Having been an avid surfer in my youth, when the sport was a lot safer than it is now, I've taken a keen interest in how the local shark wars are progressing. So I went down to Cottesloe Beach earlier today to watch the latest protest against the so-called cull and get some video footage of it. 

And isn't it interesting that the term "cull" is the default description -- even for those who are for the State Government's mitigation strategy. In my opinion it shouldn't even be defined as a cull. The word implies a large scale reduction in numbers. This, however, is a targeted approach aimed at taking out hefty individual noahs swimming close to our beaches. But that just shows how good the green Left are at changing the language to suit their agenda. 

Cull or not, there were clearly several thousand people down there today. And the crowd's appearance and composition were really interesting. Some of the protesters were obvious crazies -- the kind of pathetic human flotsam you see stinking up the space at an Occupy event -- but most of them looked like they were actually pretty responsible and functional in their daily lives.

And that's what was so strange -- even surreal. I mean, if you go to your usual bolshie demo it's like going to the zoo and looking into the cages. Normal folk stop and stare, maybe throw the leftist howler monkeys a coupla peanuts, then walk on by. But here there seemed to be no distinction between the two worlds ... It was really odd; even kinda creepy.  

I mean, why would so many seemingly sane adults who appeared competent and mature enough to hold down responsible jobs rock up holding stupid blow up shark dolls and Colin Barnett effigies with bloody fish hooks in their mouths to respectfully listen to and then applaud the eye-watering psychobabble of a conga line of human-hating shrub-humpers like Sea Shepherd's Jeff Hansen?

Clearly, the decades long campaign of "attitudinal reconstruction" waged by these grim, relentless misanthropes is bearing its ghastly, twisted fruit. Infantile Rousseauian rubbish about man being bad and nature being good is now the conventional wisdom across much of the social spectrum here in Perth.



Sure, it's not yet the majority view. But it's getting that way. And even if you're one of the many who knows full well how howling-at-the moon mad it all is, odds are that so many of your friends and co-workers have been gripped by fervent Gaia-worship that it's much easier to just keep your mouth shut and go along with the insanity.

Still, there are some encouraging signs of rebellion. Increasing numbers of people are willing to stand up for the rights of humans over those of sharks. Some have even set up Facebook pages, for example. There may even be a pro-shark cull demo at some stage -- who knows. (Oops. Used that word cull again! "Cull", it's the new "carbon".) 

Down south, many surfers are starting to arc up about the deep green insistence that we do nothing to stop the shark threat. And even the words of one of the speakers at today's protest hinted at the existence of a bit of a schism within the local surfing community.

This came at the end, when local singer/surfer Sam Carmody (seen here with one of his new found marine mates) rattled off a little spiel before launching into song. He talked about how the grommets (young surfers) attending this event shouldn't feel ashamed because it wasn't that extreme. This implied that peer group pressure had been placed on them to withdraw their support -- and no wonder.

Anyhoo, you can see this exhortation at the beginning of the video below. And from about a minute and half onwards there are numerous closeups of banners, mascots and dolls -- including one of those hanging Barnett effigies I mentioned.

And on the subject of our Premier: funny that they call him the "Emperor". Trying to protect your citizens from dangers posed by prehistoric sea beasts hardly seems megalomaniacal to me. If anything is redolent of a long dead Roman tyrant it's the crowd itself. I'm thinking Caligula -- you know, the loon who was reputed to have been so enamoured of his horse Incitatus that he intended to make him a consul. (Actually, shark huggers are even weirder. Not that I'm defending ol' Nero. But at least a horse is a mammal!)