Activists and Reality

By Rich Kozlovich

All this started out as a daily e-mail regarding green issues. Then I made it a weekly affair, all titled as Green Notes in the subject line. My friend Frank Gasparini was the first to call it a newsletter, and from that point on I tried to make it one. Then I started a blog by that name which I maintained for a year, and then back to my weekly newsletter.

Then in order to link my own articles I started an anti-green blog I call, Paradigms and Demographics, which I now define as a pro-humanity blog, which by definition makes it an anti-green/anti-left blog.  Unfortunately, I'm having a problem with Blogger and the Home Page isn't working properly for some reason and Blogger won't help. Soon I will restart P&D with a Word Press platform I purchased.

But recently I was searching my files for some information and came across some of my old Green Notes I saved from 2005. Here was one article and comments I thought worth posting.

Sunday, October 30, 2005.

Here is an excerpt from John Ray’s Greenie Watch Blog by environmentalist and former Australian legislator Mr. Barry Cohen. I thought this was particularly interesting as I wonder who would do the dirty work for these wacko groups if there were no young people to fool.

(Mr. Cohen writes) On my first trip to Britain as federal environment minister, having just announced the 1984 annual kangaroo cull quota of 2 million, I was unprepared for the reception at my London hotel. A seven-metre-high inflatable kangaroo and a sign, "MR COHEN THE KANGAROO KILLER IS IN TOWN", greeted me.  

I asked the protester what concerned him. "This Cohen fellow is massacring Australia's national symbol. They'll soon be extinct," he bellowed. "Which species do you object to Australia culling?" He looked at me blankly. "Do you know how many species there are?" After a long silence he answered, "Three? Five?""Close. There are 51 species of kangaroos (macropods) of which seven are believed to be extinct with many others rare, endangered or vulnerable.  

Smaller species, under five kilograms, such as the parma, yellow foot, brushtail and bridle nail-tailed rock wallabies, are very rare and highly protected. The species culled are the eastern and western grey kangaroos, the red kangaroo, the wallaroo, whiptail, agile and Bennett's wallaby. Increased crops, pastures and dams and the lack of natural predators ensures these larger species are often in their tens of millions and in plague proportions. If we didn't control their numbers there wouldn't be any farmers left.  

"He looked at me with disbelief. "How do you know all this?" "I'm Barry Cohen."

My take on this was to ask what I thought were pertinent questions about ALL of the activists groups, including anti-pesticide groups.

1. Is this an indicator as to how knowledgeable (ignorant) these misfits are?
2. Is it possible the leaders of these movements are as ignorant as their acolytes? 
3. If this information is so easily available as part of the public record, why don’t they and/or their leaders know it?
4. Since this information is part of the public record the leaders of these movements must surely know the actual facts surrounding these subjects, why to they lie?
5. Do they have another agenda?
6. Does this fall under the category of “getting their "truth" out no matter how many lies they have to tell”?

Good questions……..don’t you think?