Hi Tweets,

>From the NY Times article on the latest kidnapping:

>"One doesn't think of birding as one avocation where this sort of thing
>happens," said Herbert Shapiro, a Central Park birder who knows Shen and
>Fiore. "It's scary."

I find the naivete expressed in this quote to be scary, too. It assumes that
because we're birders, we're immune to and removed from the world's
political turbulences ('Oh, we're birders, we're far too nice to be involved
in your civil war, we just want to come into your area for a little while
and look at your birds, and we'll try not to get in your way while you're
shooting it out with the government death-squads...'). It's only a very
short while ago that two experienced, mature Brit birders were murdered by
the Shining Path.

This latest incident is a reminder that in countries suffering from these
poverty-, human-rights abuse- and drug-fuelled insurgencies--as in unions,
militancy being the price paid for bad leadership or management---and
equally-savage repressions, we birders can't expect to just waft in exuding
a cloud of prosperity, walk around what amount to intensely cruel social and
military battlefields admiring the pretty little birds and cranking up the
old life-lists while cloaked in an all-protecting aura of 'just-birding',
then float back up to a North American heaven untouched. Wotta luxurious way
of thinking.

The hard men who run the insurgent groups, the government's
counter-insurgency forces and death-squads, the narco-terrorist gangs, are
not impressed by birders or scientists. They don't care how nice we are, and
there's little to no respect on either side for science; further, the
guerillas and/or gangs can't take the chance that birders aren't there to
gather intelligence: it's just too good a cover, especially if
counter-insurgency advisers are already known to be at work in the area.

It's called the real world, folks. Sometimes it ain't really a very nice
place at all--certainly not the way I'd like to see it (the utopianisms of
my youth have taken more than a bit of a battering--surprised there's
anything left of 'em). That said, I hope everyone comes home safe and unharmed.

Michael Price A brave world, Sir,
Vancouver BC Canada full of religion, knavery and change;
mprice at mindlink.net we shall shortly see better days.
Aphra Behn (1640-1689)