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Post by Wyndham on May 14, 2009 6:49:46 GMT -5
You know, I could never understand sport hunting -- killing for fun. To eat, yes, but not for fun. How could it be fun?
One of the conservation areas where I walk my Dog Alice is pretty substantial, and borders farms on all sides. You can walk for an hour and a half there and not see anybody. Because this is so, there's usually white tail deer and wild turkeys. One day, rambling through the brush and up some gullies, Alice and I wandered out of the park and onto one of the farms. I swear, no more than ten feet beyond the park's boundaries one of the farmers had set up a deer blind where a gully enterred a copse, and crossed with a creek. Alice and I had been following a deer trail, so I would guess its a good place. I had not seen any deer (or turkeys) for a while (Alice is good at finding them, and likes to chase them -- God forbid that she ever catches one). Guess I know why now. They're probably in this guys freezer.
Keep in mind, this farmer isn't really hunting. He's sitting there and executing the deer (and probably turkeys). Its not like he needs the food either. Looks to me like he has about a three hundred acre mixed farm, and lives about 4 miles out of town.
Very odd. What's the kick?
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Post by Wyndham on May 14, 2009 6:54:00 GMT -5
Oh Robert and Pink. Roo hunting is in your national song no?
Let's see if I can do this from memory
Once a jolly swagman sat upon his billyong Underneath the shade of a calliope tree and he sang, as he sat and stuffed a jump-buck in his bag 'You'll come a'waltzing Matilda with me' . . .
Must be a good song. Learned it in about grade 3, and still remember some snatches! Under the old Ontario public school cirriculum we use to learn songs from all Dominions, and for the purposes of the Province, Newfoundland still counted as a separate Dominion (song was 'Eye's a'by'). I don't know if they still do.
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pinkozcat
Full Member
Remember - pillage first, THEN burn.
Posts: 233
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Post by pinkozcat on May 14, 2009 9:04:36 GMT -5
Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong Under the shade of a coolibar tree And He sang as he watched and waited 'til his billy boiled You'll come a waltzing matilda with me CHORUS Waltzing Matilda, waltzing matilda, You'll come a waltzing matilda with me And he sang as he watched and waited 'til his billy boiled You'll Come a waltzing matilda with me. Down came a jumbuck to drink at the billabong Up Jumped the Swagman and grabbed him with glee And he sang as he shoved that jumbuck in his tuckerbag You'll come a waltzing matilda with me. CHORUS Up rode the squatter mounted on his thoroughbred Down rode the troopers one, two, three Where's that jolly jumbuck you've got in your tuckerbag You'll come a waltzing matilda with me CHORUS Up jumped the swagman and sprang into the billabong You'll never catch me alive quoth he And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong You'll come a waltzing matilda with me. CHORUS A swagman is an itinerant worker/hobo/tramp type, a jumbuck is a sheep, a billy is a tin can with a handle and a matilda is a swag - bedroll and spare pair of boots etc., tuckerbag is where he kept his food. The squatter is the station owner and it is his sheep, troopers are police, a billabong is a waterhole formed when the curve in a stream is cut off. Not a kangaroo in sight - the squatter had probably shot them all ...
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Post by Wyndham on May 14, 2009 16:13:28 GMT -5
Pink. You've destroyed a fond memory of grade three. Teacher told us a jumpbuck was a Kangaroo!
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Post by Tenarke on May 14, 2009 19:28:02 GMT -5
Fair dinkum, Oz!
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Post by RobertGraves on May 15, 2009 14:45:29 GMT -5
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Post by Wyndham on May 17, 2009 6:59:22 GMT -5
You know, we should be on top of this. Our delegation should be right behind -- don't eat their roos! Eat our seals instead!
Issue is that we have a long list of critters in need of eating (preferable, maybe, to just shooting them as is now done). Stopper is optics. How could we continue 'don't eat their roos! Eat our beavers!'.
That could so badly misfire in translation: either an on-slaught of tourists from PRC, or instant war.
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pinkozcat
Full Member
Remember - pillage first, THEN burn.
Posts: 233
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Post by pinkozcat on May 17, 2009 23:01:42 GMT -5
We eat our roos. At least one can buy the meat at Woolies and my youngest daughter says that it is delicious. Personally, I wouldn't touch it. But it is supposed to be very healthy with no fat at all and every so often someone comes up with the theory that we would be better off farming roos, for the general consumers, than sheep. I am not sure about the logistics of it all; I can't see them being driven through a narrow race and being killed with a blow to the head. I am not sure how they are slaughtered for the domestic market now. Just to change the subject, Western Australia has, for the fourth time at referendum, rejected summer time. We have had four trials, the last one was for three years and the 'no' vote was bigger than at the other three polls which were held after one-year trials. I am not sure which part of 'no' the pollies don't understand.
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Post by RobertGraves on May 18, 2009 2:25:38 GMT -5
Pink, you remember the ad that the beef industry ran which depicted roo meat crawling with worms and maggots? The ad was to counter roo gaining a serious foothold in the domestic supermarket meat market.
Talk about a scare campaign.
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Post by Tenarke on May 18, 2009 18:53:53 GMT -5
“Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed, that he is grown so great?”
Sorry; I just couldn’t resist it.
This discussion of kangaroo meat and Wyndham’s proposed alternate sources of protein triggered a couple of associations. The first was an article I once read on the early history of Jewish settlers in the great plains of the Dakotas, ruefully entitled “Prairie Dogs Aren’t Kosher”.
Secondly, I am reminded that though I have never been to Australia I did once taste kangaroo. During WW II the Navy had my father shuttling between Sydney and some pretty fetid spots in New Guinea. Dad said that he really much preferred Sydney. I trust that this will not be taken as faint praise. During this time he managed to mail us a can of kangaroo tail soup which we ate and found to be delicious.
Oz, as to domesticating kangaroos for meat; the thought also bothers me. If raised and bred for food they would necessarily evolve into slow, fat and stupid creatures. Consider domestic cattle compared to the wild cattle from which they were bred. Or even better the dumb, clumsy and flightless domestic turkey against the swift and wily wild turkey.
Indeed if the speed and agility weren’t bred out how could they be herded or fenced? What kind of steed would a “rooboy” need to ride? A dirtbike?
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Post by RobertGraves on May 19, 2009 3:37:27 GMT -5
Crikey.com article:
Why Bush invaded Iraq: the war on Gog and Magog Visiting Professor at Yale University Clive Hamilton writes:
On Sunday GQ magazine published an amazing scoop revealing that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld embellished top-secret wartime memos with covers featuring quotations from the Bible.
Leaked by an unknown official who was disturbed enough to keep copies but reluctant to fan Islamic fears that the United States was on a crusade, the memos are being seen as Rumsfeld’s means of manipulating or ingratiating himself with the born-again President.
From Ephesians he chose:
Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.
But there is another, perhaps more alarming, story about Bush’s Christian fundamentalism and the Iraq War that has yet to come to light.
In 2003 while lobbying leaders to put together the Coalition of the Willing, President Bush spoke to France’s President Jacque Chirac. Bush told Chirac that Gog and Magog were at work in the Middle East and they had to be defeated.
Gog and Magog are Biblical creatures, forces of the Apocalypse, who appear in Genesis and Ezekiel. At the end of the millennium they would come out of the north and, unless stopped, destroy Israel in a final battle. Bush believed the time had now come for that battle.
The Book of Revelation took up the Old Testament prophesy:
And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle ... and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.
Bush is believed to have told Chirac: "This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins".
The story emerged only because the Elysee Palace, baffled by Bush’s words, sought advice from Thomas Roemer, a professor of theology at the University of Lausanne. Roemer subsequently gave an account in the September 2003 issue of University’s review, Allez savoir. The small piece apparently went unnoticed, although it was repeated in a French newspaper in 2007.
The story has been confirmed by Chirac himself in a new book yet to be published in English by French journalist Jean Claude Maurice. Chirac is said to have been stupefied and disturbed by Bush’s invocation of Biblical prophesy to justify the war in Iraq and "wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs".
In the same year he spoke to Chirac, Bush had reportedly said to the Palestinian foreign minister that he was on "a mission from God" in launching the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and was receiving commands from the Lord.
There can be little doubt now that President Bush’s reason for launching the war in Iraq was fundamentally religious. He was driven by his understanding of the realisation of Biblical revelation in which he had been chosen to serve as the instrument of the Lord.
That the US President saw himself as the vehicle of God whose duty was to prevent the Apocalypse raises serious questions about Australia’s participation in the war. In his intimate moments with Bush, did John Howard hear about Gog and Magog and the holy mission to fight the forces of Satan?
More than three thousand US troops have died in the campaign to defeat the evil forces from the north. Were Australian troops sent to risk their lives because of George Bush’s Biblical delusions?
In a coda to this story I stumbled across a curious fact. It's common knowledge that while a senior at Yale George W. Bush was a member of the exclusive and secretive Skull & Bones society, a fact that has given rise to lurid stories about an old boys’ network at the pinnacle of corporate, government and CIA power.
George’s father, George H.W. Bush had also been a “Bonesman”, as indeed had his father. Members of Skull & Bones are assigned or take on nicknames when they join. And what was George Bush Senior’s nickname?
"Magog".
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Post by Wyndham on May 19, 2009 17:38:19 GMT -5
I saw that Robert. Doesn't inspire confidence eh? Well, that nightmare is over. On to the next catastrophe (actually I hope we're in for a rest).
Tenarke: you're right about the Turkeys. The wild variety are starting to come back where I live. I see them in the parks. First time I saw them, it was a foggy autumn and a string of grey shadows went zipping through the mist parallel to Alice and I. Creatures about four feet high, and moving FAST. I thought they were velociraptors. My dog tried to take on a Turkey cock once. She was chasing some chicks. Thing flew at her out of nowhere, neck forward like a goose, wings spread wide. I believe now that dinosaurs live. So does Alice. She didn't stop until she was in the back seat of the car.
A domesticated Kangaroo would come in at about 500 pounds and look sort of like a gigantic gerbil with a long neck. Not very atractive.
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Post by Wyndham on May 21, 2009 6:43:03 GMT -5
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Post by RobertGraves on May 22, 2009 19:29:38 GMT -5
Crikey, Noam must be how old now?
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Post by Wyndham on May 25, 2009 21:48:55 GMT -5
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