Daily Caller
Panda Conservation Projects Backfiring After American Zoos Dished Out Millions To China
Giant Panda at the Atlanta Zoo. Creative Commons license -Flickr/Rob
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Ireland Owens
American zoos have dished out millions to China for panda conservation projects, but the money has instead largely been spent developing China’s economy, according to The New York Times.
U.S. zoos have sent tens of millions of dollars to China for the right to host pandas in the U.S., according to the NYT. Despite the U.S. government requiring that the funds be allocated toward panda conservation, the Chinese government has spent millions on various other expenses, including roads, apartment buildings and museums.
American zoos pay around $1 million annually to receive pandas from China, according to the NYT. Some of the American zoos were aware that the funds were not always being used to protect pandas, but were concerned that they may have to stop displaying pandas and return them to China if the payments ceased.
Many American zoos rely on displaying pandas to boost merchandise sales and attract visitors, according to the NYT. Some U.S. regulators have previously raised concerns about Chinese administrator’s use of the funds, and regulators halted payments to China in 2003 due to inadequate documentation.
“There was always pushing back and forth about how the U.S. shouldn’t ask anything,” Kenneth Stansell, a former Fish and Wildlife official, told the NYT.
Two giant Chinese pandas arrived in Washington, D.C. in October and are set to debut at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in January 2025, according to CNN. The zoo has already begun to release panda-themed merchandise, according to Washingtonian.
“It’s really alarming that they’re approving these things in the first place,” said Delcianna Winders, an animal-law professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School, the NYT reported. “And then there’s no follow-up to track that the money is actually going to what it’s supposed to be going to.”
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Wallace White
The liberal parliament in the United Kingdom is on the brink of a collapse after a scandal involving mass rape perpetrated by migrant gangs rocked national politics across the pond.
Jess Phillips, the Home Office Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls and a Labour Party member, blocked an inquiry by the town of Oldham into Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s conduct while overseeing the prosecution of a migrant grooming gang’s sexual abuse of children in the town from 2011 to 2014, according to a Jan. 2 report from the Telegraph. The move prompted mass outcry and renewed attention to the UK’s ongoing crisis involving organized migrant grooming gangs, largely consisting of Pakistani nationals, stemming from waves of unchecked immigration.
Chiefly, critics accuse Starmer of failing to tackle migrant rape gangs when he headed the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) from 2008 and 2013, complicating his political situation amid calls for his resignation and a tanking approval rating. Starmer, in his capacity as prime minister, allowed illegal immigrants to apply for asylum even after arriving in the UK, according to the BBC.
In 2009, the CPS under Starmer dropped charges against a Pakistani grooming and rape gang in Rochdale — despite the prosecution having DNA and hours of video evidence of the crimes — claiming the teenage victim wouldn’t have been viewed as a “credible” witness, the BBC reported in 2012. The case was reopened in 2012 when Nazir Afzal took over as a prosecutor for the CPS, where he secured convictions for eight men involved in the gang.
Ex-detective Maggie Oliver, who helped uncover the abuse in Rochdale, said that Starmer is complicit in the mishandling of the investigations into the rape gangs, according to The Telegraph.
“The time is long overdue for a full national inquiry into the rape gangs scandal,” Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative Party leader, said on X Jan. 2. “Trials have taken place all over the country in recent years, but no one in authority has joined the dots – 2025 must be the year that the victims start to get justice.”
The Labour Party, led by Starmer, has had a historic polling collapse according to Sky News polling released Dec. 22., and for the first time, the party’s polling dipped below 27% despite winning one of the largest majorities in parliament history just five months prior. It is currently projected to lose its majority in the upcoming May election, and the Reform UK party, started by conservative politician and architect of Brexit, Nigel Farage, could supplant the Labour Party as the most popular in the UK and win a majority of seats, according to an analysis by the Telegraph.
The UK’s immigration policies remain one of voters’ top concerns, according to YouGov polling from Jan. 6. As of 2022, 14% of the UK’s population was foreign-born. Asylum seekers made up 4% of the foreign-born population in the UK the same year, and a majority were from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, India and Bangladesh, according to Migration Observatory.
Foreign nationals living in the UK are three times more likely to be arrested for sex offenses than British nationals, and twice as likely to be arrested for crimes in general, The Telegraph found.
Billionaire tech mogul and President-elect Donald Trump’s confidant Elon Musk, who has become increasingly outspoken about UK politics, accused Phillips on X of trying to protect Starmer amid his political struggles by squashing the national inquiry request. Musk’s interest in the scandal and recent involvement brought the issue international attention.
Starmer, in response to the public outcry, accused people of “jumping on the bandwagon of the far-right” for calling attention to the issue.
“It is so disrespectful it is beyond belief,” Sammy Woodhouse, activist and independent reporter covering the grooming scandal in the UK, said on X. “[Starmer is] branding people again as ‘far-right.’ This is not being ‘far-right,’ this is people having genuine concerns and outrage [sic] … we are talking about children being groomed, abused, raped, tortured, trafficked, murdered, blamed, ignored, impregnated, criminalized.”
Multiple local reports over the years have detailed the astonishing extent of sexual abuse by foreign migrants.
In 2014, a report from the town of Rotherham found that at least 1,400 girls were sexually exploited, mostly by Pakistani migrants, between 1997 and 2013. Local authorities were also apprehensive about identifying the ethnic background of the perpetrators for fear of reprisals.
Ten members of the Labour council wrote to the Home Secretary, Conservative Amber Rudd, in 2016 claiming that allegations of abuse in the town of Telford were “sensationalized,” according to the Free Press. It was later revealed by The Mirror in 2018 that “up to” 1,000 underage girls were raped and abused there in what was deemed an “ongoing” crisis at the time, that started in the 1980s. The report claimed that authorities feared accusations of “racism” for sharing details about majority-Asian assailants.
Starmer’s office did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Daily Caller
Musk Completely Derails UK Political Establishment, Accuses PM’s Party Of Covering Up Muslim Rape Gangs
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Thomas English
Elon Musk ignited a political firestorm in Britain after accusing Prime Minister Keir Starmer of complicity in the “rape of Britain” Friday, reanimating a years-old debate over organized child sexual exploitation by predominately Pakistani men.
Musk has ravaged Starmer and other U.K. officials in a barrage of tweets over the past week, primarily accusing Starmer of inadequately prosecuting rape gangs during his tenure as director of public prosecutions (DPP) from 2008 to 2013. The SpaceX founder also attacked Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips, who he said “deserves to be in prison,” for blocking a government-led inquiry into child sexual exploitation by gangs in Oldham, a northern England town.
“Starmer was complicit in the RAPE OF BRITAIN when he was head of Crown Prosecution for 6 years,” Musk wrote. “Starmer must go and he must face charges for his complicity in the worst mass crime in the history of Britain.”
The recent flurry of attacks mark the world’s richest man’s latest incursion into international political affairs, with Musk now focusing in particular on the United Kingdom’s decades-long struggle to curb the proliferation of “grooming gangs” primarily comprised of Pakistani-descended men who mainly target native Briton girls for sexual exploitation, The Telegraph reported in an analysis of the persistent issue.
The most infamous cases involving these gangs occurred in northern England towns like Oldham, Telford and Rotherham — the severity of which has been whitewashed for fear of accusations of Islamophobia, according to The Telegraph.
“To protect ‘community relations’, the British state has gone to immense lengths to cover it up,” he wrote. “Reports have been blocked and deliberately kept out of the public eye. Any connection with ethnicity, immigration, or Islam was downplayed … the evidence that British Pakistani men were over-represented among the perpetrators was spiked to avoid uncomfortable truths.”
Musk Starmer and the Labour government with operating a two-tiered justice system, suggesting in a meme Thursday that the prime minister prosecutes “rape and violent crime” with leniency while instead focusing on policing online speech. He also said the Labour Party “opposes a national inquiry on the mass rape of little girls in Britain for one reason only: It will show that they were complicit.”
The prime minister defended his prosecutorial record as DPP in a press conference Monday, saying he “brought the first major prosecution of an Asian grooming gang in this particular case” and “changed the whole prosecution approach.” While largely avoiding mentioning Musk by name, Starmer also condemned the spread of what he called “lies and misinformation” from detractors who are “interested in themselves” rather than the victims.
Starmer also defended Phillips in the press conference, insisting she has done “a thousand times more than they’ve even dreamt about when it comes to protecting victims of sexual abuse throughout her entire career.” Phillips blocked a Tory-led motion Thursday to hold a public inquiry into the historic sexual abuse in Oldham because it was for “Oldham council alone” to decide whether one was necessary, according to The Telegraph.
Musk’s attacks are not limited to the Labour Party alone, however. The Tesla CEO also called for Nigel Farage, the architect of Brexit and the leader of the Reform Party, to be replaced as party leader because he “doesn’t have what it takes.”
The comments come hours after Farage referred to Musk as a “friend” in an interview with the BBC’s “Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg” program.
“Well, this is a surprise!” Farage wrote in response to Musk. “Elon is a remarkable individual but on this I am afraid I disagree. My view remains that Tommy Robinson is not right for Reform and I will never sell out my principles.”
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