Woman slaughters elephant and feels sense of achievement

Teressa Groenwald-Hagerman is feeling very pleased with herself after the keen hunter met a challenge to hunt and slaughter an elephant using a bow and arrow. Her trip was paid by sponsors, including her schilling for a line of hunting clothing made specially for women (because sadly sexual equality, normally a very fine idea, also sometimes means that women get to prove they are as violent, foolish and downright nasty as many men). She's proud of travelling to the vast continent of Africa, the cradle of life, to kill one of the most magnificent animals on the planet. She spent several hours a day training to use the bow effectively. One wonders what positive things she could have done for herself or others in those hours instead of training to slaughter an animal purely for fun.

And please, don't give me that 'humans are predators' line, this isn't the Neolithic period and people like this woman are utterly despicable throwbacks to an earlier time. Hunting for food is one thing, but hunting for sport, whether it is fox hunting upper class twonks in Britain or would-be Amazon Jungle Janes like this person killing an elephant for the thrill, is simply despicable and there is no reason and no excuse for it. And given how often the violent abuse of animals is cited by criminal profilers as the first symptom of a possibly sociopathic personality I think we shouldn't just dislike people like this, we should be actively wary of them and their urges to kill other creatures purely for a thrill. (from the Telegraph via Boing Boing).

Evil bastards

Japan is unhappy with Australia. Why? Because of pictures released showing the hideous slaughter their whaling fleet inflicts on harmless animals for 'scientific research' - said research seems to consist of proving that shooting a large mammal with an explosive harpoon causes a long, slow, lingering, painful death and that you can cook the bits later for food (although actually there is some research which says they can hardly give whale meat away in Japan, so why they pursue this slaughter is beyond all comprehension and one is left to think those responsible are just evil bastards). One set of images taken clearly shows the swines killing a mother and a calf then dragging their carcasses up into their mobile concentration camp ships.

These pictures didn't come from Greenpeace, they came from observers in a team of Australian customs officers.

"It is explicitly clear from these images that this is indiscriminate killing of whales, where you have a whale and its calf killed in this way... And to claim that this is in any way scientific is to continue the charade that has surrounded this issue from day one..." Peter Garrett, Australian environment minister.

Japan's state-supported Institute for Cetacean Research (where they research whales by killing them slowly and chopping up their carcasses like some sea-going Jack the Rippers) has claimed that releasing these pictures "created a dangerous emotional propaganda that could cause serious damage to the relationship between our two countries." Well no argument on the first part - it does create emotions but I can't help but think they are more worried about being seen by the entire world committing these atrocious acts than anything else. They were caught out slaughtering a mother and calf on camera. There's no excuse for that. And to then try and blame Australia for showing what these bastards were more than happy to do when they thought no-one would notice is just plain cowardice. Then again, this is a country that still likes to pretend they didn't engage in systematic torture, rape, murder and even using humans as guinea pigs for chemical warfare experiments during the Second World War. Maybe Japan needs to have evidence shoved in its nose and be made to see what the hell it has done.

I've got a great idea for some maritime 'scientific research' - let's see scientifically what happens when we fire torpedoes into a whaling ship...