Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

welcome back D

Yo Don glad to see you back!

and I am with all the others in saying I am deeply sorry about you losing a best mate as they are very hard to come by and when gone leave you quite lost.

I did not take you or your post as being racist...just that you were very concerned about fellow mammals.

Just to re-ignite the debate....

I remember years ago in NZ.... the Taiwanese used to come down every summer for the squid run... trouble was the current, and the squid used to be about 8 miles off the coast.... the declared waters at that time were 12 miles....

Used to be that many of them you could see a string of lights along the horizon at night as far as you could see in both directions....

The motherships used to sit on or just in/over the 12 mile limit... and send fast little dories inside the limit to fish.... that's if they could be bothered....

At the time the NZ Navy didn't have patrol boats that could catch them and the situation was getting pretty volitile with some of the local fishermen letting off a couple of rifle shots....

Went on for a couple of years, the Taiwanese claimed squid was a traditional food and that (somehow) NZ was a traditional hunting ground - bullocks...

Anyway the Navy was due to take delivery of some new patrol boats that were faster than the dories... so the cheecky buggers decided to get in and make a real killing before they arrived.....

One of the patrol boats caught one of the dories about 5 mile inside the limit and chased it as in ran for the mothership..... wouldn't stop even with a cannon shot across the bow.....

So the RAAF scrambled a fighter and the straffed the bastard across the fore deck.....

End of problem, no further incursions. The next year NZ declared a 120 mile zone and made it known that both the Navy and airforce would be "rigourously" enforcing it.

I don't have a problem with the Japanese claiming that whale meat is a traditional food source and as such they have a traditional right to hunt for it.....

Just do it in your traditional waters - off Japan....... what no whales left.... stiff!!!!

Straff the bastards I say.....

P.S ... just thought I'd add... not because they're Japanese, but because they're lying, inhumane killers and plundering pirates with no respect for international opinion or the value of preservation of a scarce resource.

Hi all and Rup

I kinda agree with you, in that all indigenous people should have the right to pursue their traditional foods and I think culturally itsa a good thing! :faroah:
However if fishing and hunting is being pursued for cultural reasons then I believe that they should totally embrace their traditional experience. If whaling was traditionally undertaken in a sailing ship then so be it use one, leave the hi tech ship and exploding head harpoons behind, ditch the depth sounder learn the seas and embrace the whole experience... If this was done then maybee the quota would be a little less relivent and the cultural experience would be maintained

AMEN

Thanks for coming back, Don. I have really enjoyed your knowledge and humor. I am so sorry to hear about your friend. I cannot imagine how hard that must be.

I also would much prefer that the whales be left alive. They are majestic creatures, and are a lot more intelligent than we are smart enough to realize.

I am probably hyper-sensitive to even the suggestion of racism, and probably see it where it was not really intended. My husband and I are Caucasian and adopted our girls from China. I admit that I react in defense of them. I also have a problem with violence; war and hatred confuse me. I guess we just stumbled on a couple of my hot buttons, and I shall endeavor to calm down. At the same time though, I encourage all of us to think about what we are saying and how it might be perceived by someone of another ethnic/religious/sexual/socio-political group. Sometimes our ingrained way of saying things come across poorly. Right now I'm having a debate with myself over an expression I caught myself use the other day: "Wait just a cotton-pickin' minute." I haven't figured out whether it is racist, although it probably comes from the days of slaves picking cotton. OK, maybe I spend to much time thinking.

Welcome back, Don!!! (Now, about my shy tilapia gals...)

Janet, so would a cotton picking minute be more or less a regular minute?

Personally the concept of racism is taken a bit too far in some places imho. Like the Cricket, and the football. You can call some1 a ***** ***** ****** in order to throw him off his game, and that's ok, yet to call him a "***** ***** Pommy ******" is racist! I don't get it. It's simply a descriptor in many ways. Even if you remove the Pommy and make it more correctly 'English' it's still racist.
But the weird thing is, the poms don't care too much, so it's rarely called racist. yet as soon as you call some1 a ***** ***** Indian ******, You can get called up before tribunals, get sacked, suspended and ridiculed by the media.
My biggest problem is that if you call some1 a black B***** then yeah, you're using the fact that he looks different. But jabbing at some because their allegience lies somewhere different to yours, isn't that what we do to each other who barrack for different teams? They're only countries for Christ's sake!
Whilst I believe persecution of people and treating them different because of their race or country of origin is inherently evil, saying that somebody is from another country is NOT.
I was actually called down the other day, because we were talking about some1 and some1 asked 'who?' and I said 'The little Asian Bloke' apparently 'Little' is a derogative term, cos I'm tall, and because I said he was Asian It was then RACIST!?!?!?

anyway all I'm saying, is treat every1 equal, call it how it is, a spade is a damn spade and a shovel is a shovel, and let's get on with our lives and stop being so goddamned precious.

PS lovely to hear about your girls Janet, My brother lives in China, and he and I both think they're a beautiful people. Adoption must be difficult for a mother, not having given birth an all, but it is so important with all the young children suffering without 1 on 1 care that parents can give.

PPS Welcome Back Don, It was a while ago, if I said anything I would regret, I do apologise (too afraid to look) I know what it's like, I once had a not too close friend the victim of a hit an run, and he survived 6 hours in the gutter before passing on before the ambos got there. I know your pain, and it does take a long time to get over. If it was a really close friend, then I really feel for you mate, it's just not fair.

Interestingly, I do not in the least regret skipping the pregnancy and birth, or even the first year+ of each of my children's lives. It probably seems strange, but without those sacrifices, I would not have the wonderful children that I have. And at the same time, without making the sacrifices of difficult pregnancies, induced labor, and a C-section, my sister would not have the wonderful children she has.

I suppose mothers' (parents') brains just work like that.

If folks wish to discuss adoption, I would be happy to participate, but we should start a different thread. It's not really a vent.

Hi Beardy
I kinda agree with you, (here comes the 'but') But...there is a kind of reverse discrimination at play here...I am primarily Anglo-Celt in origin, and apparently do not qualify for the strange term 'indigenous'. Really, there are no such people in the known world as indigenous, it is one of those 'yo-yo' terms thrown out to imply that specific cultures have inherently more value and worth than others, and as such, are entitled to indulge themselves in activities such as whaling, eating turtles, dugong, ..... (insert most endangered species here) etc specifically because their forebears did so and that is considered 'culturally' significant. To be prevented from doing so (for any reason) is taken as lessening their 'value' and 'spiritual worth', insults their ancestry, and demeans their humanity...well, that are some of the excuses they offer. To me, we are all members of that strange tribe of humanity, living in the same canoe, with very limited options for the future, and the sooner we all realise this, the better off we all will be. I agree, traditional foods should be harvested by traditional means, it makes them taste better! I do object to so-called indigenous cultures utilising the developments of mainstream culture such as sanitation, medicine, electricity, computers, mobile phones.....(insert your choice of 21Century technology here), and then rubbishing mainstream society as worthless, and demanding protection on certain resources (such as whales...).

*deep breath*

KP, I had an experience similar to yours...I identified a gentleman in my ward to another nurse as the 'one-armed man', to positively identify him in a room of white males. It is important to do this in medicine...I was accused of discriminating. I agree, wholeheartedly... I was... that is the very essence of discrimination, to separate through differences. We need to stand up and speak against this half-brained understanding of relationships.

*another deep breath*

Don, good to hear from you...I thought that there was a deeper issue underlying your posts. My sympathy, and my condolences. I deal with issues of grief and loss both professionally and personally every day. It sharpens your perception of life, and shortens your tolerance, at least it does to me. Persevere. People say that grief fades... I haven't found that to be so... I just learn to conceal it better. Perhaps that makes me a better person, perhaps that makes me a better liar. But I am so glad that you are back

Interesting SNAG!
I deal with grief/loss/death by using a thought process called the 5 emotional stages;
anger,barganing,denial,resentment,acceptance in no particular order and no particular time frame, I watch my thoughts and try to catogorize them to see where I am coming from...end rant now.
Think I was going to go OTT

Yeah, I know of them...but I lost my instruction manual when I was a child...I don't work like the book says I should.

But do you work the way the boss says you should Snag?

never rent or put a rental through a company called burswood property transactions.
They treat their tenants with arrogance and any complaint you have will be met with total disinterest.
we have been good tenants paying our rent on time and looking after the place and the property manager had the gall to complain about a few weeds in the front yard and the fact a patch of grass has browned (40c days, DUH)

had my partner in tears after she argued with me in our kitchen, blowing the issue out of all proportion.

:-) yeah I had a bad experience with Ray White Bundoora. They never cared much (Landlord was great though) and when we left, gave prospective tennants my work mobile number to organise property viewings! I went off my bloody tree!