Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Infanticide in NG Highlands

In today's West Australian newspaper there is a report about infanticide in the New Guinea Highlands. It seems that women from opposing warring clans have been killing their newborn sons to stop another generation of fighters disrupting everyday life in the villages. They figure that if there are fewer men, there will be far less fighting. Seems perfectly reasonable to me. There aren't a lot of women out there starting wars.

The report quoted two women from opposing clans, Rona Luke and Kipyona Belas who said...'Male infanticide reduced the cyclical payback violence infamous in Highlands' tribal fights'. Not bad for unsophisticated villagers.

That 'quote' was almost certainly a westernised version of 'If they die they don't fight'.

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My brother works for a seafood wholesaler/distributor. On deliveries to restaurants he has seen some grotty kitchens. The business deals in a lot of cash transactions (?). Other restaurant owners give their cheque book to bro and he writes out the amount and they sign it. Illiterate?

When he delivers the seafood and puts it in their freezer he is obliged to eat a sample of their food...fish and chips; Chinese , Vietnamese etc.

Recently his employer has dumped his W.A. distributor of local frozen chips and imported two containers of chips from Germany. Can they be much cheaper than the local product?

4 comments:

Fremantlebiz said...

Every time I hear about food from Europe being dumped in Australia I think of Chernobyl.

Kev said...

I was wrong. There were three containers of chips and already three restaurants have given them the thumbs down in favour of the local chips at the same price.

Anonymous said...

Regarding the infanticide, do you believe it actually happened, or do you think it's a hoax / gross exaggeration?

Kev said...

Most probably colourful journalese. If more than a few babies had died at birth, sorcery would have been blamed and the 'sorcerers' would have been killed.