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Not to mention giant white sharks and saltwater crocodiles ,deadly box jellyfish and ring octopuses and cone snails, and a host of the most venomous snakes . Yet in my opinion this ,the largest island on earth, hosts the friendliest people on the planet!
hrumph! The Amazon Basin aso has a phenomenal bio-diversity which incudes lethal creatures on land and in rivers just waiting for you to arrive -are you up for it? Some places look better on tv, which is where they should remain for me, and most of us.
I think a key point about Australia is that much of it is still wilderness and hostile to human settlement, while the 'Outback' seems to contain humans hostile to other humans. I am sure plenty of indigenous people will know where to go and where not to go, barefoot, or in shoes, or camper vans.
My experience of Australians has been poor, from a woman I met on a train to Paris who tried to convince me 'Aboriginals' are stone deaf being from the Stone Age and not really humans; to the guy at work who insulted me when I was the Union rep (not that he was in our Union) blaming Britain for the 'Communists' who were sent to Australia that he loathed and detested (he assumed I was one of them) -and had mininal impact on Australian politics. I did meet a congenial Aussie in Dublin's justly, and famously musical pub, O'Donoghue's in the 1970s, but he didn't live in Australia. Once I almost collided with Germaine Greer in the South Front, which would have left me the worse for wear given her size and mine; and in the distant days when I worked in Broadcasting House Rolf Harris waived me across a zebra crossing on Portand Place.
There was the gruff, no-nonsense Aussie I shared a small table with in a packed Diwan-i-Am who grabbed the waiter by the arm ''Get me a mutton curry, yella rice and a beer", telling me "I'll be in Bomby tomorra nght and get the real thing" which was not fair, as the Diwan-i-Am was one of the best 'Indian' restaurants in London at the time. Someone I know who went to Australia, on being asked said 'It's really just England with very hot weather', and after a flush of truly interesting films in the late 1970s-early 1980s the best directors left for the US.
Yes, Xavier Herbert, Les Murray and Judith Wright are some of the finest writers in English, but that cannot be said of the crabbed, asthmatic, strangulated prose of Patrick Wright, designed as it is to inflict misery on its readers, or the irritating if now deceased Clive James whose only contribution to literature was a series of bad tempered letters in The Times Literary Supplement exchanged with America's most intelligent, if nauseating gossip, Gore Vidal, disputing Hiroshima and the end of the War in the Pacific.
As for Dame Edna Everege, no words can describe 'the horror! The horror!'. Someone once told me she thought Nicole Kidman was/is the most beautiful woman in the world, and was not blind when she said it. I did see Melbourne's drag review, Les Girls when they had a season at the Wimbledon Theatre in London in, I think, 1979 and two or three were amazing, including the 'legendary' Carlotta, but if you were not 6 foot six with the girth of a combine harvester there was no chance of getting a root with the cast on that occasion. And Bob Hawke's rehabilitation of the Labour Party after the Whitlam Paradox was the model for Tony Blair's cake and ale reforms in Cool Britannia. If one assumes that was a positive step foward for Labour, which three election victories tends to confirm.
I am sure I am mistaken about the place, but I don't have any plans to go, and in the current situation we find ourselves in, it is not going to happen this side of eternity.
Don't forget that the most dangerous animal is man. Animals normally attack people only for food or defence - they don't kill masses of people just because they are angry at something. Australia is a safer country than the US because guns are much less prevalent and there is less social disfunction.Quote:
Originally Posted by sukumvit boy
One of the curious tendencies of extremists is that they give full vent to their views wihen the reality of political power is a distant dream, then suddenly recant when it becomes a close-up reality. Americans have had to assume Marjorie Taylor-Greene is being honest when she disavows any sympathy with QAnon, now that she is in a member of the House. Sidney Powell, having spent months claiming voting machines in the US 2020 elections were rigged, now faced with lawsuit after lawsuit, claims ' No reasonable person would conclude that the statements were truly statements of fact.
Thus, in Israel, Belalzel Smotrich and colleagues in his party, Otzma Yehudit [Jewish Power] have suddenly decided the nauseating views they have been expressing about Israel's LGBQ+ citizens for yers are not in fact what they said they were. Thus,
"Smotrich helped organize an event in 2006 called the “beast parade” in which goats and donkeys were paraded in Jerusalem in a protest against the LGBTQ+ pride parade in the city, but has since expressed regret for taking part in the event, telling Haaretz “I did it when I was young, and I regret it.” In an interview with Arutz Sheva at the time of the parade, Smotrich had stated that the Pride Parade was “worse than the acts of animals.”
https://www.jpost.com/israel-electio...essives-663037
Even Netanyahu once said he could never govern with people like that in coalition, whereas his position now is so precarious he may have to, though he will presumably praise Otzma Yehudit for 'changing' their views.
As for the LGBTQ+ citizes of Israel, as the Jerusalem Post article states-
"Despite being a relatively progressive country in terms of LGBTQ+ issues, LGBTQ-phobia is still strong in Israel, and LGBTQ+ civil rights are still lacking.
Hate crimes against LGBTQ+ people have been on the rise for years, with LGBTQ-phobic cases reported once every three hours in 2020 in Israel, a 27% increase compared to 2019.
Conversion therapy is still legal in Israel, and Jewish conversion therapy organizations from the US have found refuge in Israel.
Same-sex couples still can’t marry, adopt or have children through surrogacy within Israel, and have to go through court rulings and expensive and complicated bureaucracy to achieve these basic parts of establishing a marriage and a family."
A more bleak view has this-
"Nahum Barnea, a commentator for the country’s top-selling newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, wrote on Wednesday that the rise of Religious Zionism “isn’t just a blow to morale, it’s an ideological catastrophe.”
He said Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party was now “a hostage in the hands of an anti-democratic, racist, homophobic, terrorism-sponsoring group of people.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...els-parliament
But hey, once they are in the Knesset and the Government, who knows, maybe they will go all cuddly and warm, like Lauren and Marjorie...
I most certainly agree with all your points flighty2, I was just having a little fun about Australia since I just happen to be reading Bill Bryson's ,"In a Sunburnt Country" a most entertaining book about Australia .
Well done, New York!
3oz?
Lucky bastards!
Oh dear, it seems that the Mattinee idol of Congress might be facing the final curtain many years before he thought it was due to fall....
"The Florida Republican congressman Matt Gaetz appears increasingly politically isolated amid a spiralling scandal over a federal sex-trafficking investigation. Even for Donald Trump, one Republican political operative said, “a 10ft pole is not long enough”. "
I had a good laugh at this -"The Daily Beast, meanwhile, reported that advisers were pleading with the former president to keep quiet".
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...icking-scandal
But is he guilty?
Yeah Jericho...the law had to catch up to what everyone was already doing. My neighborhood already has a constant skunky smell from it.lol. ........Oh , and I think Gaetz is definitely guilty. He was always a weird wolf. Remember when he said he had a young Hispanic son...that he’s not related to? I saw that interview with Tucker Tuesday...it was odd, to say the least.
Here’s my thought for the day. we now have a saner President...but he lies almost as much as Trump did.
If I was Tucker Carlson, I would had asked Gaetz if he was wearing a wire. Gaetz sounded like he was trying get Tucker to admit to something he did.Quote:
Originally Posted by fred41