.

He said he wanted to discuss with Mr Biden how he tackled issues facing ‘Middle America’ such as welfare reform and tax.

In other words, he wanted advice on how to head off any possible attempts to get the Tea Party movement started here….

When You Have A Duty To Risk Your Health & Safety…

Amelia Gentleman (social affairs writer for the Guardian) on the Commonwealth Games and the duty of athletes to suck it up and risk their health and safety because…

Wait. What?

A few years ago, when I was working in India, I spent several days talking to poorer Delhi residents whose homes had been demolished in preparation for these games. These were familiar stories of individual catastrophe; in recent years there has been a lot of painful upheaval as politicians try to create a city worthy of its status as gateway to an emerging superpower.

You mean shoddy, jury-rigged and falling apart before it’s even open?

But there was a particularly depressing absurdity in the amount of misery triggered during the planning of the athletes' village – a construction that would only be operational for a short period.

A period that might now be shorter than they’d planned!

In the context of the profound unhappiness that families such as Parvati's have endured, complaints from team officials about the standard of accommodation might be viewed as rather petulant.

You mean, because of the actions of the Indian government, the athletes have no right to be concerned that part of the roof may fall on their heads?

Feeble even, when you put them next to those of people such as Mahavir, a farmer who saw the 10-acre plot of land where he grew flowers and vegetables reclaimed by the state for the project.

That’s hardly the athletes fault, is it? They didn’t instruct the Indian government to uproot Mahavir’s vegetable plot.

The buildup to the Commonwealth Games has been chaotic and troubled by allegations of corruption. The resettlement of so many city residents raises uncomfortable questions, and the environmental damage to the banks of the Yamuna river is likely to be permanent.

But, presumably, the Indian government saw an upside; increased tourism, increased trade…

But however misguided these decisions were, the price has already been paid. It would be even worse to think that the sacrifices made were entirely pointless.

So, the athletes should risk shoddy, dangerous conditions?

In the spirit of friendliness the games is meant to evoke, the athletes should fret less about their personal comfort and insist on travelling to Delhi. Turning up to take part is the least they can do.

They aren’t so much fretting about their ‘personal comfort’ as their safety, and that of the attendees!

Well, Andy, Maybe Some Of Them Shouldn’t Take The Opportunity To Behave That Way…

Andy Kershaw in the ‘Indy’ asks that we stop treating Haitians like savages:

There has now solidified a consensus among aid organisations that the relief they are bringing is itself a liability; that distributing what Haitians are dying for – literally – will bring on a second nightmare. So, supplies pile up at the airport because, apparently, the Haitians need to be fed and watered at gunpoint.

Do they?

Well, as an infamous picture earlier in the week showed, yes, they do:


But Andy is the typical armchair general, convinced he can do better.

He does have some good points to make:

The crisis, for more than a week now, has been not about the shortage of donated food, water, fuel and medicines but the distribution of those essentials that are piling up, obscenely, at Port-au-Prince airport. On Monday evening's Channel 4 News, Jon Snow, at that same airport, interviewed the head of Oxfam in Haiti. Snow remarked that he and his team had been to areas around the capital that had not had any NGO visits, never mind material aid. The Oxfam woman spoke authoritatively, but emptily, about how her teams were all over the city conducting "assessments".

Sounds a lot like any local council or major government department to me. All they are missing is the PowerPoint seminars…

Andy, from the comfort of his air-conditioned office in the UK, decries the aid agencies for thinking of their own safety:

The alarmingly unanimous priorities of the spokesmen and women of aid organisations and the military, have been with "issues" (for they love that word) of "security", "procedures", and "logistics" (what we used to call "transport" or "trucks"). These obsessions indicate not only a self-serving and self-important careerist culture among some, though not all, aid workers (although wide experience of the profession in Haiti and across Africa tells me it is more common than donors would like to think), but that the magnitude of the crisis has paralysed them into a gibbering strike force of box-tickers.

And what are you doing to help alleviate the crisis, Andy?

Oh. That’s right. Nothing. Just suggesting that they be left to sort it out themselves…

This self-imposed blockade by bureaucracy is a scandal but could be easily overcome. The NGOs and the military should recognise the hysteria over "security" for what it is and make use of Haiti's best resource and its most efficient distribution network: the Haitians themselves. Stop treating them as children. Or worse. Hand over to them immediately what they need at the airport. They will find the means to collect it.

And if they don’t?

If the strong rise to the top, and the weak go without, as happens in every single disaster known to man where discipline isn’t enforced, what then? Will Andy be screaming from the safety of his newspaper that the West should ‘do something!’ again?

Of course he will…

And I’m struck by the difference in this article (which basically claims that Haitians are pure, noble souls beset by evil circumstance) and all those articles on the film ‘The Road’, which was lauded by many for the way it ‘showed the true reality’ of global warming and how it’d turn us all into ravening cannibals scrambling for survival…

And oh, look what's in the news today...

Haiti: All Our Fault…

The Haiti disaster has been dominating the news these last few days. A 7.0 magnitude quake would wreak havoc almost anywhere, never mind a (literal) banana republic, and some of the pictures have been truly horrific.

Certainly, they put the hysteria over the snow that has featured in our MSM to shame…

But is it a purely natural disaster, compounded by the state of the even-more-laughably named ‘government’ of Haiti, or basically the fault of the West?

Step forward, Peter Hallward to tell us:

…it's no accident that so much of Port-au-Prince now looks like a war zone. Much of the devastation wreaked by this latest and most calamitous disaster to befall Haiti is best understood as another thoroughly manmade outcome of a long and ugly historical sequence.

Yup, it’s all the fault of the west that Haiti is a basket case.

This is standard lefty boilerplate. In fact, you could remove the words ‘Haiti’ and ‘earthquake’ and replace them with other third-world hellholes and natural disasters and print the same load of guff. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone had…

The noble "international community" which is currently scrambling to send its "humanitarian aid" (Ed: no, I don’t understand the need for scare quotes there, either…) to Haiti is largely responsible for the extent of the suffering it now aims to reduce. Ever since the US invaded and occupied the country in 1915, every serious political attempt to allow Haiti's people to move (in former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide's phrase) "from absolute misery to a dignified poverty" has been violently and deliberately blocked by the US government and some of its allies.

Because they are sadistic bastards, presumably, and knew this earthquake was coming. Hell, maybe they even fired up their Super Secret Earthquake Machine™ just for shits and giggles…

Peter seems a little confused about the damage a 7.0 magnitude earthquake can cause:

As Brian Concannon, the director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, points out: "Those people got there because they or their parents were intentionally pushed out of the countryside by aid and trade policies specifically designed to create a large captive and therefore exploitable labour force in the cities; by definition they are people who would not be able to afford to build earthquake resistant houses."

Umm, take a good look at the pictures of the Presidential Palace. Are we saying they couldn’t afford to build earthquake-resistant structures?

Or more likely, that there's very little could be done to resist this…

Meanwhile the city's basic infrastructure – running water, electricity, roads, etc – remains woefully inadequate, often non-existent. The government's ability to mobilise any sort of disaster relief is next to nil.

Because every time someone attempts to build a road or a hospital, US forces swoop in and take the building materials out of their hands, eh Peter?

The international community has been effectively ruling Haiti since the 2004 coup. The same countries scrambling to send emergency help to Haiti now, however, have during the last five years consistently voted against any extension of the UN mission's mandate beyond its immediate military purpose.

What do you want, Peter? Do you want colonialism, then? You were arguing against it in your opening paragraphs…

Proposals to divert some of this "investment" towards poverty reduction or agrarian development have been blocked, in keeping with the long-term patterns that continue to shape the distribution of international "aid".

Why, it couldn’t be that international aid is really more a way to provide jobs for graduates in wealthy countries than to improve the lives of the poor, could it, Peter?

Maybe what they would be better off doing is resolving their own problems, electing less corrupt governments and not relying on a helping hand from the west?

But no, it seems what Peter thinks they need is…Fidel Castro:

The same storms that killed so many in 2008 hit Cuba just as hard but killed only four people. Cuba has escaped the worst effects of neoliberal "reform", and its government retains a capacity to defend its people from disaster. If we are serious about helping Haiti through this latest crisis then we should take this comparative point on board.

Well, I’m sure things can only get better in Haiti if they adopt Cuba’s system of governance…

/sarc