THE CULT OF IVORY IMMOLATION

I admit it. I love the Antiques Roadshow, not least, I admit, because Fiona Bruce is really hot!

I also love the show for the wealth of information I can occasionally glean re my passion - antiquarian books and are historical documents - but today (December 28th, 2015) they included a segment that bordered on the irresponsible.

One of the items featured was a wonderfully carved champagne flute, circa 1850. It was controversial only because said item was carved from ivory. This resulted in a brief follow-up segment on the ethics of owning ivory items, given the plight of Africa's elephants.

The question was, should all ivory be destroyed in order to take a stand against the illegal ivory trade. I was gobsmacked there could be any advocacy of such an insanely short-sighted, simplistic and entirely tokenistic campaign.

Opinions were sought from two experts. One, Mr. Will Travers of the Born Free Foundation, the other Dr. Marjorie Trusted, Senior Curator of the Victoria & Albert Museum, custodians of perhaps the world's largest collection of ivory artifacts.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Travers waxed on about his feelings, stating that when he looks at works in ivory all he sees is dead elephants. Not content with this Sixth Sense-esque sharing moment, he also went into detail about the heartbreaking sight and smell of the many dead elephants he’d stood beside in the wild.

Dr. Trusted, on the other hand, spoke of the great wealth of ivory artifacts extant and their artistic as well as historical significance.

Now let me be clear. I am absolutely against the killing of elephants for their tusks. However, that anyone could possibly be so driven by their emotions as to believe the destruction of historical artifacts can in any way contribute to elephant protection is beyond me.

No doubt some people; those blessed with the intellectual acuity of the inanimate objects the'd sacrifice to their zealotry for instance, will dash out and burn that old hair brush great granny left them. But I will be very surprised if so much as a single pachyderm arises, phoenix-like, from the ashes of their vandalism.

However, in doing so they will undoubtedly contribute to the increasing rarity of ivory items held in private hands. 

As we all know, the rarer the item, the greater its value invariably becomes. Ivory will always be in demand, simply because it is rare, because it carves beautifully and because  it does not degrade as many other natural materials are apt to.

The rarer these vandals make historical relics with their self-indulgent reactionary symbolism, the more value those who admire such objects will place on those that remain.  

Thus the greater the motivation among suppliers and poachers eager to get their cut of a limited resource that's value, both monetary and as symbol of status, has been pushed through the roof by abolitionists. 

The community has turned its back on many forms of contraband over the years and the State destroys thousands of tonnes of it annually, yet never to my knowledge has the production of anything ever been arrested by this process. 

To the contrary, whether it is illegal guns, meth or even gin, destroying supplies simply drives up the cost of that which slips through the net.

The trade in rhino horn is a case in point. It is illegal, except among those cultures and individuals that believe it promotes virility. 

Not only do most people know it does no such thing, but even though there are comparatively inexpensive drugs that really do deliver the desired result, enough folks still think rhino horn is superior that rhinos are even more endangered than elephants.

Surely having formulated a substance that delivers on its promises and having made it available at a mere fraction of the cost of more traditional 'tonics', rhino numbers should be exploding across Africa? 

The fact that people such as you and I wouldn’t dream of having any rhino products in the home makes no contribution whatsoever to the preservation of rhino in the wild, nor will it, for as long as some people are wedded to their belief that rhino horn works.

It requires a level of naive stupidity that defies description to believe any cultural shift can be embraced by a percentage of the world’s population sufficient to end all interest in rhino horn and thus stop the trade in its tracks.

Just one or two traders with enough cash up-front and an eye to the future would be sufficient to wipe out the worlds remaining rhinos in very short order. 

The same can be said of ivory.  

Ivory collectors do not generally trade in the classifieds. They trade within their own very exclusive networks and like dealers in illegal drugs and arms, they rarely hang out shingles inviting the public to nip inside and peruse their stock.

Elephants numbers are sufficiently diminished that the commitment of just a couple of well connected dealers is all that's required to wipe out the elephant. Such people do not deal in second-hand trinkets or museum pieces. They want sell large pieces that exude prestige to a select clientele. 

Meanwhile, around the world, simpletons emote a warm fuzzy balm around their oh-so delicate sensibilities, by advocating the destruction of incredibly beautiful artworks and crafts left to us by our forebears, and through us, to generations to come.

Some zealots even believe the ivory of mammoths, the bulk of which died of natural causes between 140,000 and 60,000 years ago, should also go to the flames.

This is nothing more than shallow emotional symbolism.

Ivory, like gold, is all but useless for practical purposes. Its value lies in its beauty and more particularly, its rarity. 

It is an idea and despite the best efforts of the Church and various miscellaneous dictatorships throughout history, no idea has ever been destroyed by burning rare and beautiful works of art, be they as spectacular as the ornately craved hilt of an ancient samurai sword, or as diminutive as granddad's old pipe.

Anyway, I'll get outaya way now...

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THE INSIDIOUS SCOURGE OF RADICALISATION

As is the case for most reasoning people I’m sure, the issue of ‘radicalisation’ concerns me deeply.

Once radicalised by the proponents of an extremist doctrine, extremists will stop at nothing to impose their ideology on everyone.

Their tools for achieving this end are many, including dividing communities into groups of 'us' and 'them', abuse of the right of free speech to achieve that end, and the corrupt manipulation of various other democratic freedoms and processes too.

Those who oppose their will are treated to a relentless stream of disparaging rhetoric contrived to dehumanise the ‘unbeliever’, portraying them as wicked people to be shunned by a community of the devout.

They distrust government to the point of paranoia, seeing some dark intent behind every decision and process and they have no respect for the servants of government unless they subscribe to the same extremist ideology as their own.

Extremists are not born, they are manufactured. They are indoctrinated with an unrelenting stream of one-eyed, intolerant, extremist hyperbole and it would be a great mistake to assume this applies only to radical Islam.

In Jumping the Gun [Letter, Bay Post/Moruya Examiner, December 18th] we read the allegation Eurobodalla Councillors are pushing some corrupt hidden agenda that can be addressed only by a regime change of true believers.

The community is coerced to take a certain view, that the presence of HuntFesters will deny the community access to facilities for 7 years. In fact HuntFest occupies the facilities in question for only one long-weekend a year, during which the community is invited to attend.

Perhaps most bizarrely, the community is again advised that the failure of Council to bend to the will of a tiny fraction of the community responding to a survey – approx 85% of 166 respondents – amounts to a failure of the democratic process.

Democracy is not a tool for the oppression of minorities. In fact it assures their right to exist and to conduct their legal activities without fear of constant harassment and vilification, which in the past has included references to not wanting “people like that in our beautiful Eurobodalla”.

It has been estimated that at least 2000 supporters of radical Islam currently call Australia home.  Are we to believe their attitudes and actions speak for the entire Australian community?

Or do we simply acknowledge that the views of 2000 radicalised ideologues – as with the 0.4 of 1% of Eurobodalla residents opposing HuntFest in the much misrepresented consultation – represents only the views of a tiny fraction of the community sufficiently obsessed with their ideology to quite predictably and always angrily rattle their sabres?

Such people do not speak for the community. In fact, they do not even speak for the majority of Greens, many of whom grow increasingly concerned about the extremists within their ranks.

As our population grows, so the number of people radicalised under a variety of symbols and battle cries will also grow. This is inevitable!

Also inevitable is the fact their places of worship – their meetings and rallies – are doomed to poor attendance and their manipulative, often paranoid propaganda will continue to be rejected by a community intent on resisting radicalisation in all its manifestations.

Anyway, I'll get outaya way now...


Jumping the gun

Letters to the Editor

Bay Post/Moruya Examiner

December 18th, 2015

The Eurobodalla Greens are shocked a further five-year licence for the Narooma HuntFest looks likely to be issued whilst the current licence has two years to run.

The licence, controversially awarded in 2012, expires in 2017. In September HuntFest organisers applied for a renewal for the period 2018-2022. They have been told Eurobodalla Shire Council will process the application in February/March 2016.

You would have thought, with sensitivity around this issue, the council would stick to due process. The renewal of a five-year licence so far in davance [sic] renders the council liable once again to legal challenge.

If issued, the licence locks out the community from that venue until after 2022.  It holds a gun to the heads of the next elected councillors, who will be unable to re-visit the issue for the full term of their election.

HuntFest has realised a less sympathetic council will be elected next year, so the only option was to go early. The council needs to acknowledge the cynical, undemocratic and questionably legal nature of the application and tell HuntFest to wait their turn until early 2017.

The Eurobodalla Mayor’s announcement last week that an independent audit committee had found the council acted correctly in granting the license and that the agreement was watertight is meaningless.

The initial licence made no reference to guns and ammunition, yet through amendment creep, such sales are permitted.

If the council had determined to refuse the sale of weapons on public land the same audit committee could have easily supported that position as well.

When the people were formally and directly asked about guns and ammunition sales they mostly said NO. At this point, on this issue, what  the councillors “feel” is not relevant.

What the community has said must prevail.

Otherwise, why bother to ask?

Nick Hopkins

Convenor, Eurobodalla Greens

[ends]

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DEMOCRACY, THE ADLER AND BIRTH CONTROL

My disdain for online petitions is no secret among those who know me. Digital petitions indulge ignorance, facilitate instant gratification through the expression of gross intolerance and are prone to manipulation by the unscrupulous.

Once upon a time, the petitioner was tasked to demonstrate some commitment to his/her cause by canvassing "the average right-thinking man or woman in the street".  Those approached could ask questions, while the petition’s peddlers would also be exposed to the views of a more-or-less random sampling of people and their opinions on the petition’s thrust.

Online petitions, on the other-hand, require little or no commitment on the part of the petitioner, beyond the willingness to outline an objection or gripe.

Petition facilitators such as Change.org, Get-Up and Communityrun, to name but a few, will then disseminate one’s plea using their databases to target, not “the community”, but those members of it who’ve previously demonstrated a propensity for signing similar petitions.

These facilitators are essentially mass marketing companies exploiting the bourgeoning outrage economy.

The signatory’s email address, which serves as a unique identifier in lieu of the traditional signature, along with other information such as one’s postcode, is then used to track and record the individual’s political persuasions, their likes and dislikes, so that invitations to sign similar petitions may be issued.

This has seen petition signing develop into something of a hobby or crusade among some, especially the marginalised and disaffected who derive a sense of personal empowerment from supporting or opposing causes they have little knowledge of and perhaps no personal stake in at all.

An example of this was seen in a petition launched in 2014 in an attempt to derail an annual outdoors and hunting expo held in the small rural NSW township of Narooma.

The petition, much vaunted as evidence of overwhelming community opposition to HuntFest, garnered the support of some 40,000 signatories, 34,000+ of which, it was later revealed, were not residents of Australia or its territories.

This did not stop the petitioners presenting their ‘evidence’ to their local Council’s  Greens representative, who proudly tabled it before her fellow Councillors as undeniable proof of the breadth of opposition to HuntFest....in Patagonia, Israel, Finland and possibly the planet Alderaan.

This sort of manipulation is as commonplace as it is unprincipled. So much so, that one might even suggest it is intrinsic to the digital petition phenomenon. 

Take for instance the more recent case of a petition opposing the importation/ownership of the much publicised and oft misrepresented Adler lever-action shotgun.

The nature of the petition warrants no exploration here, but its legitimacy as a reflection of genuine community concern does.

Following the usual emotive and non-sequitur concerns linking the Adler to Port Arthur, the text goes on to state, “We, the people of Australia” in not one but two locations. 

However, there is absolutely nothing to prevent residents of Inner Mongolia being counted among “the people of Australia” who ostensibly support the petitioner’s demands.

I know this, because I signed it using a typically Mongolian name, email address and even a legitimate Inner Mongolian postcode i.e. 162800 (Heilongjiang).

Despite containing two digits more than any Australian postcode can boast, the petition’s systems thanked me for my support, advised me that by providing my email address I agreed to receive other campaign emails from Get-Up and Communityrun, and registered me as the petition’s 11,646th supporter.

It did likewise when I signed it "Rolf Harris", providing the email address rolf@hermajestyspleasure.co.uk and the London postcode WC2E 9RZ. 

So much for “We, the people of Australia”.

At issue also is the level of informed support the petition has garnered, even amongst actual Australians.

Samantha Lee, the face of Gun Control Australia and
many believe as much as 10% of its total membership

Take for instance the face of Gun Control Australian, Ms Samantha Lee, who was among those asked to speak at a recent press conference promoting the petition's 'success'. 

Others in attendance included David Shoebridge, firearms spokesperson for the political cult known as the Greens, and Labor MP Dr Hugh McDermott.

During her address to the assembled media, Ms Lee, doubtless a proud petition signatory herself, proceeded to relate a number of concerning ‘facts’ about the Adler, which together constituted grounds for deep community concern.

Every single one of those 'facts' was wrong!

Let me be very clear here. I do not mean Ms Lee's ‘facts’ were open to dispute or interpretation on irrelevant technicalities. I mean they were fundamentally wrong, in much the same way it is fundamentally wrong to suggest Buggies have gills and thrive in the home aquarium.

Ms Lee’s false claims include, but are not by any means restricted to, the following:

“The Adler has a magazine attached. No other lever-action firearms have a magazine attached.” 

False!  With a few rare and mostly antique exceptions, all lever-action firearms have a magazine attached.

“The Adler has a pistol grip!” (inferring it could be easily cut down and concealed.)

False!  The Adler has a pistol grip in precisely the same way a goldfish has a pistol grip i.e. not at all.

“This lever-action is quite advanced technology!”

False!  The lever-action has been about for some 130 years and available in Australia for at least 100 of those. Nor is the Adler the first and only lever-action shotgun available in Australia. Its current popularity is due almost exclusively to its affordability compared to similar lever-action shotguns already available and present in Australia since Adam played fullback for Jerusalem.

The point is, Ms Lee is a self-styled gun control advocate and lobbyist who either knows nothing about the item she seeks to have banned and is thus creating unwarranted community concern with her falsehoods, or she has the level of knowledge one expects of an responsible lobbyist, but is willing to deceive the public in order to contrive a desired outcome.

Either way, her statements were unprofessional, deceptive and highly unethical. The SSAA's response to Samantha Lee's various deceptions may be viewed here

Ms Lee is typical of the people who, via social media and other networks, have encouraged “the community” to sign an online petition, which itself provides next to no technical information about the Adler.

This begs the question, can the petition be considered the product of informed support or is it simply a reflection of fear resulting from ignorance and deception?

There appears to be a growing belief that democracy is a process by which a majority may stop or ban a thing by simple weight of ill-informed and irate numbers. Democracy is in fact a doctrine of tolerance and diversity, of respecting differing lifestyles, cultures and informed points of view.

Democracy is not a weapon by which we might rid ourselves of things that frighten us. Rather, it is a philosophy that strives to ensure the individual’s freedom to abstain from such things.

So who checks the integrity of these petitions to ensure they’re not fudged?

Who ensures that this petition, so proudly presented to Parliament by David Shoebridge, is an expression of the will of “We, the people of Australia” and not the people of Inner Mongolia?

How do decision-makers ensure that support for a cause was not garnered by way of false and misleading information and what does the scrutiny of many thousands of electronic petitions annually, cost the Australian taxpayer?

Finally, the reasonable expectations of the petition’s signatories would also appear dubious, as the following comment left by a petition signatory - one ‘Joanne D’ - clearly demonstrates:

“I was in hospital having my first child when Port Arthur massacre happened and I want to ensure it is never repeated.”

However one chooses to interpret Joanne D's impassioned comment, one thing is certain. The Adler lever-action shotgun was not the weapon responsible for either misadventure.

Anyway, I’ll get outaya way now...

Follow the blog on Twitter @Hunters_Stand

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