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From Our Own Correspondent
A Croc at the Door!
00:28:00
Hungry crocodiles are invading homes in northern Australia looking for the family pet,...
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- [00:00]
Kate Adie
Hello from the from our own correspondence studios at Broadcasting House in London, you've downloaded the latest edition of the programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It's introduced by Kate Ady.
- [00:12]
Narrator/Presenter
Today, guns in front, guns behind the dangers of a drive through increasingly violent Baghdad. Dogs and cats, beware. There are killer crocodiles invading homes in Australia hunting for food. Indian films celebrate their hundredth birthday. We learn what makes a Bollywood cinema crowd scream today. And from rampaging Vikings to effeminate pussycats, is that what a millennium of change has done to the men of Denmark? At least 10 people have been killed this morning in explosions in the Iraqi capital Baghdad. Violence yesterday took a further 28 lives. Many of the victims had been attending a wedding party in the south of the city. The United nations is calling on the country's politicians to resolve their differences. Their failure to reach agreement on a number of key disputes has been linked to this new unres, which has left 160 people dead this week alone. Paul Martin says the instability comes against a backdrop of heightened tension between Iraq's ruling Shia majority and its minority Sunni community.
- [01:18]
Paul Martin
A good friend of mine, Canon Andrew White, the Anglican vicar of Baghdad, found Daoud when he was a 12 year old street urchin, a sort of American Marines mascot playing with a real gun in the back of a Bradley armored vehicle. Canon White adopted him. Now Daoud is a neatly bearded 22 year old who's had several close shaves with death. The latest just the other day he was in a parked car in a teeming area of Baghdad called Kadameer when a vehicle in the same car park exploded and debris flew everywhere. Not everything in Iraq is grim. There are now colorful swings and slides on the newly grassed banks of the River Tigris. The once deadly road between Baghdad airport and the city where snipers would take potshots or set off roadside bombs, is now bedecked with fountains spouting from black granite basins and fringed with newly planted palm trees. There are even statues on some of the roundabouts. One features that mythical character Ali Baba, pouring hot water into 40 buckets to scold the 40 thieves hidden inside them. This isn't a place anymore where the visiting journalist goes around on his own. I'm being driven around in a mini convoy. Inside our car, a five year old boy is chatting excitedly on a cell phone. Grandma, he says, we've got men with guns in front of us and men with guns behind us. He's referring to our constant companions, two truckfuls of submachine gun toting bodyguards we spend a delightful few minutes in the Abu Hafif cake and chocolate shop, a rare oasis, before our little armed convoy heads into the soulless suburb of New Baghdad to visit some of Cannon White's parishioners among the rapidly dwindling and beleaguered Christian population of this city. The other day, I met a former ambassador for Iraq who said that hours before, he'd been told that men wielding guns with silencers had leapt out of a car and shot his cousin dead. There's a real fear now of a new civil war. In recent weeks, hundreds of people have been killed. Six or seven years ago, it was even worse. But the hard won peace that followed may turn out to have been just an extended pause in the hostilities between this country's majority Shia community and its minority Sunnis. The Sunnis have felt marginalized since the fall of Saddam Hussein. They maintain they face discrimination in politics and in trying to get work in the army, the police and the civil service. And the more Sunni insurgents fight the Syrian government next door, the more Sunni hardliners feel emboldened in Iraq. There was one security check after another as our armored convoy made its way to the holy city of Najaf. There have been many killings by people dressed in police or army uniform in trucks that look official. Sometimes, in fact, they are. The streets of Najaf are crisscrossed with dangerously dangling improvised electricity cables. Its gorgeous mosque commemorates Ali, son in law of Islam's founding prophet. Muhammad Ali's martyrdom cemented the split between his supporters, the Shias, and what became the majority Islamic sect, the Sunnis. Shia and Sunni are one hand, said the banners strung across Baghdad's roads soon after Saddam fell from power. But if there was any semblance of Muslim unity then, there's little evidence of it now. Perhaps, though, there's still hope. We met two Shia brothers, Jawad and Ali, to see the foundations of a religious school they're setting up. It's a stone's throw from the majestic blue dome of the Imam Ali Mosque. And here they say they will teach the new generation of Shia clerics the virtues of tolerance, moderation and brotherly love. These brothers are the sons of Ayatollah Abdul Majid Khuy, who 10 years ago was hacked to death here by a mob supporting a rival Shia cleric. Back in Baghdad, I visited the heavily guarded Ministry of Justice on the last day of April. Bombs exploded outside as gunmen attacked the Ministry. My young friend Daoud had been nearby. He said he'd run into the wreckage of the fourth floor and pulled out bodies and body parts, which he had then laid out by the Ministry's main door. He has gruesome photos taken on his cell phone that day. It makes me feel good, daoud told me, when I can help people. But if collecting bodies is all a young man can do to help here, the future of this country for the moment, looks bleak.
- [06:12]
Narrator/Presenter
And that's Paul Martin. The series of high profile massacres in schools, cinemas and elsewhere in the United States has launched an often bitter debate there over gun control. But beyond the headlines, the reality of drugs, guns and gangs in a city like Los Angeles is that an average of 6 people are getting shot there every day. Frank Gardner, who himself was shot while on assignment for the BBC in the Middle east, has been to South Central Los Angeles Angeles to investigate the effects of this culture of violence.
- [06:45]
Kate Adie
Alfred runs his project like a military operation, talking to me on the streets of South Central Los Angeles. He posts his men on every corner of the crossroads, watching every car that drives past. They cut a fearsome sight, powerfully built in black bomber jackets, chain medallions reflecting sunglasses. To the casual observer, they look like typical gang members, ready to pull out a pistol at a moment's notice. But in fact they are unarmed and belong to something far more courageous. They are OGs, old gangsters, men sometimes as young as in their 20s, who have taken the life changing step of leaving the gangs, getting out while they can. Under the tough tutelage of Alfred, a former Latino gang leader and ex convict, and his business partner Akhil, a once militant member of the Black power movement, the Black Panthers, these reformed gangsters are learning how to defuse conflicts in their neighborhood. They call it a gang violence intervention program. Watched by dozens of ex gang members, Alfred and Akhil act out a standoff that grows increasingly aggressive. There is pushing and shoving and name calling. If this was for real, someone would quite possibly be pulling out a weapon by now. A woman appears from around the corner, ranting and screaming abuse at the top of her voice. Is it part of the act? Apparently not. She's high on drugs, one of the men tells me. Despite her cameo appearance, the streets look deceptively tranquil in the warm glow of late afternoon. There are freshly mown lawns, fences, people sitting out on porches, video shops, traffic lights, all the paraphernalia of a functioning city. Alfred laughs when I point this out. It might look normal, he says, but make no mistake, this is a war zone down here. Gang versus gang. Just down the street, Akhil and his men escort us to a desolate looking petrol station. And this time it feels like a military convoy, their vehicles bracketing us front and rear for our protection. Sheets of filthy newspaper litter the street, blowing back and forth in the wind. A woman is slumped motionless on the curb, her jaw resting open on the concrete. A passed out drunk, we are told. The casual everyday violence so common in these deprived parts of Los Angeles is. Is of course a world away from the glitter of nearby Beverly Hills and Hollywood. Gang culture has a lot to do with it, glamorizing a lifestyle that Alfred says can only ever end in one of two ways. Prison or early death. The tattoos worn by hardcore gang members are not arbitrary. They each have a significance. The stylized letters ms, for example, stand for Mara Salvatrucha, one of the most violent Latino criminal gangs originally from El Salvador. Tears tattooed onto the face mean you've done time in prison. If the tears are colored in, you've killed someone. One man we saw brought into hospital with gunshot wounds from a drive by shooting had an obscenity tattooed onto his eyelids. Members will use this to warn others off their turf by closing their eyes as they walk past. In LA County Hospital, where I saw patient after patient brought in after being shot by gangs, they even have their own prison wing below ground, run by the sheriff's department. A deputy shows me round. They've just had a new intake from the county jail. Inmates from a white supremacist gang there came off worst in a minor riot. Jailers carry no firearms in case they're ever overpowered. Patients are shackled to their beds. They watch me with studied indifference. I'm clearly not from a rival gang. Upstairs, back on the ward, I meet Carlos. Like me, he's been shot several times and left for dead. He says he doesn't know who attacked him, but others don't believe him. When it comes to shootings, there tends to be a culture of silence. The LAPD officers who hover near the beds in their distinctive midnight blue uniforms rarely get much in the way of a witness statement. And yet, despite the depressing frequency of these shootings, the figures are moving in the right direction. In the past 20 years, the number of murders by firearms has has shrunk by 2/3. It's partly down to better policing, partly to California's ban on assault weapons, and partly to the deterrence of life sentences. Things have improved since the infamous Bloods and Crips were shooting it out on the streets of South Central in the early 90s. But California still has the highest rate of gun crime in all America. And Los Angeles sees some of the worst injuries. If this city is going to bring down gun crime from its unacceptably high levels, it still has a lot of work to do.
- [11:14]
Narrator/Presenter
Frank Gardiner there. The population is steadily rising in Australia's Northern Territory. And not just the human one. The number of crocodiles there has soared since a ban on hunting them was introduced in the early 1970s. It's now estimated there are some 130,000 saltwater crocs in northern Australia. A number of people have been killed by them and many others hurt. Today, as Phil Mercer has been finding out, the wildlife authorities are trying to educate both residents and visitors about the dangers posed by these notorious salties.
- [11:47]
Phil Mercer
One of nature's most efficient killers is best considered from a safe distance. So it's with some trepidation that I take hold of not one, but two saltwater crocodiles. Admittedly, these are reptilian tiddlers, about a meter long, but they are nevertheless armed with teeth like needles and a true hunter's instinct. When they're bigger, their jaws will be among the most powerful in the animal kingdom. The juveniles on show at Crocodylus park have their mouths taped firmly shut, leaving me to enjoy the photo opportunity, along with other excited visitors who've come to this wildlife centre in Darwin to handle a creature that's remained largely unchanged for over 200 million years. A few meters away, behind a steel fence, a fully grown adult crochet peers over suspiciously. Despite the security. It is unnerving to be so close to such a fearsome predator, especially one that won't take his eyes off me. The park is home to thousands of these supremely aggressive reptiles, which aren't kept solely for the enjoyment and education of tourists, but for research. One of the biggest residents is Harold, a heavyweight at 4.6 metres long, who's part of a scientific breeding program. He lies silently in his enclosure. The bone fragments that provide armoured plating on his back protrude from the water, while his teeth spill down the side of his massive jaws. Study him for a few minutes and perhaps the species most potent weapon becomes evident. He doesn't move. He just lingers. While strength and ferocity are crucial, it's limitless patience that serves saltwater crocodiles so well. They can stay underwater and go without food for long periods. While stalking their prey, they can wait and wait until the moment is right to strike. Suddenly, there's an almighty splash and two meaty males clash in a nearby lagoon. For a moment, the water is full of snapping jaws and thrashing tails. Charlie Manolis, the park's chief scientist, tells me crocodiles are antisocial and violently territorial and that fights between rivals are common. Larger animals, he says, have been known to puncture an aluminium boat with their teeth. The number of crocodile attacks is increasing in northern Australia. Most victims are not bumbling tourists who ignore the warnings and stumble into trouble, but complacent locals. For many, the waterhole or creek they've swum in since they were children is now out of bounds. As the crocodile's territory expands. School children in Darwin are involved in a new safety campaign highlighting the dangers posed by the world's largest and most destructive reptile. Rachel Pearce from the Parks and Wildlife Commission of the Northern Territory is helping to spread the word at a caravan and camping show at the Darwin showground. It's 35 degrees Celsius and the day is smothered by the sort of humidity of. That's a real test for visitors. Rachel tells a crowd of children that as crocodile numbers increase, so does the threat to residents and tourists. There are crocodiles in people's gardens, she says, and adds rather ominously, that these armored plated invaders have also been found inside homes searching for foods, mainly family pets. A colleague Rachel tells me was called to a house in Darwin where a 2 metre croc had followed a dog indoors. The ranger leapt onto the wandering animal's back and it was safely removed. School children are recording their own songs as part of the Northern Territory's Crockwise awareness campaign. You shouldn't swim near them because they can bite you and do dangerous things, says a young girl holding the distinctive skull of a saltwater crocodile. At the Parks and Wildlife stall, her friend tells me that salties can attack you whenever they feel like it. Back at Crocodylus park, one of Australia's leading crocodile research institutions, I asked Charlie Manolis what to him must sound like a very naive and daft question. If someone jumped or fell into the lagoon in front of us and tried to swim to the other sides, what would happen? They're not going to make it, is his instant reply. Crocodiles are just killing, eating machines. And that's the simple message to people here in northern Australia that one of nature's most resourceful killers lives among them.
- [16:27]
Narrator/Presenter
Phil Mercer. Indian cinema's celebrating its centenary this month, and the industry has, it seems, come a long way in a hundred years. Audiences at the Cannes Film Festival have just seen one of the latest made in Mumbai films, billed as a milestone for showing A Gay Kiss. Indian filmmaking began in the city which used to be called Bombay and is still frequently referred to by that name, films are now made in more languages in that country than anywhere else in the world. The Hindi film industry, the one that's known as Bollywood, is the biggest and best known of the country's different production centres. Mark Tully has been looking at the changing relationship between its distinctive style of filmmaking and Indian society over the last hundred years.
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Mark Tully
When the Bollywood actor Amrish Puri played the villainous Mola Ram in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the director Steven Spielberg described him as my favorite villain, the best the world has produced and ever will. In Bollywood, Amrish is best remembered for an over the top, some would say absurd role as Mogambo, a ridiculous, garish, outrageously dressed megalomaniac who aimed to conquer India in a film called Mr. India. Amrish's two roles illustrate the anomaly of Bollywood, the reason it's so underestimated. It has produced actors like Amrish, directors, musicians and technicians too, described by the renowned film critic Derek Malcolm as having every right to be compared with the best of those from Hollywood. Yet its output is so different, and that's because it's aimed at an Indian audience. The larger than life characters they like can all too easily be mistaken for parodies of reality, yet those characters have consistently reflected the mood of India for a hundred years. The first silent Indian films were mythological and so inevitably larger than life. The myths represented a widespread desire to get rid of the British and restore India to its past glory. In the early days of independence, national pride was high and it was believed that socialism would eradicate poverty. In the classic film of that era, Mother India, there was a melodramatic scene when a village woman trapped in debt was bent double, pulling a plough because she'd been forced to sell her bullocks. The problem of poverty was highlighted, but so was the fortitude of the poor. Sadly, socialism spawned the stifling bureaucracy which wound its tentacles around every sphere of national life, strangling the earlier optimism. To take the nation's mind off the grim reality of the 70s, when the global oil price rise compounded the damage bureaucratic red tape was inflicting on the economy. Bollywood turned to teenage romance to lend reality to the film called Bobby, which started this trend, the director chose a star who was only 16. Dimple Kabadia. Indira Gandhi ordered the government controlled television to screen Bobby in the hope that it would keep people at home. On the night that opposition leaders were holding a massive rally in Delhi demanding her resignation. It didn't for many years India was prudish, so bare bellies and clinging wet saris were as far as directors would go. Kissing was taboo. When another teenage star, Mandakane, stood in a waterfall, her sari so transparent that little was left to the imagination, there was a national outcry in the centenary year. India is enraged by scandals revealing rampant corruption and Bollywood is reflecting this. In one recent film, Jolly llb, businessmen, a judge, lawyers and policemen are all corrupt. Fortunately, in the end the antihero judge becomes a hero and one of the lawyers is shamed into honesty. So there is a traditional Bollywood happy ending. Purists would probably regard the seedy judge and fast talking lawyer in Jolly LLB as over the top. But for the last 100 years the skilled artists of Bollywood have shown that Indians like larger than life characters to reflect their society. And that doesn't make them any less real. Gulchen Grover, one of Amrish Puri's fellow villains, liked to tell the story about the airline passenger who refused to sit next to him because to her he was as villainous in real life as as he was on screen. Changes have come now that middle class multiplex cinemas divide the Indian audience. The poor can only afford the traditional one screen cinemas where they provide a lively audience. Jeering when the villain comes on, cheering the hero, whistling and making other encouraging noises when there's any chance of a kiss. If the heroine is reluctant to kiss, the audience will shout give me one. And when the songs are what are known as item numbers, that's to say raunchy numbers, the audience will join in the dancing. The Bollywood director Shyam Benigle told me he used to paint with a broad brush for the one screen audiences. He now paints with a less broad brush, keeping the more sophisticated middle class multiplex audiences in mind. But the colours are still Bollywood bright.
- [22:18]
Narrator/Presenter
Mark Talley in India, there's a new television show in Denmark causing huge controversy. It's been attracting record numbers of complaints and at the same time large numbers of viewers. The shows on the publicly funded TV channel Dr. Those are the people who gave us critically acclaimed shows like the Killing and Boyen. Well now they're giving us Blachman. This is a programme on which two men in suits stare at naked women and talk about them. Our fully clothed correspondent Emma Jane Kirby has been to meet the host who insists the show is poetry, not porn.
- [22:54]
Emma Jane Kirby
Thomas Blackman shifted nervously in his seat and rubbed his hand across his face irritably. I'd imagined that a man who'd spent the last few weeks, being paid to watch women strip naked in front of him would wear a decidedly smug expression. But Mr. Blackman just looked stressed and perhaps a little hurt. My show, he told me ruefully, was a gift to the nation. It was a gift to women. Sadly, the generosity of this former X Factor judge does not seem to have been appreciated by the Danes. His offering to his fellow countrymen was a new TV talk show with a twist. He would sit in the dark on a leather couch with another celebrity male friend, and in front of them, a woman aged anywhere between 28 and 85 would stand naked and completely silent while they talked about her body for half an hour. Mr. Blackman invented the show because he felt that Danish men could no longer say anything about the way women looked without being accused of being sexist or aggressive. In his country, led by a female Prime Minister and which is big on equal opportunities, he told me, women have castrated men, leaving them wimpish, invisible and irrelevant. Danish men, he lamented bitterly, daren't even speak their minds to one another. Women, he added wryly, talk all the time. The country's feminists have been outraged by the show and have likened it to watching two sleazy middle aged men in a strip joint. Curiously, though, Mr. Blackman doesn't appear to be salivating as he stares at the naked ladies. In fact, he looks decidedly embarrassed. In the episodes I've seen, most of his commentary tends to be rather tame and directed towards the feet and ankles rather than breasts and bottoms. Of course I'm uncomfortable, he agreed. I'm the one who's exposing myself. I have to talk. The woman just stands there. I'm far more naked than she is. Bizarrely, both the female participants I spoke to insisted they felt empowered by their naked appearance. Nina, a tanned and pretty primary school teacher, told me it was fun watching the men squirm as they tried to find words to Describe women's bits. 85 year old Eva said she felt beautiful again under their gaze. Mr. Blackman and I conducted our interview at DR's headquarters, the Danish equivalent of the BBC, and just before his arrival I went to use the bathroom. I hadn't noticed that the lavatories were unisex, so when I pushed open the door and saw a semi naked hairy man stepping out of a shower cubicle, I admit I was somewhat startled. A woman entered behind me and also saw the towel clad man. Oh, hi. She yawned and then pulled out her BlackBerry and started checking meeting or programme details with him while I, red faced, scuttled quickly behind a cubicle door, Mr. Blackman explained he had a simple to revise women's perception of men's perception of women and to give the usurped male a voice. You know, he said sadly, I never made one critical comment about these women. They weren't models. They were just ordinary women from the street and they were a hundred percent natural. He seemed so down that I decided it would be kinder not to tell him that Nina had just confided in me that she'd had a professional body makeover before appearing on the show and had been waxed to within an inch of her life. Suddenly he looked defiant. Women have no sense of humour, he snapped. I guess only 10 per cent of women understand me, but I don't care. They're the ones I'm going to dance with. I couldn't quite think of a follow up question, so I terminated the interview. There, outside in the sunshine, I ordered a coffee at a nearby pavement cafe and mulled over Mr. Blackman's theory about Denmark's men, from raping and pillaging Vikings to effeminate invisible pussycats in little more than a thousand years. I was shaken out of my reverie by the throaty sound of an engine and looking up, I saw a slow moving car on the opposite side of the square with what I first took to be a huge purple rocket on its roof rack. As the car moved nearer, I understood my mistake. Proudly, boldly, a three metre long plastic penis was riding through the streets of Copenhagen. As it came round the corner, the phallus seemed to point at me accusingly before picking up speed and moving off. Flummoxed, flabbergasted, I turned to a large group of female office workers who were drinking coffee at the next table and asked them, was it an advertising campaign? What on earth was a giant penis doing cruising their city? The women looked at me blankly. What penis? One of them asked.
- [27:49]
Narrator/Presenter
And with Emma Jane Kirby chronicling strange goings on in Denmark, we've reached the end of this edition. There'll be more stories from far and wide in Saturday morning's program. I hope you'll join us then. Goodbye.