"Ebony and Ivory" was banned for a while in South Africa during the Apartheid era.
In the early 19th century mammoth ivory was used, as substantial source, for such products as piano keys, billiard balls, and ornamental boxes.
One thing that Paul forgot to mention was that the piano keys were made of ivory.
I make that record here, even belatedly (he is alive and kicking well unlike the dead elephants).
Paul McCartney is the writer and Stevie Wonder the other of the duet.
This song hit the chart in 1982 and I was in England.
I was neither black nor white but a browny (not a brown Sahib) and was feeling the pinch.
All the jobs I did up to that point were the ones white man did not want to work.
One place had the highest maternal death and another place had highest neonatal death in UK.
All the same, I worked for humanity and mostly neonates.
Worked hard to improve the lot including newly established wings and hospitals and planning for new ones in Dartford.
I was focused when British doctors were either half drunk or fully drunk and one social worker was killing destitutes to get their social benefits illegally and there was a mad GP and mad nurse murdering NHF patients and babies.
All three were in prison, one committed suicide in the cell.
Then the last case was a little girl who was seduced by the father who was a policemen.
I had enough and left UK for good never to return.
These people who are agents of human rights, look straight into the mirror and see who is more innocent.
I abhor violence and killing even in war.
But I abhor killing innocent animals, more.
If we look at the history of Ceylon British occupiers killed our Gentle Giants almost to extinction in the hills and where now tea is planted and foreign labour was brought and they were the worst treated slaves until 1975, when British Television exposed them in broad day light.
I do not say their lot is better three years after the war ended and their daily wages are not enough to buy flour or bread!
They are fast leaving the plantation but their leaders are living in cushy Colombo 7 palaces.
They only come up when they need their votes that comes once in every six years.
Now coming to my lead story the Ebony and Ivory.
Ivory trade was regularized only towards beginning of 1980.
In this country we have both Ivory and Ebony.
From 1970 we started decimating the Ebony with 1973 oil price hike and with foreign cash deficit
We started decimating tree cover including in the plantation sector and growing not cash crops but manioc.
The tree felling is continuing with political patronage and now anybody who is somebody with political backing of two third majority can transport illegal timber anywhere in this blessed country.
We deserve this type of government for our own stupidity.
State laborers were eating maniac with their leaves as vegetable matter and I had to do postmortem on them and the diagnosis was cyanide poisoning.
Now, we are killing the remaining tuskers to adorn the high palaces with ornamentation.
They are venerated for 10 days and the rest of the year they are neglected by wildlife, railway and the hashish cultivators in the deep jungle with ¨Upi Wawamu Rata Nagamu with Hashish¨.
Below is a historical record which I copied form elsewhere in the web for your information.
Japanese, American, Russians and the Chinese are the biggest consumers of illegal IVORY TRADE.
In the early 19th century mammoth ivory was used, as substantial source, for such products as piano keys, billiard balls, and ornamental boxes.
Some estimates suggest that 10 million mammoths still remain buried in Siberia.
The ivory trade is the commercial, often illegal trade in the ivory tusks of the hippopotamus, walrus, narwhal, mammoth, Rhino and most commonly, Asian and African elephants.
Ivory has been traded for hundreds of years by people in such regions as Greenland, Alaska, and Siberia.
The trade, in more recent times, has led to endangerment of species, resulting in restrictions and bans.
