food crisis – Bruce Llama http://www.brucellama.com That's one crazy Llama Mon, 04 Jan 2016 02:22:31 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.5.4 Roast Penguin http://www.brucellama.com/2011/08/29/roast-penguin/ Mon, 29 Aug 2011 05:36:42 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=2216 [SOURCE]

I love Emperor Penguins.  They are so big and flappy.  They are resilient and amazing critters who roam around the Antarctica, breeding and eating and making lots of noise.  And there’s so many of them.

So, when one such penguin arrived in New Zealand and promptly got sick because he was eating sand instead of ice, he was taken in, surgery was done on him and he was nursed back to health to get a free trip on a research vessel back towards home.

Isn’t that sweet.

All to the tune of about $60,000. That’s NZ dollars.

I’m all for looking after our world, and the life that inhabits it.  I’m pretty sure the money spent on saving a penguin who couldn’t get home isn’t money well spent.  Why don’t we nip down to the Antarctic and save the baby Emperor Penguins that don’t get fed because their parent doesn’t return with food, or the egg freezes on  the ice?  We don’t because they’re not in danger of extinction.

That’s money that could have been spent on saving… oh I don’t know…. people in Africa starving perhaps.  It’d buy a lot of rice, at the very least they could tuck into some penguin steak.

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]]> Give me a stick http://www.brucellama.com/2010/10/07/give-me-a-stick/ Thu, 07 Oct 2010 04:48:13 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=645 You remember hunting, where you take a stick, go out into the woods and hit things until they die. Then you eat them.

These days we do it with a gun. Much easier than beating some poor animal senseless.

We live in such a closed world these days. No longer do I have to hunt for my food. I can buy it in nicely presented packages with lovely pictures on the front.

Now, I’m a happy llama and like nothing more than to graze the grass. I enjoy fruit and vegetables. But what I really want is a big hunk of lamb. Yummy. I really like sinking my teeth in and gnawing away at dead sheep.

I’m perfectly happy to be removed from the process, you know, how the dead things end up on my plate. However, some of us still like to go out hunting, and I’m ok with that, provided that what you hunt ends up on your plate or someone elses plate for dinner.

It’s no longer ok just to go hunting for the sake of sport. The days of shooting just because you can have to end. I think that every creature on the planet has a right to be here, and just because we can hunt and kill doesn’t mean we have to.

I can hear the cries now. “It’s ok to go out and shoot (insert animal considered a pest) because they’re a pest”. That’s very noble of you, to help us out like that, to make the world a better place. Australia would be much better if some snotty nosed english twat didn’t think it was ok to release rabbits, foxes, ducks, goats, pigs, camels and deers into the Australian environment. I wish someone could get rid of said pests. But its not sport to remove them. Its a job, a task. One that needs dedicated shooters who are employeed. Not a bunch of weekend Rambos.

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]]> Shake me up baby! http://www.brucellama.com/2010/05/08/shake-me-up-baby/ Sat, 08 May 2010 04:33:33 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=1432 The christians, well some of them, are waiting for the coming of their smelly dirty jewish messiah (I don’t imagine cleanliness was high on the agenda back in the year dot). They want so much for the world to end, for all the sinners to be cast into hell that they are on the look out for signs.

Luke 21 talks about signs for the end of the age – it matters not that the signs are common occurances, but you know, that’s ok.

Here are the signs:

There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven.

Wow, earthquakes – how interesting! This is a great one to latch on to. Earthquakes happen every day, hundreds, and every now and then we get a big one. Now, there’s nothing in Luke that says there will be a lot of extra earthquakes, just great earthquakes, but some of our dear deluded christians have noticed an increase in earthquakes.1  Therefore the end of the world is nigh.  Jesus is coming again.  Alas, they always fail to understand that the science of detecting quakes and their strength has been growing over the last 100 years.  So while the records have been more accurate as the technology changes, this is not an indication that there have been more quakes.  The common source of the information comes from the USGS site that clearly states, at the top of the page:

Selected earthquakes of general historic interest.

Wow, famines – how interesting! There are hungry people in the world.  Jesus must be on the way back.  Oh, and look, some of the hungry people in the world also have earthquakes.  Double whammy.

…food shortages continue because many people do not have enough money to buy food or land on which to raise crops. In developing countries, well over a billion people have to live on an income of a dollar or less a day. The majority of these suffer from chronic hunger2

I wonder if they see a link.  Food is short, no money, chronic hunger, no crops.  It would seem to me that the barrier here is that you have lots of money and lots of food and they have none.  It’s within your power to fix this problem, and I would have thought that the word of your bastard god would be enough for you to understand you must feed the poor. Give them some money to feed themselves.  You know, share.  (arseholes)

Wow, pestilence. There are sick people, science can’t seem to find a cure for sick people, there’s an awful lot of them, there’s HIV/AIDS, swine flu, cholera, bird flu.  Oh, and look, poor people seem to get sick, they also live in earthquake country and have no money or food so can’t remain fit and healthy because of the famine.  But don’t worry, it’s a sign that jesus is coming back, so we can’t help you because jesus is coming back and we really want that to happen.

Then there’s the fearful events and great signs from heaven.   There’s the attack on the world trade centre, there’s the ongoing terrorist threat, there’s global warming, there’s earthquakes, famine and pestilence.  There’s comets, planets lining up, threat of meteors landing on us, all from the heavens…

And on and on it goes,  people of faith who think they can predict when their sweet baby jesus is coming back, based on signs that happen every day for hundreds of thousands of years, do nothing to help those in need.  They are so busy looking out for the signs, making sure they’ve said their prayers, that they simply can’t see the truth.

The world is the way it is because of dumb fucks like you.  Stop shoving the food in your face, stop saving the money to buy things, and get out and actually do something to help those in need.  Jesus will love you for it.

  1. My good mate everlastinglife has tabulated the increase for us here ↩
  2.  This is from the jehovahs, they really want the endtimes to happen SOURCE ↩

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]]> The world farts http://www.brucellama.com/2009/12/19/the-world-farts/ Sat, 19 Dec 2009 05:26:39 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=1106 All these leaders, those elected, those who seized power, those puppets, all of them went to Copenhagen to talk about global warming.  You know, the change in the climate of this planet, the only place the we have to live.  There’s ongoing concern and evidence that the climate is changing.  Did I mention that this was happening on the planet that we call home and that we just can’t move to somewhere with a better view?  There are those that think we are not to blame for the change, there are those that think that nothing has change.  There are those that are blaming the change in the weather patterns on human activity.

You’d have to be pretty bloody stupid not to notice that the ice is melting on mountains, you’d have to be bloody stupid not to notice an increase in typhoons in the Philippines. On going droughts around the world. There are signs man, read the fucking signs.

Regardless of whether or not we can actually save the world, we need to try.  If the changes are a result of our actions, then we need to make some changes, if the changes are a perfect example of the earth doing it’s thing then that is no reason for us not to try and change it.  After all we have been changing the environment to suit ourselves for thousands of years, but this is the biggie.  If we fuck this up we as a species are screwed and as much as we have found water on the moon there is no chance of us all moving there.

So, our beloved world leaders all meet for a chin wag about climate change and what do to about it.  And it descended into a bitch session.  The poorer countries  staged a walk out in protest and the richer  countries just got their own way.

The best they could do was to agree to a three page statement that changes nothing.

But even the leaders of the world’s biggest countries admit that the provisions in the final document will not protect the planet from dangerous changes in global temperatures. [SOURCE]

It seems so obvious to me, we consume, factories make the stuff I consume, factories create pollution by making the stuff that I consume, pollution causes a change in the atmosphere that traps the sun’s heat and cause the temperature to rise because the factories pollute making the stuff I consume.

My answer, reduce consumption.  Why don’t we do that?  Money.  It’s all about economies.  If we stop consuming, factories must stop producing, if that happens then profits fall, people get laid off, companies go broke, admin staff get laid off, our society as we know it breaks down.

At this time of year, Christmas, our shops our full of useless shit.  Row after row of crap that has been produced to meet the demand.  We don’t really need this shit, but large corporations seem hellbent on making it for us, it’s how our economy works.  It’s supposed to be all about supply and demand, but I’m not sure whether we are demanding it or the companies simply make the demand by supplying the shit.

You and me need to take some responsibility for this.  Government and corporations need to take some responsibility.  There is no use talking about reducing emissions (which sounds rather something like Brother Baker was saying during a talk on masturbation) if you don’t tie that in with talking about reducing consumption.

A useless, gutless effort is the talkfest at Copenhagen.

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]]> Parliament of World Religions http://www.brucellama.com/2009/12/05/parliament-of-world-religions/ http://www.brucellama.com/2009/12/05/parliament-of-world-religions/#comments Sat, 05 Dec 2009 01:59:54 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=1062 Like a swarm of gnats descending on a pile of shit the parliament of the worlds religions has landed in Melbourne.

The streets are adorned with much love and people wearing silly hats and dresses.  The worlds largest interfaith event is on its way.  Never mind that they can’t agree on the simple things, like what is god, where does she hang out and has there ever been a llama born of an alpaca.

You can catch Canon Gideon Byamugisha1, he’ll be pointing out the complexity of moral challenges around HIV/AIDS in Africa.  I hope the catholic church is listening and getting ready to issue the condoms.  The people don’t need religion, they need protection.  Recently the Ugandan parliament consider the death penalty for homosexuals2, not only do they want to put people who are gay to death, they also want to lock up anyone who helps them.  As far as I know pope bendydick has not even spoken out about this outrage.  There’s a challenge to the parliament of world religions, start calling some of these extremist to account for their backward attitudes.

Federal, State and Local governments have given millions3 to the conference, to help fund this quaint sky pixie fest.  These are some of the richest organisation on the planet, god is on their side and they still need fucking help.  Why didn’t they just go down on bended knee and ask god to provide.  Oh, that’s right, they did and the grand pooh-bah gnat provided funding from my taxes.  Mind you, those same funders didn’t see fit to fund the atheist convention happening early next year, apparently the grand pooh-bah gnat wasn’t so keen on them.

When justifying why the fairy-tale believers should be funded Reverend Tim Costello, a patron of the world’s religions event, said it was important to support the forum, as “90 per cent of the world is deeply religious”.  He then went on to say “In a global context, most of the world is profoundly religious, and there literally can’t be peace without religious peace.”  Well he got that right.  But you’ll never achieve world peace through religion, one of the key tenets of most religions is that they have the eternal truth and all the answers and everyone else is wrong.  This means that they feel compelled in their own way to make everyone believe like they do.  I’ve said it myself, the world would be a much better place if everyone just believed like I do.  Of course, I’m right and everyone else is wrong.  If I could just get myself a band of loyal followers we can set about converting the world to my brand of… oh.. nothingness?  And 90% of the world is deeply religious?  Deeply?  On what basis do you make that rather grand claim?  But its ok, he doesn’t have to provide any evidence because its all about faith, just trust him, he’s a reverend.

There’s a lot of focus at the parliament of world wankers on the environment this year.  Lots of talk about how religion can ‘heal’ the world, as if its some sort of being you can pat on the head and say ‘there, there, let me kiss it better’.  Our world doesn’t need spiritual assistance to survive, it needs toss pots like you to stay at home and stop burning fossil fuels to spread your vile religions.  Stop consuming so much energy trying to spread the word and focus on how to reduce your impact on the world.

So they’ll sit around for a week each pretending to respect and love the people of different faiths, but each really thinking how stupid it is to believe that crap.  They’ll pass some resolution about protecting themselves and make grand claims about world peace and how to feed the starving, how to save the world from us and so on, then they’ll all go home and tell the faithful how grand it all was, they’ll go on praying to their god on bended knee and waiting for things to change, but that’s it, they won’t actually do anything.  Oh, some of them might build some new churches and talk about ways of getting the young people back.  Poverty, war and disaster will continue unabated thanks to the ongoing tragedy of the belief that there is something out there taking a keen interest in us.

Twaddle.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/atheists-cross-as-religious-forum-secures-taxpayer-funding-20091126-jste.html
  1. The first Ugandan priest to admit he was HIV positive – check his WIKIPEDIA page ↩
  2. SOURCE ↩
  3. $2 million from Federal and State, $500,00 from the City of Melbourne SOURCE ↩

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]]> http://www.brucellama.com/2009/12/05/parliament-of-world-religions/feed/ 1 How’s the environment? http://www.brucellama.com/2009/11/08/hows-the-environment/ Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:12:15 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=1026 [SOURCE] The richer you are, the more food you throw out. 1 There are people who have to scrape and save for everything they eat, there are people who just can’t get enough to eat.  We throw it out, the left overs.  There’s lost of reasons for it, but the primary reason seems to be that we don’t plan what we are going to eat.  We go to the supermarket and just buy stuff.  The supermarkets don’t help either, they encourage you to buy by making sure they provide enough bags for you to carry your stuff around in.

I do it, throw out food.  I don’t mean to, but it doesn’t get eaten for whatever reason (probably lack of planning), and it ends up in the big bin, and I have a big one, so I can fill it up, I then have to put the bin out on the street and someone comes and takes it away, leaving me with a big bin that’s empty and needs filling up again.  I don’t even know where it goes.  I do now know that it contributes to the emissions of green house gases, seems there’s a lot of methane in my food scraps.

[SOURCE]  It seems that we also throw out our TV sets.

About 234 million computers, televisions and mobile phones were thrown out last year, an increase of 41 million on the year before.

I’m glad I haven’t upgraded to a plasma!  I did get rid of my old CRT monitors and now have a lovely flat screen.  I recently upgraded my mobile phone, but haven’t thrown the old one out yet.

Here we have politicians talking about emission trading schemes, when what we really want is for people to stop being so wasteful.  The supply and demand system works way too well.

With so many people who don’t have as much as I do, it’s bad that I throw away so much stuff.  I don’t give enough consideration to the imapct of my habits.  The impact that they have on the rest of the world.

While we are worrying about whether or not jesus is coming back, or whether or not the new public transport ticketing system is going to work, or how to save enough to fly into space, people continue to starve.  To death.  And they do it without watching television or sending an SMS.

Sobering thoughts.

  1. SOURCE Australia Institute – What a waste – an analysis of household expenditure on food ↩

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]]> Fancy smancy http://www.brucellama.com/2009/11/02/fancy-smancy/ Mon, 02 Nov 2009 05:24:20 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=1014 mcdonaldsfancy

McDonalds, that big  multi-national hamburger joint, is selling something a little bit fancy in Melbourne, and I guess the rest of Australia.  Guess what you get?  No, no, not a plastic toy.  You get a hamburger.  It’s cow meat, from an Angus cow by the sounds of it.  Apparently it’s fancy meat.  Let me get this right… for all these years, when McDonalds have been talking about only using the best Australian beef in their products they haven’t?

Let’s face it, there is nothing fancy about eating a burger at McDonalds.  It’s fast food.  Adding an extra sauce and telling me its Angus meat changes nothing.  It’s still a fast-food hamburger.  Oh, and BYO cutlery? It’s a laugh when you add that into the mix.  I’ve used knives and forks at some very unfancy restaurants over the years, I even use them at home, which is hardly ever fancy.   What a crock.

I know, I know, it’s suppose to be a bit of a ‘joke’.  It’s a humours ad, but it fails badly and it just simply annoys the crap out of me.  Now if they were selling alpaca meat….

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]]> Story of stuff http://www.brucellama.com/2009/10/19/story-of-stuff/ Mon, 19 Oct 2009 08:48:02 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=922 [SOURCE]

The story of stuff is quite important. The amount of shit we have is contributing to the financial, environmental and food problems that we are experiencing in the world. I’ve said it plenty of times, to help us survive we need to be nice to each other, we need to make sure everyone has enough food and money to get by, that means reducing the amount of products that we consume. It’s pretty straight forward. I’m trying to do my bit, I don’t think its enough. What are you doing? Oh, and get along to the website and watch the full 20 minute video. It’s very revealing.

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]]> McSilly http://www.brucellama.com/2009/09/10/mcsilly/ Wed, 09 Sep 2009 21:11:45 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=874 [SOURCE]

McCurry in Malaysia has just won an eight year battle for the right to use Mc.  McDonalds are not too impressed.

A giant corporate chasing after a small time operator over the use of Mc.   For eight years.  What’s wrong McDonalds, afraid someone might prefer a jolly good curry instead of a big mac?

Why not get on with serving what you serve and stop picking on the little guys.  Could it be you are really worried that they might take away some of your custom?  Why does your brand need such protection?  Surely you’re a big enough player not to be so concerned about such frivolous matters, instead you tie up the courts with silly actions.  The court should be focused on more important things than your corporate ego, and you really should be focused on serving your customers decent hamburgers.

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]]> How’s your food? http://www.brucellama.com/2009/08/14/hows-your-food/ Fri, 14 Aug 2009 06:45:37 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=732 [SOURCE]

Let me pick a few key sentences out of the article for you:

THE United Nations food aid agency says it will be forced to cut programs even as hunger soars amid the global economic crisis because pledged donations have failed to materialise.

we are facing a dangerous and unprecedented shortfall in emergency funding

a reduction in rations and programs throughout the world, including those to the world’s most vulnerable people.

Those living on a dollar a day can only afford to buy about a third of the food they were able to buy a few years ago

for the first time in history, 1.02 billion people are undernourished worldwide, up from 60 million just two years ago

One out of every six today are on the official list of the urgently hungry

Right.

Last night I purchased some grapes.  We grow them here in Australia.  It’s not grape season though.  The grapes I purchased where from the United States, and they cost $11.00 a kilogram.  That’s expensive, however, I’ve been a sick llama and felt like a treat.  I did mention to the love llama how great it is that I can get any food I want any time of the year.

Let that arrogance sink in a bit.

Is it still sinking?

The grapes are here because I have the money to buy them.  I get paid very well to do my work, so well in fact that even when I’m sick (as I was for two days) I still get paid.  With that money I get nice fresh juicy grapes imported from the USA.  Flown over no doubt. (Let’s not get into the whole energy debate on that one)

I made a lamb roast on Friday night.  I purchased a leg of lamb.  (It’s ok, I’m told the lamb didn’t feel a thing) and roasted it with some lovely fresh veggies.  I then planned to make a soup with the bones and other associated leftovers, but alas, I was unwell and had to through the scraps out. (No, I’m not suggesting I should send the bones to Africa)  I didn’t have the energy to boil them up.

What a luxury.

As I’ve said before here and here, oh and here.  I’m a short fat  Australian.  I eat to much.  I have too much food, so much that I can freeze the left overs and buy expensive grapes.  You know I’ve got 4 different types of cheese in the fridge at present.

This isn’t right, and I don’t know what to do.  I’m supporting CARE Australia and Amnesty International, both non-profit, non-religious and not associated with a political party.  I’ll be more mindful about what I purchase and I’ll be writing a few letters to the papers and to my local members.  Really though, there should be no excuse for starving people in today’s world.

I’m worried about equality in marriage, I’m concerned with office politics, I get stressed about my children’s education, I don’t buy fuel until Tuesday night (it’s cheaper then).  How lucky I am.

Now, off to save the world.  Will you help?

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