Monkeys: Misanthropic or Misunderstood?

(photo:thomas lu)

"We can deal with mad bulls but monkeys are more difficult"

-New Delhi deputy police commissioner Jaspal Singh, as quoted by AFP.

I feel it is my duty to remark upon the spate of yellow journalism that has been denigrating the noble race of monkeys in recent days.

It began with an Agence France Presse article titled "Monkeys rampage in Indian capital", which quickly scaled Yahoo's "Most Viewed" charts, prompting the other agencies to respond.

"In land of the Monkey God, a primate menaces," Reuters blared.

To the AP's credit, it has a slightly more factual story, "Monkey Injures Several People in India," avoiding the dubious claim repeated by other agencies that a single monkey had hurt more than 2 dozen people.

Today the New York Times got into the act, two days late and with 1,000 words _ the words not worth the picture. At that length, the NYT is more a magazine than a newspaper...

All the stories are basically anthropocentric, species-ist and humanist in their outlook: people are good, and monkeys bad. People are valuable, monkeys are a nuisance.

And, aiming at the lowest common denominator, all make sure to mention prominently the death of New Delhi's vice mayor last month.

Trouble boiled over in late October when the city's deputy mayor, Sawinder Singh Bajwa, 52, fell to his death driving away monkeys from his home.

He was on his balcony reading a newspaper when four monkeys appeared, his family said. As he waved a stick to scare them away, he tumbled over the edge and died in hospital from head injuries.

-AFP

Tragic, surely. I pray that I don't die in some humiliating manner.
But no one dares to point out the obvious: if this guy weren't going after the monkeys with a stick, he'd be alive today.

In fact, none of the stories makes more than a passing effort to think about things from the monkeys' point of view.

(peter garnhum)



(mr. huevo)

Estimates for the city's monkey population in all four stories range from 5,000 to 25,000.

Well, I estimate New Delhi's human population at 14 million, and growing at the rate of 1/2 million per year. Who is overbreeding here?

A telling detail is included in the final sentence of the AFP story:

"Kartick Satyanarayanan, head of India's Wildlife SOS, said the invasion of natural habitats by mushrooming populations was at the root of the problem.
"Humans are taking all their space."

It's only natural for monkeys to strike back. In fact, rumor has it, the latest altercations are part of the monkey's "Take Back New Delhi" campaign, in which all the humans will ultimately be put in cages and be moved to neighboring Mumbai.

The monkeys are a nuisance, but please, don't insult my intelligence by suggesting that they can compete with say, pollution, on the list of troubles that New Delhi faces.

The other thing these stories do is mock Hinduism, the world's oldest surviving religion, in which monkeys are considered holy.

The AFP says that "along with sacred cows and buffaloes, marauding monkeys have been longstanding pests."

Efforts to drive out the animals is complicated by the fact that devout Hindus view them as an incarnation of Hanuman, the monkey god who symbolizes strength.

Devout Hindus? As opposed to lax Hindus, who cook and eat the monkeys? New Delhi is more than 80 percent Hindu.

There's a reason Hindus worship monkeys!

Monkeys are pure comedy gold. Always have been, always will be.

Praise Hanuman!

And please, keep me up to date about any important monkey news or comedy you come across...

(stephen butler)
(stephen butler)
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Satur Ocampo / U.S. fighting Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines / and Communists

Philippine congressman Satur Ocampo visited the Netherlands and spoke to around 50 expatriate Filipinos in Amsterdam Wednesday. Plus two Dutch and one American, if I counted correctly.

I begin by pleading a lot of ignorance about the Philippines.

This man's resume has to be read to be believed. Suffice it to say he's a leftist leader who was tortured under the Marcos regime and arrested as recently this year on rebellion charges. He's never been found guilty and was re-elected to the opposition in May.

Here are two clips of his talk.

In the first he says the U.S. has taken the opportunity of Sept. 11 to re-establish a permanent military presence in the Philippines, using the threat from Muslim separatist (terrorist) groups like Abu Sayyaf and the communist (terrorist) groups (linked to Ocampo) as justification.
Though U.S. troops were expelled from the country in 1992, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo wants U.S. assistance, and her government is dependent on the support of the Philippines' military for survival. So the expansion of defense budgets is a political necessity, and with all that funding, the military must be seen to do something. They've been carrying on military "exercises" in cooperation with U.S. troops continually for five years now, most recently this month.
But victory over either 8,000 communists (?) or the 200-member (?) Abu Sayyaf has remained elusive.






From an outsider's perspective, I'd say Abu Sayyaf (tiny), the Communists (small) and the Army (huge) are all involved in struggles to exert power where they can; all are trying to extract "taxes" by various means in their spheres of influence; and none always follows the rules of war.

Only Iraq has been a more dangerous place for journalists to work since 2003.

The whole reason we hate Al-Qaida is that they kill innocent civilians. Who shall we hate in the Philippines?

The economy is performing well under Arroyo; but bribery is rampant and the human rights record of the country is terrible, according to Amnesty International and others: leftists suspected of links with communists _ and members of the opposition _ are targeted by (para)military forces for summary executions.

To contrast with Ocampo, here's an Agence France Press report on Arroyo from Wednesday:

Speaking to local officials ... Arroyo said the 39-year-old Maoist rebellion "impedes the progress and development of a number of rural areas" where the majority of the poorest Filipinos live.

"So if we are to become a first world country, we'll have to put a stop to this ideological nonsense and criminal acts once and for all and we want to defeat them by 2010."

In the second clip, Ocampo says the military push doesn't jibe well with a general amnesty Arroyo offered to communists in September. He questions whether the economic development that's meant to be paired with the offensive will work in practice.



As a very last remark, I'd say that the intractable problem is trying to get all sides to disarm. Focusing on the army: they must have an enemy and be fighting him in order to justify their existence. Having a large standing army causes all kinds of problems. The Romans knew this, as did U.S. president Eisenhower.

So until the region in demilitarized, including a reduction in the size of the army _ which is not currently on the cards _ I can't imagine that the Philippines will know true peace & stability.
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