The bush is alive – insects, scurrying creatures and large marsupials. I felt at home.
Some of the fantastic wildlife around Salle in OZ
Students show leadership on Climate Change!!
In 60 towns and cities across the UK students a planning a schools walkout to protest the lack of action on Climate Change.
Once again it is the youth who are being responsible while their supposedly ‘responsible’ elders are languishing. While report after report comes out about the catastrophe affecting the environment as a direct result of the actions of mankind the politicians obfuscate and sit on their hands.
We are staring at a future of mass extinctions, the loss of all insects, the collapse of complex food webs and global warming that would put most of our cities and agricultural land under water. What are our elders doing? They are ignoring it.
Thank heavens for youth. They are the ones that are going to be inheriting the mess we’ve made of the world. Our short-term greed is destroying the planet. We are beset by huge problems of our own making:
Overpopulation
Species extinction
Habitat destruction
Pollution
Global warming
War
Mass poverty
Mass migration
What are the current political leaders doing about it? Sweet Fuck All!!
Thank heavens for the kids! At least they are fighting for the future! More power to them!!
Opher’s World – gives them its support!!
The world’s worth fighting for!! More power to the Youth of today!!
Killing our precious animals for fun!!
Tess killed this giraffe for fun.
She grins behind his dead body in this shocking viral photo — but right now, we have a precious chance to turn this tragedy into a lifeline for giraffes everywhere!
Join the AVAAZ campaign and stop these bastards killing such beautiful creatures for fun!!
https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/giraffe_protection_plan_rbl_loc/?cCAwEjb
Louisiana Alligators!
Dear Mr Bolsonaro – a poem
Dear Mr Bolsonaro
Dear Mr Bolsonaro, please take a minute
In between chopping down trees
And bringing all those with contrary views
To their knees
To listen to the birds, the animals
And the pleas;
The people who care about nature
And the purity of the breeze
Who feel the need for oxygen
And life within our seas.
Please Mr Bolsonaro, please.
Opher 8.1.2019
Trump Mark 2 – the scourge of the Amazon. Another black and white populist who wants to rule with the gun, cares not a jot for the environment or sensibilities and is only concerned with himself, getting elected and the fanatical support of his base.
He talks of clearing rainforest, putting a motorway through the wilderness, opening up logging and mining. It’s only ever about money.
Mr Bolsonaro – there’s more to life than money!
Australia – trees and animals at night – weird and wonderful
Why is it considered alright to kill whales in such an agonising and barbaric manner?
Just imagine if we killed cows in a similar manner!
If we drove through fields chasing them, finally firing a harpoon into their sides to explode into their guts and send out barbs to anchor them and we then dragged them around the field on the end of a long line while they screamed and slowly died in agony for hours from their internal injuries.
I think there might be a public outrage.
I think people would demand that the cows were at least killed humanely.
Whales are more intelligent than cows. They have advanced social structures. They have culture. They are gentle creatures. Why would anybody feel it is acceptable to kill them in this brutal savage manner?
The Hunt – a whaling poem
The Hunt
I hear them come.
I run.
But there is nowhere
To hide.
I dive.
I surface and gasp
And dive.
But they are relentless.
They never tire.
In panic
I strain and race.
Their engines pound
Their mechanical,
Metallic coldness,
Their metronomic
Melody
Of death.
No escape.
No matter which way
I twist and turn.
They hunt me down.
Desperate.
I gasp.
And it hits.
It slams into my side.
Explodes.
Sending white hot barbs
Of liquid fury
To pierce my insides.
No matter how much I struggle
They have me
Torn, bleeding
And pierced
Writhing in agony,
On the end of a rope.
It pulls, it rips, it tears
But there is no escape.
I feel the life blood
Flow freely
As the searing pain
Floods my mind,
As my body weakens.
Yet still,
Futilely,
Driven by the
Will to survive,
With the knowledge
Of the hopelessly,
I thrash.
It is tearing my insides.
The agony is white hot.
My mind shrieks.
Yet there is no escape.
With gaff and hook
They reel me in
And, eventually,
I cease to struggle.
Opher – 28.12.2018
A hundred pound harpoon is blasted from a gun on deck into the flesh of the whale as it surfaces. It penetrates deep and explodes, ripping flesh and sending barbs deep into the tissue to anchor it to the ship.
As many as seven harpoons may be used.
The whale thrashes around in agony as the barbs tears at its flesh but it can’t escape.
It will take half an hour of searing pain until the loss of blood causes it to weaken and die.
The whalers do not care about the whales intelligence, nor its highly developed social life. They do not care about the songs it has composed or its family. They do not care about how much agony they cause. To them it is a big piece of meat to be sold for profit.
They bloody the waters, hack and saw the flesh into lumps to sell.
It is all about the money.
Do Elephants Dream? – A Poem
Do Elephants Dream?
Do elephants dream
Of their slaughter?
Do they cherish life?
Do elephants wish
For a better life
For their children?
Opher 29.11.2018
Too many humans see animals as expendable ‘things’ to be shot, cleared away, driven out and treated with no care.
They are not ‘things’. They are creatures just like us who relish life, who care for their children, who are conscious.
The Genocide of Evangelism!
The effect of the Spanish invasion of the Inca nation in South America is well-documented. That civilisation was annihilated as the conquistadors plundered, tortured and raped their way around in their lust for gold, conquest and to spread the word of Christianity.
What happened in Tierra Del Fuego is less well known.
When the Spanish first visited the large archipelago at the tip of South America they were amazed by the sight of tens of thousands of campfires that lit the place up at night. It is estimated that 500,000 South American Indians inhabited the area. Tierra Del Fuego literally means land of fire. Those natives, despite the freezing temperature, went naked and lived by hunting the numerous wildlife, mainly sealions. They did this from canoes. It is thought that the large amount of sealion blubber in their diet raised their metabolism to enable them to deal with the cold.
That discovery was the end of that way of life and the end of that half a million people.
By the time I visited Ushuaia in 2016 there was just one elderly Native American Indian left.
The ships from Britain, Portugal and Spain came more often. The ships, much to the dismay of the Tierra Del Fuegans, massacred the wildlife. They even went to the breeding grounds and wiped out the young. They slaughtered everything even when they did not need them for food. What was plentiful became rare.
The Indians found that the sealions, their staple diet, were no longer sufficient to support them. They began to starve.
The evangelical missionaries moved in. They offered food to the starving people if they agreed to convert. They insisted they wore clothes.
Unfortunately the clothes became soaked when out canoeing and the hunters became chilled. Clothing the natives killed them. Feeding them on corn did not maintain their metabolism to deal with the cold. The missionaries brought Western diseases. The Natives were decimated with influenza, measles, syphilis, and gonorrhea.
What was once a vibrant culture living at one with nature was rapidly transformed into a decimated rump. Hundreds of thousands died.
When I visited it was clear that the wildlife was sparse. The remnants were hanging on.
The very last Native American was living our her last days.
Evangelism has wiped them all out. They might all be dead but at least they had received the word – right?
Evangelism is deadly.
When I heard of the stupid American evangelist who was visiting the natives in the Andaman islands. I was quite pleased that they’d shot him full of arrows.
I suggest that we leave people alone!! (And stop slaughtering the wildlife!!)