July 13, 2007

"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area."

The UK Government vehemently denies....
well...
you read the post title.




The inhabitants of the Iraqi port city of Basra are in stark mortal terror of giant man eating badgers that they are blaming on the British Army.

The BBC covers the plague of badgers here, pointing out that....

Dr Ghazi Yaqub Azzam, deputy dean of Basra's veterinary college, speculated that the badgers were being driven towards the city because of flooding in marshland north of Basra. 

The badgers are an indigenous species known as the "honey badger".

So there you have it!

There is nothing to see here...just chuckle and move along...don't think anything of it and pay no attention to the impolitic analysis below the fold....



In typical BBC fashion, the reason WHY the marshes north of Basra are being flooded is glossed over....after all, it is scarcely worth mentioning that Saddam Hussein had drained the marshes (more here) in order to persecute the Marsh Arabs.

While this inhumanity was par for the course for the butcher of Baghdad, it is remarkable as an environmental catastrophe even worse than his burning of the oil wells in the second gulf war*. 


Since the fall of Saddam, Allied civil engineers have been re flooding  the marshes and assisting in bringing back the remnants of this 5000 year old culture, and important tidal ecosystem  with some degree of success. Of course, one other result of this is the badgers, which moved from the north into the previously drained marshes, which were, for a time, a fairly badger friendly habitat.....are getting the hell out of dodge anyway they can.....including to the south into Basra where they are not familiar to the locals.

Of course this information would provide an..."unhelpful perspective" to the story....

It also means that the Brits are partially, indirectly, responsible for the badger plague .

The BBC....covering up the UK's 'crimes'....

* Note, to the Iraqis (and I assume the Iranians) the liberation of Kuwait was the SECOND Gulf War...the Iran-Iraq war being the first...we don't think of ourselves as involved in that....but this is of little consolation to the crews of the USS Stark, and USS  Samuel B. Roberts.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 01:44 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 376 words, total size 4 kb.

1

Badgers Unite!! Of course the Badger is in my SCA heraldry.

 

Posted by: Marina at Fri Jul 13 22:03:49 2007 (z3dTy)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

Comments are disabled. Post is locked.
31kb generated in CPU 0.0151, elapsed 0.1998 seconds.
69 queries taking 0.1898 seconds, 355 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.