Spain's King Juan Carlos has got a bit of a chequered history when it comes to guns. In his younger days he shot and killed his brother by accident although their were three versions of the accident. Either he was cleaning his pistol and it went off or the second version happened where he pointed the gun at his brother not realising that it was loaded and shot him through the forehead or his armed was knocked when his sister came through a door and the gun went off.
Being a Royal, no investigation followed but whatever way it happened, Spain had one less Prince than before and you would think that the Spanish Royals would have steered clear of guns but King Juan's grandson, 13-year-old Froilán Marichalar, is in hospital after shooting himself through the foot while hunting in Spain.
So it seems that imbecility runs in the blood of the royal Spanish family and to prove it, King Juan Carlos has been hospitalised himself after a fall while elephant hunting in Botswana.
Details are sketchy to exactly what happened but if their is a God he was hurt by an elephant falling on him.
The King had been getting his jollies by killing innocent animals at Rann Safaris which allows brave hunter types to shoot animals from the back of a vehicle for $15,000 a pop.
Responding to criticism that shooting elephants from the back of a truck was the work of evil after pictures were released of the King standing infront of a dead elephant, the head of Rann Safari's did not say that all hunters are sociopaths who enjoy inflicting pain on innocent creatures, preferring to use the line that they are 'managing the World's animal population to their betterment'.
Hunters moronic logic that by killing animals you are actually doing them a favour so that, as in this case, the more elephants you kill the more their habitat will improve.
That's true because by the time you have killed the last elephant their habitat will be absolutely immaculate.
Maybe if more hunters followed Prince Marichalar's example and blew their own foot off there may not be so many rotting corpses of animals laying around with bullet holes in them just because some sadistic halfwit got their kicks from killing things with high powered rifles from a safe distance.
13 comments:
I didn't realize elephant hunting was still legal.
I thought you were a follower of evolution?
Preventing animal extinction is anti-evolutionary. If we have a responsibility to protect animals from extinction it is for our sake, not theirs (human nature at work). Giving away our evolutionary edge is moronic logic.
q
I did also Nog but maybe not in Botswana.
Another terrible justification for murdering innocent animals q.
"a follower of evolution"
What a jarring turn of phrase. Evolution is not some cult, creed or religion; it's a scientific fact about which some people know more than others. Indeed, about which some people don't wish to know anything.
The word 'followers' implies loyalty, faith and allegiance - which are not particularly appropriate in this context.
Re- Carlos. Sounds like a bit of a dick.
cheezy,
ha ha. ok, let's see if i can think of a word that doesn't offend your sensibilities.
hmmmm, you wouldn't like believer, it could cause a rant. hmmmm, how about adopter. better, but not quite right (could be emotionally driven instead of pure intellect).
OH OH OH, how about adapter?!
get it? those able to adapt to the theory of evolution are better able to survive.
fyi - i happen to be one of the people that knows a lot about it cheezy.
- - -
Lucy,
animals have no concept of innocence. that is a human label that is both subjective and manipulative (as your post is an example of)... though i find killing elephants more than a little repulsive and something i would not do short of protecting the life of a human.
q
for one i wont eat elephant. for another quail, dove, and deer are not on the verge of extinction and neither is their habitat. also, my society raised me to see some animals as being special like horses, dolphins, dogs, and yes wait for it... elephants.
q
"let's see if i can think of a word that doesn't offend your sensibilities."
How about just 'As someone who knows about evolution....'?
You wouldn't say 'As a follower of gravity', would you? And the scientific method has proven evolution just as definitely as it's been proven that we're stuck to the surface of the planet because of gravity.
"fyi - i happen to be one of the people that knows a lot about it cheezy."
That's great, then you know exactly what I mean.
I’m not quite sure why evolution was introduced into this thread in first place. I don’t think I know anybody who seriously doubts the fact of evolution (or at least none who will admit to it!), and yet these same people – I’m pretty sure – would all feel sad when blue whales or pandas or elephants cease to exist. Are we all sadly confused?
I don’t think so. If you’re saying that we always have to let endangered species die out in order to protect the ‘balance of nature’, then this is misplaced because the ‘balance’ theory has been totally discredited by ecologists. We used to believe this hippy concept that all animals/ flora/ fauna in their ‘natural state’ were in a condition of stasis and that, because of this, human intervention to change this was always a bad thing.
Now, however, we know that this is bollocks. Nature itself is in a constant state of change, sometimes incredibly fast and dynamic change. Human intervention can act as a net positive (promoting the fecundity of life within the system), a net negative (destroying the majority of life forms within the system), or (frequently) some more ambiguous mixture of the two.
Therefore, as humans are already deeply involved in this business anyway (of selectively breeding, preserving, or indeed culling certain animals) and have a particular interest in preserving certain species for our own use (usually to eat), I don’t see any logical problem or contradiction with preserving certain selected animals for the enjoyment and education of future generations.
The thing is, even if we were concerned about any kind of ‘natural balance’ within certain smaller systems then, almost by definition, animals that we currently categorise as ‘endangered’ would hardly be a threat to it.
Now, IF elephants start multiplying like rabbits and stampeding out of the Serengheti by the hundreds of thousands, causing all sorts of problems for us, THEN we can start to organise culls to get the numbers down.… and everyone can once again have nice ivory figures on their mantelpiece. As humans we now have the scientific knowledge to know exactly when this would be the desirable course of action.
Until then however, anyone who pops down to Africa to kill an elephant for some other reason (probably involving the lack of firepower in his pants) is one sad sack of shit, in my book.
cheezy,
your interpretation is not very close to what i meant. i don't have the energy or desire to elaborate.
q
I think I know what you meant, and I do see your point - in saying that preventing extinction is 'anti-evolutionary'. It's true. It is undoubtedly altering what would otherwise happen.
What I'm saying is that the human beings are up to their tits in this practice already - promoting the continuation of certain species, and diminution of certain others.
I'm wondering if there are any evolutionary biologists out there who are so fundamentalist about 'survival of the fittest' that they believe animal conservation to be a harmful thing.
cheezy,
it seems that evolutionarily the human cerebrum created an anomaly. The cerebrum, combined with the resulting accumulation of data and communications enables conscious awareness of our greater environment and enables future thought. This in turn enables human awareness that we can cause our own demise – though it does not insure that we can prevent it! To survive we must be guardians of our environment. i can't imagine any sane person (sorry to leave you out of this conversation david g) advocating the destruction of any species. Frankly I wonder what will happen to our environment if we actually eliminate something as irritating and harmful as mosquitoes – which seems to be an objective that nobody dislikes, but will certainly have an impact...
what I resist on a regular basis however is what I consider to be extreme reactions. Some people seem to be all or nothing. Instead of limiting hunting and fishing we need to eliminate hunting and fishing. Instead of insuring survival of animals we need to elevate animals rights to the status of human rights. “Can’t put an oil pipeline thru Alaska because if I was an elk I wouldn’t want it in my neighborhood”. Stuff like that really seems unreasonable to me.
q
All sounds reasonable to me... especially rallying against extremism.
...except... I don't really think that most people who are interested in conservation really think that animals should have rights that are tantamount to human rights (e.g. Do they think they should be allowed to vote?).
Well, maybe a few people do think this way. But I don't think that expressing contempt for narcissistic dickheads who shoot elephants for fun should be enough to get someone lumped into that particular category... e.g. me.
Good point about mosquitoes though. Although I believe the current concern is the shortage of bees.
cheezy,
i was not lumping you in with the extremes. i don't recall you ever advocating an extreme where you would impose your way on everyone else. what i meant was the likes of PETA.
yes bees are all the buzz here too.
what i don't understand is why someone that wants to protect one creature (elephants)for environmenatl reasons yet supports eliminating another (mosquitoes). Also, there was once a concensus in the usa to get rid of wolves. now the peple that live in cities have imposed laws on people that live in montana, wyoming, etc. to repopulate wolves (they eat flocks, herds, pets, and kids). ditto alligators (they eat pets and kids). wow, that's like people living in the country saying we need to repopulate rats in the cities...
q
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