Barry McKenzie, Australian at Large, made his debut in the 10 July 1964 issue of Private Eye. He was the creation of the comedian Barry Humphries, then, like a number of other creative Aussie expats, resident in London. Hero of a new strip cartoon, illustrations by Nicholas Garland, Bazza, as he would become known, was identified in this first outing as “a strapping young specimen of Australian manhood” and self-described as “an ordinary honest working-class bloke”. His first words “Excuse I, what’s gone flaming wrong?” informed readers that they were in the presence of an antipodean Candide, the classic hick, come to the big city and ready to surf on a tide of Foster’s lager into what within a year would be apostrophised as “Swinging London”.
Naive he surely was — and while over his nine-year career at the Eye he might increasingly turn the tables on the Brits, that innocence never wholly disappeared — in one respect he was omnipotent. His slang-laden, all-Australian language burst into the Eye reader’s consciousness fully-formed and quite astounding. By 1968 Bazza was offering freckle puncher, smell like an Abo’s armpit, bang like a shithouse door, dry as a nun’s nasty, point Percy at the porcelain, siphon the python and perhaps the most celebrated, the Technicolour yawn (aka the liquid laugh or the big spit).
[…]
It was also resolutely carnal: in its concentration on defecation and urination, drinking (and the seemingly inevitable vomiting it induced) and copulation (even if Bazza remains the eternal virgin), Humphries either created or collated a vocabulary that would not be rivalled until Viz magazine’s “swearing dictionary” Roger’s Profanisaurus began appearing in 1997.
Rooted, from Amanda Laugesen, director of the Australian National Dictionary Centre at the Australian National University and chief editor of the Australian National Dictionary, focuses on this side of the Australian vocabulary. Rooted comes from root, a euphemism for fuck, both literally, in the context of sex, and figuratively, as in harm, destroy, and so on. It falls into what Laugesen is happy to term “bad language”, even if one might suspect that with her formidable knowledge it is a term she knows perfectly well is a construct of tabloid moralising and empty religiosity. (Perhaps I am hardened by proximity, but I find it sad she feels the need to warn readers they will encounter the language that is the subject of her work.)
Jonathon Green, “Fair dinkum dictionary”, The Critic, 2021-04-08.
July 7, 2021
QotD: Bad language from Down Under
June 27, 2021
Fall Blau Starts … or Does it? – WW2 – 148 – June 27, 1942
World War Two
Published 26 Jun 2021Fall Blau, the huge Axis summer offensive in the Soviet Union, is supposed to being this, but is postponed to next. The smaller Operation Fridericus II does begin though, and what does Josef Stalin make of that and the intelligence he’s received? Meanwhile in North Africa, after the fall of Tobruk, the British 8th Army gets a leadership change, but Erwin Rommel is still on the move eastward into Egypt. Where will the Allies try to hold him? Half the world away, the Allies begin to establish a base at Milne Bay, New Guinea. It’s a start, a small one, but a start.
(more…)
May 1, 2021
SMLE MkIII: The Iconic Smelly of World War One
Forgotten Weapons
Published 20 Jan 2021http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
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In 1907, the British adopted the final major pattern in the evolution of the Short, Magazine, Lee Enfield. Designated the ShtLE MkIII (Short Lee Enfield) at the time, it would be retroactively renamed Rifle No1 MkIII in the 1920s. This new design was simpler and more durable than its predecessors while actually improving the practical accuracy of the rifle. The rear sight protector wings were substantially strengthened, the front sight became a square post, the front sight protectors were opened up to allow more light in, and the rear sight windage adjustment was simplified — while retailing 1 MOA adjustment clicks and 25m elevation adjustments. A new bayonet was also adopted in 1907 for the MkIII. The previous 1903 pattern bayonet was deemed too short, and the British essentially copied the Japanese Type 30 Arisaka bayonet as its new Pattern 1907 — hooked quillion and all.
The example we are looking at in today’s video is a fantastic specimen, as it was sold out of service to an Australian reservist in 1912 having not received any post-production modifications or updates. It is still sighted for the early MkVI round-nose ammunition, for example, and its bayonet retains the hooked quillion. The rifle’s owner died prior to World War One, and the gun remained stored away and forgotten through both World Wars, where virtually all existing service rifles were taken back into service and updated. Only in the 1960s was this one found, making it a pristine collector’s example to show how the MkIII was originally produced.
Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle #36270
Tucson, AZ 85740
April 29, 2021
“Tokyo Rose” – WW2 Traitor or Victim?
Mark Felton Productions
Published 28 Apr 2021This is the story of “Tokyo Rose”, a Japanese-American from LA who broadcast propaganda for the Japanese during WW2. Was she a traitor or a victim?
Dr. Mark Felton is a well-known British historian, the author of 22 non-fiction books, including bestsellers Zero Night and Castle of the Eagles, both currently being developed into movies in Hollywood. In addition to writing, Mark also appears regularly in television documentaries around the world, including on The History Channel, Netflix, National Geographic, Quest, American Heroes Channel and RMC Decouverte. His books have formed the background to several TV and radio documentaries. More information about Mark can be found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Fe…
Visit my audio book channel ‘War Stories with Mark Felton’: https://youtu.be/xszsAzbHcPEHelp support my channel:
https://www.paypal.me/markfeltonprodu…
https://www.patreon.com/markfeltonpro…Disclaimer: All opinions and comments expressed in the “Comments” section do not reflect the opinions of Mark Felton Productions. All opinions and comments should contribute to the dialogue. Mark Felton Productions does not condone written attacks, insults, racism, sexism, extremism, violence or otherwise questionable comments or material in the “Comments” section, and reserves the right to delete any comment violating this rule or to block any poster from the channel.
March 7, 2021
The Japanese Raid Australia and the British Raid France – WW2 – 132 – March 6, 1942
World War Two
Published 6 Mar 2021The Japanese advance in Burma continues, threatening Rangoon, and also make landings on Java and New Guinea. They even go so far as an air raid on Broome, Australia. The British are making raids of their own this week, Operation Biting against Bruneval in German-occupied France. As for the Germans themselves, 100,000 of them are still surrounded by the Red Army at Demyansk, and Hitler is told that the Soviets might have enough reserves to defend against a renewed summer offensive.
Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tvFollow WW2 day by day on Instagram @ww2_day_by_day – https://www.instagram.com/ww2_day_by_day
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sourcesWritten and Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)Colorizations by:
– Mikołaj Uchman
– Olga Shirnina, a.k.a. Klimbim – https://klimbim2014.wordpress.com/
– Cassowary Colorizations – https://www.cassowarycolor.com/
– Norman Stewart – https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/Sources:
– IWM: O1962, CH 16518, IWM A 9580, IWM A 9584
– Arrow by 4B Icons from the Noun ProjectSoundtracks from the Epidemic Sound:
– Rannar Sillard – “Easy Target”
– Jo Wandrini – “Dragon King”
– Howard Harper-Barnes – “Underlying Truth”
– Fabien Tell – “Last Point of Safe Return”
– Phoenix Tail – “At the Front”
– Howard Harper-Barnes – “London”
– Flouw – “A Far Cry”
– Johan Hynynen – “Dark Beginning”
– Wendel Scherer – “Out the Window”Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
From the comments:
World War Two
3 days ago (edited)
CORRECTION: In this episode, Indy says that Franz Halder estimates German losses in the USSR to be up 1.5 million by March 1st. In actuality, Halder estimated them to be 1 million. A simple brain freeze when Indy was writing the script meant that he read out the incorrect statistics on the teleprompter. The vast majority of the time, our fact-checkers ensure this doesn’t happen — unfortunately, this one slipped through the cracks.MAIN COMMENT: The Japanese are still advancing seemingly everywhere, even raiding Australia. In Europe, the German death camp system sees new facilities open this month and kicks into a higher gear.
February 28, 2021
Japan Destroys Allied Armada in Biggest Naval Battle in Decades – WW2 – 131 – February 27, 1942
World War Two
Published 27 Feb 2021The Japanese are advancing in the Dutch East Indies and Burma, brushing aside defenders, but their biggest victory this week is at sea, when they not only brush aside the ABDA Fleet, but literally wipe it out of existence. Meanwhile Italian and German submarines are patrolling the Caribbean, sinking any Allied merchant shipping they find. It is yet another week of Axis successes.
Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tvFollow WW2 day by day on Instagram @ww2_day_by_day – https://www.instagram.com/ww2_day_by_day
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sourcesWritten and Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)Colorizations by:
– Mikołaj Uchman
– Norman Stewart – https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/Sources:
– National Portrait Gallery
– IWM: H 17365, A_238, CB(OPS) 5008Soundtracks from the Epidemic Sound:
– Rannar Sillard – “Easy Target”
– Howard Harper-Barnes- “Underlying Truth”
– Jo Wandrini – “Dragon King”
– Fabien Tell – “Last Point of Safe Return”
– Wendel Scherer – “Out the Window”
– Reynard Seidel – “Rush of Blood”
– Brightarm Orchestra – “On the Edge of Change”
– Craft Case – “Secret Cargo”
– Phoenix Tail – “At the Front”
– Johan Hynynen – “Dark Beginning”
– Wendel Scherer – “Growing Doubt”Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
February 23, 2021
Hitler’s Raiders in the Pacific
Kings and Generals
Published 21 Feb 2021Get your free trial of MagellanTV here: https://try.magellantv.com/kingsandge…. It’s an exclusive offer for our viewers: an extended, month-long trial, FREE. MagellanTV is a new kind of streaming service run by filmmakers with 3,000+ documentaries! Check out our personal recommendation and MagellanTV’s exclusive playlists: https://www.magellantv.com/explore/hi…
Kings and Generals 3d animated historical documentary series on modern warfare continues with a video on the German naval raiding vessels which attacked Australia, New Zealand and other Allied territories in the Pacific Ocean during the early portions of World War II. This episode focuses on the exploits of Orion, Komet, Pinguin, and Kormoran, explaining how the Kriegsmarine‘s vessels attacked the targets in the Pacific Ocean, especially Nauru and its phosphate facilities.
Support us on Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/KingsandGenerals or Paypal: http://paypal.me/kingsandgenerals. We are grateful to our patrons and sponsors, who made this video possible: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1o…
The video was made by Leif Sick, while the script was developed by Ivan Moran. The video was narrated by Officially Devin (https://www.youtube.com/user/Official…)
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#Documentary #WorldWar #Raiders
February 22, 2021
Australia experiments with social distancing from social media
Arthur Chrenkoff is mildly surprised to find that the Leviathan of social media — Facebook — considers his personal account to be a publisher for Australian ban purposes:
As of this morning, Australian media outlets – as well as government agencies – are not able to post anything on Facebook, and their articles and stories cannot be shared by anyone in the world using Mark Zuckerberg’s now somewhat anti-social network. This is Facebook’s retaliation for a law being introduced by the Australian government that would have companies like Facebook and Google pay Australian media outlets for having their content on their sites. Google has in fact just reached a global agreement with News Corp regarding content use, but Facebook is opting for a much more of a FU negotiating approach.
As much as I dislike Big Tech, I have so far been unable to see a good rationale for the new law. While the media keeps complaining that Facebook and Google (in particular) are monopolising the online advertising revenue, links to media stories are to my mind advertisements that drive online users to the source – and to the source’s advertisers. Perhaps it’s the media who should be paying the socials for this publicity. In the end, the war between the Big Tech and the Mainstream Media is one, to borrow from Henry Kissinger, it’s a pity that both sides can’t lose.
Apart from the fact that various health authorities around Australia are now unable to share COVID information on Facebook, the other ironic casualty of the Aust-Zuck spat is yours truly, whom Facebook has kindly deemed to be an Australian publisher, even though The Daily Chrenk media empire consists of a single ageing desktop in an inner Brisbane suburb utilised (all too rarely and irregularly) by yours truly for the love of it with no commercial element whatsoever. And so, the main avenue of promoting my new posts by sharing their links with the 1000-plus good people around the world who follow TDC page on Facebook has been (I hope only temporarily) lost to me. While it’s flattering to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with The Australian, I’m now somewhat confused: should Facebook be paying me when I voluntarily use their site to try to get eyeballs for my work? Thank you, Australian government, for thinking that should be the model.
I think the whole notion of taxing social media sites like Facebook is cracked … which might explain why the Canadian government has legislation in the works to do something similar … and earlier European attempts to extract money from the “tech giants” have always backfired. That said, I think Facebook’s retaliation is ill-advised, being both disproportional and very likely to induce other governments to look into ways to exercise more control over Facebook and other social media platforms. There are likely no winners in this dispute or the future confrontations that this will likely inform.
February 21, 2021
WW2 – 130 – Britain’s Worst Defeat – Singapore Falls – February 20, 1942
World War Two
Published 20 Feb 2021The most humiliating defeat in British history according to Winston Churchill — 80,000 men lost as prisoners of war! Humiliated by an enemy far less numerous than themselves! There are many ways to describe the fall of Singapore; these are but two of them. The Japanese are also bombing Australia and invading Sumatra, Bali, and Timor this week, so they are certainly not resting on their laurels. Meanwhile in the Soviet Union, thousands of Red Army paratroops are dropping behind German lines.
Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Or join The TimeGhost Army directly at: https://timeghost.tvFollow WW2 day by day on Instagram @ww2_day_by_day – https://www.instagram.com/ww2_day_by_day
Between 2 Wars: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Source list: http://bit.ly/WW2sourcesWritten and Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson, Bodo Rittenauer
Creative Producer: Maria Kyhle
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Indy Neidell
Edited by: Iryna Dulka
Sound design: Marek Kamiński
Map animations: Eastory (https://www.youtube.com/c/eastory)Colorizations by:
– Norman Stewart – https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/
– Adrien Fillon – https://www.instagram.com/adrien.colo…Sources:
– IWM ART: LD 6042, 15747 12, 15747 139, 15747 14Soundtracks from the Epidemic Sound:
– Rannar Sillard – “Easy Target”
– Fabien Tell – “Other Sides of Glory”
– Rannar Sillard – “Split Decision”
– Gunnar Johnsen – “Not Safe Yet”
– Farrell Wooten – “Blunt Object”
– Howard Harper-Barnes – “Underlying Truth”
– Jo Wandrini – “Dragon King”
– Fabien Tell – “Break Free”
– Christian Andersen – “Barrel”
– Johan Hynynen – “Dark Beginning”
– David Celeste – “Try and Catch Us Now”
– Farrell Wooten – “Mystery Minutes (STEMS INSTRUMENTS)”Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
February 5, 2021
Tank Chats #93 Humber Hornet | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published 24 Jan 2020Here David Fletcher takes a look at the Humber Hornet, a specialised air-deployable Armoured Fighting Vehicle. It was designed to carry the Malkara, an anti-tank guided missile developed by Australia and the United Kingdom.
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January 27, 2021
Australia’s aboriginal people
On Australia Day, which progressives want to rename as “Invasion Day”, a look at the aboriginal culture(s) who had inhabited the continent for thousands of years before contact with Europeans:
Colour lithograph of the First Fleet entering Port Jackson on January 26 1788, drawn in 1888.
Original by E. Le Bihan via Wikimedia Commons.
Liam Hemsworth and others are spruiking nonsense which is also being taught to school children as they protest against “invasion day”:
We are spiritually and culturally connected to this country.
This country was criss-crossed by generations of brilliant Nations.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were Australia’s first explorers, first navigators, first engineers, first farmers, first botanists, first scientists, first diplomats, first astronomers and first artists.
Australia has the world’s oldest oral stories. The First Peoples engraved the world’s first maps, made the earliest paintings of ceremony and invented unique technologies. We built and engineered structures – structures on Earth – predating well-known sites such as the Egyptian Pyramids and Stonehenge.
Our adaptation and intimate knowledge of Country enabled us to endure climate change, catastrophic droughts and rising sea levels.
Always Was, Always Will Be. acknowledges that hundreds of Nations and our cultures covered this continent. All were managing the land – the biggest estate on earth – to sustainably provide for their future.This statement is a work of poorly written fiction. All humans are descended from ancestors that roamed Africa. At some stage – perhaps 50,000 to 60,000 years ago according to archaeological records – some Homo Sapiens (so far as we know, Homo Erectus do not appear to have migrated to the land mass now know as Australia) moved to this continent during the Pleistocene (ice age) when sea levels were much lower allowing transit without seafaring. Later the ice age abated, ice melted and the Australian continent became separate and its inhabitants isolated.
In Jared Diamond’s book Guns, Germs and Steel – the Fates of Human Societies, he argues that circumstances (pressure on resources etc) lead to innovations and changes to society. On Australia he wrote:
Australia is the sole continent where, in modern times, all native peoples still lived without any of the hallmarks of so-called civilization – without farming, herding, metal, bows and arrows, substantial buildings, settled villages, writing, chiefdoms or states. Instead Australian Aborigines were nomadic or semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers, organised into bands, living in temporary shelters or huts and still dependent on stone-tools. – (p. 297).
Compared with Native Australians, New Guineans rate as culturally “advanced” … most New Guineans … were farmers and swineherds. They lived in settled villages and were organised politically into tribes rather than as bands. All New Guineans had bows and arrows, and many used pottery. – (p. 297-8).
While New Guinea … developed both animal husbandry and agriculture, … Australia … developed neither. – (p. 308).
Isolated from other populations, and lacking little in the way of resources, Australia’s first inhabitants were not pressured into changing their ways of life and remained essentially hunter gatherers and nomadic societies. I make no judgement on whether this is good or bad, merely that despite the lack of competition over resources, life wasn’t always rosy and violence and skirmishes, murder and rape occurred as much among those humans as it did elsewhere.
It was inevitable that this isolation would not persist – it is perhaps surprising that it persisted as long as it did. But contact with other humans was inevitable and the outcome of that contact would be widely varying depending on whether the contact was made by the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Chinese, British or others. The fact that Australia became a British colony is probably the best of the many alternatives that could have sprung from colonialisation. And we are all affected, mostly positively, by that contact – there would be few Aboriginal Australians (perhaps none) who today could say that they have no ancestry at all from settlers who arrived after 1787. We are all of mixed blood and we all descend from those original Homo Sapiens who evolved in Africa. It is time to talk about unity rather than division.
January 17, 2021
Hector Drummond on Boris “Cane-Toad” Johnson
As a teaser to attract new subscribers to his Patron and SubscribeStar pages, Hector Drummond shared this piece on the ecological disaster of Australia’s 1930s cane-toad importation and the similar political disaster of Boris Johnson in Britain:
In the 1930s Queensland farmers were facing trouble with large numbers of cane beetles eating the sugar crops that were an important part of the state’s economy. So the Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations came up with a cunning plan. They would import some cane toads (a native of middle and south America), because cane toads ate cane beetles. This was sure to solve the problem in a trice. One-hundred and two cane toads were duly imported into the state, from Hawaii as it happened, to do the job.
Unfortunately this soon became a classic case of the cure being worse than the disease. In fact it wasn’t any cure at all because the cane toads didn’t bother much with the cane beetles, and instead ate everything else they could wrap their tongues around. The other thing they did was multiply at an explosive rate. These days there are estimated to be 200 million cane toads in Australia, mainly in Queensland, and they cause havoc with the native fauna, not least because they have nasty poison-producing glands on the back of their head which the native animals have no naturally-evolved defence against. Curious pet dogs who mess about with a toad can die.
In 2019 Britain was facing its own crisis. It had become obvious to half the country that Theresa May’s Conservative government was deliberately trying to prevent Brexit from happening. As the other parties were even worse, the only hope for a real Brexit to take place was if a new pro-Brexit leadership in the Conservative party could be installed. After a titanic struggle, this finally happened, and Alexander “Boris” Johnson became the new leader, with Michael Gove and advisor Dominic Cummings at his side.
Unfortunately Johnson has proven to be Britain’s own version of the cane toad, a cure that is vastly worse than the disease. Johnson, at least, proved to be more able than his Australian counterpart at doing the job that was required of him. Whereas the Australian toad was about as interested in cane beetles as Olly Robbins was in getting the UK out of the EU, Johnson at least gave us a middling type of Brexit which, as fudged as it was, was at least far better than anything any of his fellow MPs could have got.
But in terms of being worse than the disease, Cane-Toad Johnson has proven to be far, far more destructive than the cane toad ever was. The cane toad, after all, is merely an ecological pest, whereas Johnson has proved to be a dangerous menace to the country’s liberty, prosperity and health. The poison from his glands has leached into our very life. We have become like domestic dogs who have been forced to lick them every day.
January 15, 2021
The Lady Juliana | The 18th-Century All-Women Prison Ship
Weird History
Published 13 Nov 2019A tale as wild as the Seven Seas, the story of the Lady Juliana, a special convict ship full of prisoners sent to Australia, is one of the strangest in the continent’s history. The Lady Juliana had a specific mission: carrying a cargo of female prisoners the British government hoped would help reform the struggling convict colony in New South Wales. This motley crew of British women ultimately had a lasting impact on the history of Australia.
#prisonship #australia #weirdhistory
December 31, 2020
QotD: The “noble savage” belief system
***When the ancestors of North America’s Indigenous peoples entered the New World some 16,000 years ago via Siberia, they hunted many of the mammals, reptiles, and birds, from the Arctic down to Tierra del Fuego. Mammoths, mastodons, and enormous ground-dwelling sloths, as well as giant bears, giant tortoises, and enormous teratorn birds with 16-foot wingspans — animals that had never had a chance to evolve in the presence of humans — were among the many species that disappeared from the Americas. Some medium-sized animals — such as horse, peccary, and antelope species — were also wiped out. But others survived: Bison and deer species, tree sloths, tapirs, jaguars, bear species, alligators, and big birds such as rheas and condors are, at least for the time being, still with us. The existence of these survivors, along with the relatively unspoiled forests, grasslands, and rivers seen by the first Europeans to enter the Americas, served to support the illusion that America’s first peoples had been maintaining what popular environmentalist David Suzuki calls a “sacred balance” with the natural world. Throughout history, however, humans killed animals that were tasty, numerous, and huntable. For kin-groups, staying alive meant making life-and-death cost-benefit calculations about where to send your berry-pickers and hunters. “Sacredness” had nothing to do with it.
This is not to say that the Indigenous peoples who migrated from Asia to the Americas were especially bloodthirsty (though Europeans typically reported that their hunting and fishing skills were excellent). In every known case where humans entered continents formerly uninhabited by our species, the bigger animals tended to disappear, since they provided the most sustenance per kill. The first humans to enter Australia some 70,000 years ago wiped out giant kangaroo species, rhino-sized marsupial herbivores, jaguar-sized marsupial carnivores, big flightless birds, and many other megafauna. The same thing would happen in Europe: After sapiens completed its occupation of that sub-continent some 30,000 years ago, the mammoths, woolly rhinos, giant deer, and lions they recorded in their cave paintings and carvings also disappeared.
Baz Edmeades, “The Myth of Harmonious Indigenous Conservationism”, Quillette, 2020-09-06.
September 24, 2020
That Prometheus dude has a lot to answer for…
Arthur Chrenkoff on the surprisingly high percentage of wildfires that don’t have a natural origin:
The Green Wattle Creek bushfire moves towards the Southern Highlands township of Yanderra as police evacuate residents from Yanderra Road, 21 December, 2019.
Photo by Helitak430 via Wikimedia Commons
Whatever your position on climate change – majority of experts believe that higher temperatures and drier conditions exacerbate wildfires, both in Australia and America – there is no immediate solution to be found on the global level. If you agree that man-made emissions are driving up temperatures, there is no course of action that will in any substantial way change the climatic conditions for the better over the next few decades (the most ambitious climate change plans talk in terms of slowing down temperature increases, not reversing the trend). Shut down the whole industrial civilisation tomorrow, and the present climate would still lag behind. Talking about wildfires and climate change (as Pelosi, Newsom and many others do) might be a good propaganda for climate action, but it will do nothing for this or any future fiery disasters.
Fortunately, there are much more immediate factors and solutions than shutting down coal and transitioning to renewable energy (themselves decades-long projects). Wildfires are almost exclusively man-made calamities, but not in the way the climate change activists think. Changing climate might indeed be making fires more difficult to contain and extinguish, but it neither starts nor fuels them. We do. Herein, therefore, lie the opportunities to mitigate such disasters as we are witnessing at the moment.
Almost all fires are started by humans
Forests don’t spontaneously combust. And while lightning can often set trees on fire, this accounts for only a very small proportion of all fires.
In Australia, it has been estimated that 87 per cent of 113,000 fires that occurred “in nature” between 1997 and 2009 have been man-made.
In the United States, the latest study from the University of Colorado at Boulder calculates that 97 per cent of fires between 1992 and 2015 that threatened homes (i.e. those happening in the so called “wildland-urban interface”) were started by humans (as were 85 per cent of all fires in “very-low-density housing” areas and 59% of all wildfires in the wild).
A word of caution: man-made does not automatically mean intentional. The scenarios range from broken glass acting as lenses for sun rays or sparks from power lines and machinery, through carelessly discarded cigarette butts and incompletely extinguished bonfires, to amateur back burn attempts getting out of control and – yes – deliberate arson.
During the Australian bushfire crises, I have compiled media reports of around 200 individuals who have been arrested and/or charged in connection with starting fires – many, though not all, on purpose.
In the United States, the cases of arsonists caught by the authorities are mounting, though nowhere near the Australian numbers yet. In Portland, a man was arrested for starting a fire, released, and started another six fires – at this rate, the US might quickly catch up to Down Under.
