valleyboyabroad

Reply to But does anyone care about the truth? Part 1 in Blogging JoeUser Forums

Brad, You: "Do you understand the difference betrween a lie and a mistake" Yes I do. You can have it either way, but let's assume it was a mistake. A mistake that has cost thousands of lives and continues to do so on a daily basis requires responisibility for those mistakes. The best interpretation of the people in charge is that they were grossly incompetent with regard to either the decision making or the competence of their intelligence gathering organisati

Political correctness gone mad in Internet JoeUser Forums

There is a church on the South Island of New Zealand. with a magnificent, centuries old Yew tree. Oh, but hang on a second, no there isn't, because the Yew tree has now been chopped down at the behest of the good Reverend. Was the tree rotting

But does anyone care about the truth? Part 1 in Blogging JoeUser Forums

In the news over the last few days comes the revelation that Bush had the occupation of Iraq very much in his sights if not on his agenda within days of his dubious nomination to the Whitehouse. Since 9/11 the occupation of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam became central to his tenure. However, lacking any substantial evidence to implicate Iraq, a web of lies and deceptions was set in motion. As the US troop deaths climb to s

Reply to Human Experimentation in Blogging JoeUser Forums

Suspeckted, Organic food is very expensive I grant you. But then look at the health benefits. The US, and Britain is rapidly catching up, has epedemic obesity and it's difficult to deny that the fast food outlets and processed food in general is to blame. The amount of sugar, salt and fat in these products are way too much. The GM issue (I personally don't think that humans are being poisoned) is about establishing the principle that people should be

Global Warming in Blogging JoeUser Forums

There is much controversy as to whether global warming exists or not. Here in New Zealand they have had the worst summer in living memory, with rain, hailstones and barnstorming winds wreaking their familiar havoc. Giant waves in the Cook Strait mean't mountainous seas, ferry cancellations and capsized boats. In Britain there is now a regular cycles of inclemently hot summers and to

Human Experimentation in Blogging JoeUser Forums

Human Experimentation. There's an unusual parasite called a brainworm that has an extraordinary life cycle. Its prey is the humble ant Here's its story. It lives in the guts of sheep, cows and rabbits and lays eggs there which are then passed out with the faeces of the animal. The faeces are eaten by snails where the eggs undergo asexual reproduction and these are eventually excreted as tiny capsules within the snails mucus. These capsules are

Valleyboy Abroads 2003/2004 Odyssey in Blogging JoeUser Forums

It's that time of the year again. The pulse quickens and the heart starts to pound, in the Middle of Winter, the finest competition outside the Rugby World Cup gets under way. The Six Nations Tournament Brilliant, or it would be if I weren't stuck in dismal Auckland, New Zealand. I can't believe that I cannot see any of the games, or at least I haven't yet found a pub that carries the Rugby Channel. All the six nations are being shown on the Rugby chann

An Australian Hero - Albert Manatjira in Blogging JoeUser Forums

Dear all, High in the McDonell ranges in Central Australia, and indeed in much of the surrounding terrain you will find standing a lonely, beautiful tree swaying gently in the hot desert breath. It is a ghost gum. It is lonely because there is only so much water to go around. And it stands like a white fingered sentinel among the distant bloodwoods and the spinifex littering the red-gold soil. Fifty years ago

Valleyboy Abroads 2003/2004 Odyssey in Blogging JoeUser Forums

Dear all, Australia Day Part II On this, Australia day 26th January 2004, Billy Young was honoured with the Medal of the Order of Australia. This story is not so much a fete of Billy Youngs remarkable life, this has been told elsewhere, notably by Lynette Silver, who has painstakingly compiled Billys history and those of his fallen companions. It is rather the consequence of a elderly chap I met at a little know secluded oases in the h

Valleyboy Abroads 2003/2004 Odyssey in Blogging JoeUser Forums

Dear all, Australia Day. It is Australia day here, unsuprisingly, in the land of Oz. Strolling through Sydney, everywehere is crowded with flocking Australians, while bemused foreigners such as myself stare in wonder at all the flags and the overt patriotism. Trying to get lunch is a formidable obstacle, a madness in itself, but fortunately I have made friends with a Latvian owner of a Bavarian restaurant and am able to find a table, a

Reply to Valleyboyabroads 2003/2004 Odyssey in Blogging JoeUser Forums

Dear Wish you, Thankyou for the sentiment, you know it's been almost exactly a year since I last saw the Spanish steps in Rome? Or perhaps you do know that, whomsoever you might be. Though I think I know. Amon cara. yechydda,

Valleyboy Abroads 2003/2004 Odyssey in Blogging JoeUser Forums

From Efwa: Efwa, 'I loved the drama and poetry of this' It's a fantastic story isn't it? But remember it's Mollys story. I haven't seen the film, but I have seen where it was made in the outback. There's this little shanty town, the name escapes me for the moment, I'll dig it out of my notes when I get a chance, which is basically a bunkhouse next to a railway line. Population is four. There's a mad Englishman called Harry who w

Valleyboyabroads 2003/2004 Odyssey in Blogging JoeUser Forums

Dear all, In 1931 a young woman, Molly, 14, and her sisters, were forcibly removed from their families in East Pulbara, West Australia and transported to Moore river, North of Perth. This was a period in Australian history when children were forcibly removed from their parents 'for their own good'. They were of the people Mardudjura. Molly was the daughter borne or Maude, a Mardu woman, in 1917 and grew up around Jigalong, North East of Perth.</

Valleyboyabroads 2003/2004 Odyssey in Blogging JoeUser Forums

Dear all, Heading North from Port Augusta, the outback stretches endlessly before you. It is hot, dusty, dry and drippingly empty. The Stuart Highway winds slowly west and then north, skirting the magnificent Flinders ranges. It passes between vast, inland salt lakes, remnants of an ancient inland sea that evaporated millions of years ago leaving a rheumy white crust as the only memory of water. A warning sign on the shores of these desolate lakes

Scribbles from the Edge in Misc JoeUser Forums

Dear all, From time to time, like Odysseus, a wanderer will come across something so astounding that they are rendered speechless. I want you to come back with me to 1970, when something truly awful occured. The place is Yungay, in the Peruvian Andes, about forty miles north of Huaras. Huaras is one of those frontier towns, a place where a gumbo of souls gather for their own reasons; to escape, to widen their horizons, to challenge themselves. <P

Inner Space in Misc JoeUser Forums

Although the disapperaence of the human into the beyond had seemed to lessen the harshness of the weather cycles, the seasons were still brutish, extreme and unforgiving. I had kept my knives sharp, my arrows keen. At first I loathed the hunt, buit slowly came to understand, to accept it, it's necessity and it's purpose. I had read that at the end of a hunt, the beast gazes calmly, acceptingly, waits for the stroke that ends their life. It is true. I remembered Shela

Valleyboyabroads 2003/2004 Odyssey in Blogging JoeUser Forums

Dear all, The songlines are a fascinating concept. Among other things they are also a map of Australia from the aboriginal perspective. In theory an aborigine can sing himself right across the land, from one end to another. The song is like a mental map, a list of routes from one water hole to another, one piece of hunting ground to another. When an aborigine is born, he inherits part of the dreaming, and this is his responsibility for life, to maintai

Valleyboyabroads 2003/2004 Odyssey in Blogging JoeUser Forums

Dear all, As part of my current odyssey, my walkabout has taken me deep into the aboriginal territory of thinking. The aborigines are not one people but are many, and there are as many as two hundred different languages. They are an ancient people, having lived in Australia, some would say, for up to fifty thousand years, populating the land in a series of crashing waves. They have a beautiful creation story called the dreamtime. The following is from B

Valleyboyabroads 2003/2004 Odyssey in Blogging JoeUser Forums

Dear all, Finally back in Sydney again. I flew in tired but happy having spent a marvellous New Year back in Tasmania. God but I love that place. I took a taxi and was chatting to the driver and said this to him. He told me that he'd come here fifteen years earlier for two weeks construction work. He said he knew within five minutes that he would stay here for the rest of his life. And he had. I was relieved to find that my suitcase was stil

Valleyboyabroads 2003/2004 Odyssey in Blogging JoeUser Forums

Well I had a bloody rotten Christmas, full of flu and cold in a damp Melbourne hotel. I even wrote a song about it (Cud, we're putting the band back together for the fourth time): Something I penned while full of cold and squeezing my breath out through my lungs. 'On a damp Melbourne eve still unable to dream, where even the songs have grown quiet, going through hell in my stop-gap hotel, it's the silence that makes me run riot. Thinking of you as I chew on co

Aboriginal Studies in Politics JoeUser Forums

This, like all history, is fabricated All history is a fabrication of some kind. Records of the past are incomplete, written records carry their author's bias, historians their own prejudices, no matter how well controlled. A fabrication is the result. The title of Keith Windschuttle's book The Fabrication of Aboriginal History is some crazy tautology. Maybe this is why the discussion about it continues to go round and round in circles. Windschuttle argues in the final

Aboriginal Studies in Politics JoeUser Forums

Keith Windschuttle: No slander in exposing cultural brutality December 29, 2003 In December last year a group of demonstrators stood in Elizabeth Street, Sydney, outside the book launch of The Fabrication of Aboriginal History holding up signs denouncing the author as racist. They were employees of the SBS indigenous affairs unit and readily admitted none had read my book. Instead, their protest was sparked by an article on this page where I said the Tasmanian Aborigin

Scribbles from the Edge in Philosophy JoeUser Forums

Ferabo, 'You have something that John, I, and so many others have lost--your youth!! ' Oi! Speak for yourself! I'm still young! Well except for the nostril and ear hairs - I mean what's the bloody survival advantage of that? Why after the age of 30 does your nostril hair decide that it wants to see the world and start sprouting from the cavities? And why do the words lumbago and arthritis and prostrate suddenly take on a very real meaning? Why is it t

Scribbles from the Edge in Philosophy JoeUser Forums

Skitty, You know I've been packing boxes getting ready to return to the land of my fathers, the land of song, Wales. While doing this I stumbled accross an old, occasional diary I kept from when I was about your age. It's fascinating, almost like a time capsule, as though I'm talking to myself across the weight and wealth of years that have since passed. When I was your age, the cold war was a very real worry. The arms race was escalating, social order was fal

Inner Space in Misc JoeUser Forums

Ishmael waved Hu forward and gestured to the seat that had been made ready for him. Hu smiled and bowed briefly, almost imperceptibly. He declined the seat and instead sat neatly, in one fluid movement on the floor gesturing for Ishmael to join him on the rosewood veneer. 'The earth would be younger but for this floor.' Hu observed smiling. 'I fear I'm too old to learn to be as flexible as your goodself master Hu.' Ishmael smiled. Hu seemed to consid