In a show for the public and the media on Friday, Irwin held his son in one arm while feeding a dead chicken to a large, lunging crocodile then put the baby on the ground and helped him walk near the reptile's pond.
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[The] Seven television network was inundated with calls after the incident was aired. Protests were lodged on a government families crisis line and with police.
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Irwin told the Herald Sun newspaper that he would never endanger his child and he had been in complete control of the crocodile.
"I guess what I am doing is teaching him to be completely familiar with crocodiles," he said. "It is far more dangerous to pack your kid up and go out on the road."
-Reuters/Yahoo Jan.02.04
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Two animal welfare groups are challenging the government's backing of a �32m research laboratory which will use monkeys in research on Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other incurable diseases.
Lawyers for Animal Aid and the National Anti-Vivisection Society have lodged an appeal against the deputy prime minister, John Prescott's approval of the project drawn up by Cambridge University.
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Scientists defended the proposal at the planning inquiry a year ago. They said experiments carried out on monkeys would be crucial for potential breakthroughs in treating some of the most-feared incurable diseases.
-Martin Wainwright/GuardianUK
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ΩWainright's biased reportage notwithstanding, these two stories, antipodean and podean, are about the same thing.
And Wainright gets one part right, at least. It's about fear.
"Most-feared...diseases." 'Incurable' thrown in for subliminal emphasis, because obviously if they were 'curable' the argument would lose most of its steam.
See how it's justified? Fear. See how the same argument could so easily be made for human experiments, on humans?
Think of the benefits to society, and they were prisoners anyway, scum, worthless parasites.
Monkeys. Crocodiles.
Monkey is to man as man is to crocodile.
And crocodile is to man as man is to monkey.
Steve Irwin's no reckless endangerer, he knows what he's doing, and something that doesn't show through on his shows or in his books, the anger he must have to face down every day. He loves these creatures, and he sees more than most of us how they're being killed one by one and family by family.
And what he said about going out on the road being far more dangerous needs to be said a thousand times a day.
The single greatest cause of death in people under 30 is traffic fatalities.
Right behind that information comes the knee-jerk learned response of drunk driving being at fault, but no, that's not true. It's the automobile. Not alcohol, not drugs, not terrorists. Just getting in cars and going 80 miles an hour inside a ton of steel while other people do the same thing right next to you going the other way. People are brainwashed about that. It's that plain and it's that simple.
Cowardice is a virtue now. Fear justifies the most disgusting and obscene crimes.
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The Monkey's Heart
The Monkey's Revenge
The Crocodile Hunter
