Nick Davies's Blog
December 8, 2022
Father Jeremy Davies obituary
My uncle, Jeremy Davies, who has died aged 87, was the chief exorcist for the Catholic church in England and Wales.
His religious beliefs were utterly alien to me. His views on the role of the devil in daily life were variously horrible (“homosexuality is the work of the devil”) and absurd (yoga just as bad). Because of an ancient breach in our family tree, I never met him until March 2020, just as the pandemic was descending. It was a strange encounter.
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March 11, 2019
How Postman Pat changed a Lake District village – archive, 1994
12 March 1994 Greendale was the perfect village. It had a beaming vicar and smiling children. Then John Cunliffe created Postman Pat
When John Cunliffe sat down in the back bedroom of his home in the Lake District 15 years ago and started to write a story about a postman called Pat, something very strange began to happen. Cunliffe was not aware of it at the time. He was writing, as he always did, for the fun of it, for the change it gave him from teaching at the local primary school, and it was only years later that he could look back and begin to see the outline of what was really going on.
He was alone at the time. His only child was at boarding school down the road near Kendal, his wife was a mature student at university hundreds of miles away, and he was pretty fed up. So when he settled in behind his old black Triumph typewriter, he started to create a world that was a little bit more comforting and, in doing that, he struck on something bigger.
Related: Postman Pat creator John Cunliffe dies
Related: John Cunliffe obituary
Continue reading...Postman Pat's creator's Greendale was his perfect village – archive, 12 March 1994
12 March 1994: After being bullied as a child, John Cunliffe constructed a community where everyone was happy, an imaginary refuge but when he sold the rights to his creation it was paradise lost
When John Cunliffe sat down in the back bedroom of his home in the Lake District 15 years ago and started to write a story about a postman called Pat, something very strange began to happen. Cunliffe was not aware of it at the time. He was writing, as he always did, for the fun of it, for the change it gave him from teaching at the local primary school, and it was only years later that he could look back and begin to see the outline of what was really going on.
He was alone at the time. His only child was at boarding school down the road near Kendal, his wife was a mature student at university hundreds of miles away, and he was pretty fed up. So when he settled in behind his old black Triumph typewriter, he started to create a world that was a little bit more comforting and, in doing that, he struck on something bigger.
Related: Postman Pat is 30 years old - in pictures
Continue reading...September 27, 2016
Revealed: how senior Laos officials cut deals with animal traffickers
Evidence obtained by the Guardian shows how treasury coffers swelled with 2% tax on trades worth up to $45m including tigers, rhinos and elephants
Help fund our journalism by becoming a Guardian supporter.Officials at the highest level of an Asian government have been helping wildlife criminals smuggle millions of dollars worth of endangered species through their territory, the Guardian can reveal.
In an apparent breach of current national and international law, for more than a decade the office of the prime minister of Laos has cut deals with three leading traffickers to move hundreds of tonnes of wildlife through selected border crossings.
Related: The crime family at the centre of Asia's animal trafficking network
Related: Animal trafficking: the $23bn criminal industry policed by a toothless regulator
Continue reading...China accused of defying its own ban on breeding tigers to profit from body parts
Beijing faces pressure at global summit to close 200 farms where tigers are bred for luxury goods and end its obstructive tactics
China has been accused of deceiving the international community by allowing a network of farms to breed thousands of captive tigers for the sale of their body parts, in breach of their own longstanding ban on the trade.
The Chinese government has allowed about 200 specialist farms to hold an estimated 6,000 tigers for slaughter, before their skins are sold as decoration and their bones are marinated to produce tonics and lotions. Campaigners say this has increased demand for the products and provoked the poaching of thousands of wild tigers, whose global population is now down to just 3,500.
Related: Animal trafficking: the $23bn criminal industry policed by a toothless regulator
Related: The crime family at the centre of Asia's animal trafficking network
Continue reading...September 26, 2016
Animal trafficking: the $23bn criminal industry policed by a toothless regulator
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species finds itself confronting powerful networks, but has no detectives, police powers or firearms
The illegal trade in wildlife is a most attractive crime. But it is highly destructive, and its scale is threatening the extinction of some of the world’s most iconic species.
It is also grotesquely cruel: poachers slice off the faces of live rhinos to steal their horns; militia groups use helicopters to shoot down elephants for their tusks; factory farmers breed captive tigers to marinate their bones for medicinal wine and fry their flesh for the dinner plate; bears are kept for a lifetime in tiny cages to have their gall bladders regularly drained for liver tonic. But for any criminal who wants maximum money for minimum risk, it is most attractive.
Related: The crime family at the centre of Asia's animal trafficking network
Continue reading...The crime family at the centre of Asia's animal trafficking network
Bach brothers based in Vietnam and Thailand are responsible for smuggling thousands of tonnes of elephant ivory, rhino horn and other endangered species
There is a simple reason why there is always trouble in Nakhon Phanom. It is the reason why the US air force came here during the Vietnam war, and the reason why this dull and dusty town in north-east Thailand now serves as a primary gateway on the global animal trafficking highway. It is all to do with geography.
Nakhon Phanom, population 30,000, sits on the western bank of the Mekong river and is directly opposite the shortest route across Laos, on the other side of the river, and into Vietnam.
Related: Animal trafficking: the $23bn criminal industry policed by a toothless regulator
Continue reading...Revealed: the criminals making millions from illegal wildlife trafficking
Exclusive: Investigation uncovers the ringleaders profiting from $23bn annual trade in illicit animals after more than a decade of undercover surveillance
Help fund our journalism by becoming a Guardian supporter.A major investigation into global wildlife crime today names for the first time key traffickers and links their illegal trade to corrupt officials at the highest levels of one Asian country.
The investigation, published by the Guardian, exposes the central role of international organised crime groups in mutilating and killing tens of thousands of animals and threatening to eliminate endangered species including tigers, elephants and rhinos.
Related: The crime family at the centre of Asia's animal trafficking network
Continue reading...May 7, 2016
The $10bn question: what happened to the Marcos millions?
In the 21 years Ferdinand Marcos ran the Philippines, billions went missing. As his son stands for vice-president, will the stolen fortune ever be recovered?
In the early hours of a February morning in 1986, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos flew into exile. After 21 years as president of the Philippines, Marcos had rigged one too many elections. The army had turned against him, and the people had come out on to the streets in their thousands. The Marcoses had seen the crisis coming and been able to prepare their escape, so when they landed that morning at the Hickham USAF base in Hawaii, they brought plenty of possessions with them.
The official US customs record runs to 23 pages. In the two C-141 transport planes that carried them, they had packed: 23 wooden crates; 12 suitcases and bags, and various boxes, whose contents included enough clothes to fill 67 racks; 413 pieces of jewellery, including 70 pairs of jewel-studded cufflinks; an ivory statue of the infant Jesus with a silver mantle and a diamond necklace; 24 gold bricks, inscribed “To my husband on our 24th anniversary”; and more than 27m Philippine pesos in freshly-printed notes. The total value was $15m.
Other autocrats were stealing from their people – in Haiti, Nicaragua, Iran – but Marcos stole more and he stole better
All the Marcoses had to do was turn on the taps anywhere in the world and cash would come pouring out
Reports said the White House was leaning on the prosecutors to go soft to avoid embarrassment for five US presidents
Bongbong is still laying claim to stolen wealth: ‘If he wins, we don’t see how we can do our work’
Continue reading...March 8, 2016
Myanmar’s moment of truth | Nick Davies
There is an old video clip that is famous in Myanmar. It shows a comedian on stage gesticulating with effervescent energy as his straight man challenges him to dance in different styles: first, Indian; then, Chinese; and then in the style of Myanmar’s hated military regime, the State Law and Order Restoration Council. Suddenly, the comedian is all slippery slime, his hands reaching out to steal, picking imaginary pockets, grasping and grabbing and smirking at his own greed.
The camera cuts to the audience, beaming with delight, and then to a woman with long black hair who rocks forward in her seat laughing, politely raising her fingers to cover her mouth. In spite of the passing of 20 years since that video was shot in January 1996, the face is immediately recognisable. It is Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the country’s democracy movement, at whose house the comedy show took place.
For daring to make a laughing stock of the military elite the comedian was arrested at dawn four days later
Related: Aung San Suu Kyi wins outright majority in Myanmar election
A villager fetched the nervous police officers, who shot video of the crime scene. It reveals a crime of pure hatred
The interviews conducted by the police suggest that they had no intention of seriously investigating the soldiers
Related: Aung San Suu Kyi wins outright majority in Myanmar election
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