I found myself unexpectedly angry, nay, furious, over the nonsense that is floating around the ether this afternoon in regard to Australian federal politics. We have another leadership spill in the offing, with Kevin Rudd again allegedly challenging for the top job. This, despite his repeated denials in the last week. As they say, truth is the first casualty of war, particularly when that war is political.
What has made me furious is the way this current Prime Minister has been spoken about, and the part the media have deliberately played in this. Since assuming the leadership, she has been the subject of unprecedented vilification, unprecedented in the sense that no other Australian Prime Minister has been subjected to such hatred and such scrutiny. I have just been arguing her case to a some blokes on Facebook, who have basically seen me as just another idiot Labor voter who needed to be put right.
Well, people, as a result of this exchange I have metaphorically sharpened my pencils and my tongue.
I know that there have been some problems with this government, but no worse than any other, and really important substantial legislation has been put and passed during this term. The country is in good economic shape. So what is really going on here?
I think there are two issues. The first is the Prime Minister’s gender. I am sure that by just being female, this has been enough to set off misogynistic males such as Ray Hadley and Alan Jones, the infamous shock jocks of Sydney’s 2GB. The second is media bias. I have repeatedly noticed that Julia Gillard cops a lot more flack than any other politician in the House. She is described in ugly and emotive terms. She is labelled as a liar, as incompetent and as having a bad hair style. We don’t like her shoes either, apparently. Impractical and she keeps falling over. And we can’t have that in the parliament, can we?
This PM is clearly not incompetent. There is plenty of important and needed legislation that has been introduced and passed through this parliament. Australia now has the Clean Energy Future package, the National Broadband scheme, the Gonski report on education and a National Disability Insurance Scheme. The PM ordered a Royal Commission into child sex abuse at the hands of the church. These are just a few really good important things this government has done. And while economics and the GDP of our country worries me not all (I think we need a new way of measuring national security and wellbeing), the world economic indices I have read and seen have Australia sitting near the top. We could even argue that Australia is now better off than when the last Coalition Government was in power. So why all the media flack squarely aimed at Ms Gillard?
Tim Dunlop of the ABC’s The Drum (http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3985592.html ) agrees with me in relation to this media bias. He notes that “Violent metaphors dominate the discussion of the Gillard Government. A recent article in (appropriately enough) The Punch managed to use all of these expressions in the course of its ranting: "assassination", "bloody execution", "swung a sledgehammer into its own political heartland", "knifed".”
He also noted that the Punch article “put the PM's problems down, in part, to her not having had a baby”.
Oh, please. In this day and age women in power have to put up with this sort of tripe?
The curse of Gillard seems to boil down to her being a liar. In fact she is, according to Alan Jones, “Juliar”. Very witty, Alan.
Why this obsession with her alleged lying and scurrilous behaviour? The famous carbon tax lie is usually what this boils down to. The tape where she said there will be no carbon tax is played over and over. However, the next bit is never played – the bit where she goes on to say quite unequivocally that in a Labor government there would be a price on carbon and an emissions trading scheme. Even Joe Hockey has defended her on this score. People, get over it. It was hardly a great big lie that has caused a war, drowned boat people and impoverished Australians.
Which leads me to my next point. The carry on about “Juliar” would make reasonable people think that she is obviously the first parliamentarian or Prime Minister in the history of Australia to lie. They appear to forget the Howard years, where John Howard’s shaky relationship with the truth hovered around 'uncomfortable'. His lies were, somehow, not lies. Confused yet?
Tim Dunlop says that the “standard theme of commentary throughout the Howard years, recycled as holy writ by journalists and other sage readers of the political entrails, was that 'the punters’ didn't care about Howard's lying.” But now apparently they do about Gillard’s lying. Why?
And just for the record, we will briefly raise some of this remarkably loose truth of Mr John "just watch my lips, the GST is dead and buried" Howard. Remember when he reneged on a number of election promises and referred to them as “non-core” promises? Do we recall that our whole involvement in the Iraq war was based on non-existent weapons of mass destruction? Let us not forget the children overboard affair, where he and his Minister Peter Reith lied about boat people throwing their children into the water – despite being advised to the contrary by our defence personnel. And I could go on. The shady dealings of the Australian wheat board, his blatant lie about not introducing a GST are all testament to a Prime Minister who apparently couldn’t lie straight in bed. But Alan Jones was very quiet about his. The Murdoch Press seemed not to notice. Curious, no?
And of course, Julia knifed poor Kevin. Leadership spills are always messy, and this one was no different. But this PM came to power in the same way the current leader of the Opposition became leader of his party – by deposing someone. Heard any criticism of Abbott?
It is only now that a lying politician is unacceptable to the great Australian public, who have suddenly become moral watchdogs. Why?
Tim Dunlop believes it is because of three things. He says:
“This is a Labor Government, it is a minority government, and the current prime minister is a woman."
Well, the fact that it is Labor and therefore unacceptable is somewhat mystifying. The Coalition has produced Barnaby Joyce and Peter Reith. ’Nuff said. Secondly, I see no problem with a 'hung' parliament - it has managed to introduce and get plenty of important legislation through. I happen to like and trust the Independents Windsor and Oakeshott, and think they do a fine job. Rob Oakeshott is my Federal member and he is a man of integrity and keeps himself well informed on issues. So there are no problems with this minority government making sensible decisions, as far as I can see.
But the fact we have a hung parliament that requires consultation and cooperation seems to be seen as horrifying by our media, has been milked by the Opposition, and has hoodwinked the great unwashed. It has showed no signs of being unstable, and manages to get quite a lot of legislation passed. So again, what is going on here?
Gillard may not be my favourite person but research shows the level of hate and animosity directed against her is unprecedented. Take a bow, media, for your role in this.
She has suffered unfairly because of her gender. This bias has been researched. It is clearly there. It is wrong and unfair. What other PM in this country has endured a “ditch the witch” sign aimed at him/her? What other PM has Alan Jones wanted to send to out to sea in a chaff bag? And what other Opposition leader stood in front of the aforesaid sign and addressed the approving crowd, giving tacit acquiescence to these things?
Being a woman means that Gillard is judged differently. It is unfair and it is unnecessary and it is scary.
As Dunlop says “When she is tough, she is seen as treacherous and unbecoming. When she prefers compromise and negotiation, she is seen as weak. Oh yeah, and she doesn't have kids: how can she relate to ‘normal’ people?”
The PM is a good negotiator, and these skills secured her the support of the Independents and the Greens to form the government, something that Tony Abbott completely failed to do. She is no more dishonest than anyone else in the house as far as I can ascertain and she is as honest than the others – the Opposition Leader included.
There is plenty of media frenzy now about the leadership spill and about Gillard. And they aren’t just commenting, which I know and accept is their job. It is the biased, ugly, emotive words and images that the media chooses when discussing Gillard. It is the deliberately negative words that are used to play to a very low baseline in the electorate.
This vilification of our first female prime minister should concern us all. It is unfair and it is disturbing in this age of supposed equality of men and women.
So whether you prefer Labor, the Coalition or the Greens, think about it. Is this how we want women in politics treated? What does this say of our society, and the increasing violence against women?
It is time to restore dignity and respect to the office of Prime Minister. It is time for the media to moderate its comments and play fair. Or we will be a much poorer society.
Wednesday, 20 March 2013
Thursday, 17 January 2013
Thunder and lightning very very frightening me
A Public Prayer Meeting for rain was held last Sunday. And lo, results were delivered. The Lord did what He had in mind. The thunder and the lightening in the sky as well as the storm rain falling on the roof were all reminders that He is the Lord Almighty and has His plans and will perform them. Hopefully His plan is to continue to bless the area with on-going moisture. More meetings are planned to ensure the Lord does just that, apparently. And we will just ignore the disconcerting fact that the Bureau of Meteorology had actually predicted Sunday’s rain two days before.
I admit that I have real trouble with the fundamentalist notion of prayer. The idea that we can ask God for anything that ails us, and get an answer has worried me for some years. In my student days, I was blessed to live next door to a very Pentecostal type, who laid hands on his car when it wouldn’t go, on the drain pipe when it was blocked, and on my thumb when it was stung by a bee and I was looking for tweezers.
I can’t get past the notion that God will happily unblock the drain of a wealthy (comparatively speaking) first world white person but let many small black children die of dehydration, starvation and various nasty diseases, even as their mothers cry out for mercy.
I also can’t get my head around the idea that climate change is bunk and that the Lord has the climate completely under control (except of course, for the times he forgets and we have to pray to get it Him—capital H, thanks very much—to change it) and that there is nothing we can, indeed should, be doing to modify our lifestyles and standard of living to reduce the emissions that are causing the problem. We can pray, because that is what Christians who believe everything is foreordained by the Lord, do.
You might well be asking at this time why bother praying for something the Lord has already ordained. Good question. I haven’t worked out the answer yet, but I am sure my Calvinistic friends would have some piece of cognitive dissonance to offer me. Apparently the dry weather has been caused by human sinfulness, and if people repent, things will no doubt change. Amazing how this sinfulness has coincided with the rise of CO2 in the atmosphere. Maybe it is a symbolic representation of it. Certainly it is caused by sinfulness of a sort, though not the kind our Calvinistic friend is talking about.
I notice that prayer is getting a similar sort of publicity in America at the moment. In the light of President Obama’s announcement about gun control, the Texan Governor, Rick Perry, has revealed he has his own plan for combating America's gun violence problem. Where President Obama has suggested banning certain automatic weapons and controlling sales of guns etc, the Texan governor announced that what was needed was not tougher gun control legislation, but prayer. Yep, Americans should simply pray for protection against being shot. If this was a successful strategy, I suggest that the casualty lists in both world wars would have been considerably smaller, peace in the Middle East would now be a reality, and in Northern Ireland the Orange marches would have disappeared into the realm of past history.
Like my friend the evangelical, Gov. Perry believes that there is a cause other than our own actions. Instead of sin, he talked about an "evil prowling" in the world that has found its way into vulnerable minds. I would suggest the evil is thinking that guns are the answer to violence, but then I am not a gun owner wedded to a constitutional amendment.
I think relying on prayer for protection against gun violence might prove difficult, as nearly 14,000 people die each year in the USA as a result of being shot. It is a sobering statistic. Australia, on the other hand, was far more pragmatic when faced with a gun massacre 14 years ago. In the aftermath of the Port Arthur massacre in 1999, the then Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, banned semi-automatic and automatic weapons. There was a gun buy-back, and such weapons were handed in. Australia hasn’t had a gun massacre since this time.
John Howard is a conservative politician and a deeply religious Christian man. Yet he saw the light and the light was direct action. This doesn’t mean we can’t pray, of course, but surely prayer is meant not so much to manipulate God into doing stuff, but to also change us, and change us to change how we do things.
In the lectionary this year we are reading the Gospel of Luke. Luke’s Jesus makes it clear that prayer is to be backed up with action. This action entails giving our possessions to the poor, not extorting money from them, releasing them from debt and freeing the oppressed from the bonds of poverty and political oppression. It is sharing our coats and our homes and our hearts. Luke’s gospel is about enacting justice, and not praying the poor of the world out of sight and out of mind by asking God to fix the poverty that we created in the first place.
I am sure my friend will continue to pray for rain. For my part, I will be praying for the strength to challenge the industries and interests and governments that continue to pollute our lovely earth, and whose actions are right on track to render it uninhabitable. I will be praying that God will give me the courage to champion what is right, and to keep hope alive that somehow, the inhabitants of this earth will find a way to work together and move forward into a future of hope.
Friday, 11 January 2013
Agenda 21 and how the science of climate change was influenced by a talking snake
I am really looking forward to 2013. Especially since I learnt that Lord Monckton, that well-known climate change denier, will be heading down under to remind us Aussies that there is no such thing as Global Warming. Lord Monckton, that wall of the West, the redoubt of reason, the sentinel of science, the fortress of freedom, and the defender of democracy, will be here in person.
His three month speaking tour of Australia and NZ is entitled “Carbon tax, climate scam, Agenda 21: can democracy survive all three? Lord Monckton does due diligence”.
This is serious stuff. Our very way of life is clearly under threat in a way never imagined before. Never mind about wars, plagues and natural disasters- Agenda 21 (a cunningly disguised form of communism) is the real threat to civilization.
For those of you unfamiliar with Agenda 21, it was an item during the Copenhagen meeting on climate change. Those of right wing bent believe that a treaty was going to be signed, rubber stamped by left wing loonies, that was designed to transfer all the wealth of the west to poor third world countries, and in doing so, create a world government run by bureaucrats. All those communists who crashed through the Berlin wall joined the environment movement, took over Greenpeace, and plotted to impose a communist world government on the world.
Yes, times are tough. We groan under the weight of carbon taxes and climate scams.
But things will be OK, because Lord Monckton is doing due diligence for us. What is this “due diligence” I hear you ask?
Definition of DUE DILIGENCE
1: the care that a reasonable person exercises to avoid harm to other persons or their property
2: research and analysis of a company or organization done in preparation for a business transaction (as a corporate merger or purchase of securities)
As I assume that the good peer will not be preparing a business transaction, I am guessing he is here to exercise care in regard to persons and property. How this is precisely to happen is anyone’s guess. Perhaps by telling us we have all imagined the soaring temperatures of the last week – remember the earth has not warmed in 16 years. Those record temperatures are a but a blip in the weather. He has clearly not seen our weather charts.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/temperatures-off-the-charts-as-australia-turns-deep-purple-20130108-2ce33.html
The deep purple in the middle of this red weather chart represents 129.2° F or 54 °C. Our Australian bureau of meteorology was forced to find new colours for its heat index because the country is under a dome of heat. “The scale has just been increased today and I would anticipate it is because the forecast coming from the bureau’s model is showing temperatures in excess of 50 degrees,” David Jones, head of the bureau’s climate monitoring and prediction unit, told The Sydney Morning Herald. The previous record high was 50.7°C (123°F), recorded in 1960 at Oodnadatta Airport. We have now had seven consecutive days above 39°C. That’s a record too.
Australia’s vile heat wave has set homes and property burning from bushfires, but I doubt if Lord Monckton’s due diligence will be of much help.
The good peer is apparently untroubled by such annoying facts as fires and tumbling records. Well, it is summer, isn’t it? As self-proclaimed head and intellectual leader of the global warming denial movement, he has set sights on different things. He is now expanding his influence from aging National Party members and Alan Jones’ listeners to the conservative Christian Church here in Australia.
Lord Monckton is being sponsored by his good friend Pastor Daniel Nalliah, leader of Catch the Fire ministry and president of the nearly formed political party Rise Up Australia. Pastor Daniel has some particularly interesting views on matters of science, the climate, abortion and multiculturalism.
Apparently Lord Monckton will be the man to give the keynote speech at the official launch of his Rise Up Australia political party.
So why Lord Monckton? According to deSmogBlog (http://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/11510), he and Pastor Danny are old friends. In January 2012, Nalliah and his Christian evangelical Catch the Fire ministry hosted Lord Monckton for a lecture as part of his nationwide speaking tour that year – one which was prefaced by a scandal surrounding Monckton’s use of Nazi swastikas.
Quite apart from these somewhat alarming Fascist tendencies, Pastor Danny is what is euphemistically called a ‘young earther’. These ‘young earthers’ are Christians that believe the earth is no more than 6,000 years old. In old terms, they are biblical literalists, creationists and fundamentalists that think Genesis is a factual scientific account, complete with that well-established scientific fact, the talking snake. Further, such people are very keen on sin. Sin is responsible for most of our ills (well, the ones you can’t blame on the talking snake and womankind generally). Sin is punished swiftly by God in this world view, thus Pastor Danny also interpreted the 2009 Victorian bushfires as God's punishment for Victoria's abortion laws. (here he is at odds with another fundamentalist who spammed the Uniting Church, and who blamed the fires on the Uniting Church’s acceptance of homosexuality). Pastor Danny is also Islamophobic, with at least half of his website dedicated to denigrating Moslems. To describe him as a fundamentalist is probably an understatement.
His views on climate change aren’t any better. The rising trend in global temperatures, identified by climate scientists to be caused by the emission of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels and other human activities, is neither here nor there. Pastor Danny believes God is in charge of climate…therefore we cannot change the climate. His website states that climate change science is “a quasi-religious hypothesis unproven by objective scientific facts.” Beautifully simple, and explains why the planet hasn’t warmed in 16 years. God didn’t want it to, of course.
All of this stuff is terribly scientific. Is this the bar and the rigorous testing that Monckton and his ilk would have us measure climate science with? Young earths of 6,000 years old, talking snakes and a God that capriciously punishes people by burning them and their property? No due diligence there, Lord Monckton. No scientific rigor either. Are these two serial pests seriously thinking this ‘science’ is convincing? And that we should extrapolate this rigorous scientific belief to their skeptical climate science claims? Surely they are kidding us!
I can’t wait to see if Prof. Ian Plimer, one time geologist, climate skeptic (we won’t talk about his interests in the coal industry) and absolute atheist (he took creationists to court and wrote a book called ‘Telling Lies for God: Reason vs Creationism’ for goodness sake), turns up to fete Monckton on his tour. Will he be invited to the launch of Pastor Danny's new political party?
Will our friends the National Party, chockers with climate skeptics, see a 6,000 year old young earth and intelligent design as perfectly reasonable scientific hypotheses, and a perfectly reasonable measure of whether climate science is reputable?
Will the Opposition leader, well known for his skeptical views on climate change and his less than skeptical views on limiting abortion, line up to shake the hand of them both?
Both Lord Monckton and Pastor Danny should thank the lord there's no need to mention any factual and demonstrable science when they are discussing climate science to all those skeptics out there.
The rest of us should probably pray, and hope someone is listening.
His three month speaking tour of Australia and NZ is entitled “Carbon tax, climate scam, Agenda 21: can democracy survive all three? Lord Monckton does due diligence”.
This is serious stuff. Our very way of life is clearly under threat in a way never imagined before. Never mind about wars, plagues and natural disasters- Agenda 21 (a cunningly disguised form of communism) is the real threat to civilization.
For those of you unfamiliar with Agenda 21, it was an item during the Copenhagen meeting on climate change. Those of right wing bent believe that a treaty was going to be signed, rubber stamped by left wing loonies, that was designed to transfer all the wealth of the west to poor third world countries, and in doing so, create a world government run by bureaucrats. All those communists who crashed through the Berlin wall joined the environment movement, took over Greenpeace, and plotted to impose a communist world government on the world.
Yes, times are tough. We groan under the weight of carbon taxes and climate scams.
But things will be OK, because Lord Monckton is doing due diligence for us. What is this “due diligence” I hear you ask?
Definition of DUE DILIGENCE
1: the care that a reasonable person exercises to avoid harm to other persons or their property
2: research and analysis of a company or organization done in preparation for a business transaction (as a corporate merger or purchase of securities)
As I assume that the good peer will not be preparing a business transaction, I am guessing he is here to exercise care in regard to persons and property. How this is precisely to happen is anyone’s guess. Perhaps by telling us we have all imagined the soaring temperatures of the last week – remember the earth has not warmed in 16 years. Those record temperatures are a but a blip in the weather. He has clearly not seen our weather charts.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/temperatures-off-the-charts-as-australia-turns-deep-purple-20130108-2ce33.html
The deep purple in the middle of this red weather chart represents 129.2° F or 54 °C. Our Australian bureau of meteorology was forced to find new colours for its heat index because the country is under a dome of heat. “The scale has just been increased today and I would anticipate it is because the forecast coming from the bureau’s model is showing temperatures in excess of 50 degrees,” David Jones, head of the bureau’s climate monitoring and prediction unit, told The Sydney Morning Herald. The previous record high was 50.7°C (123°F), recorded in 1960 at Oodnadatta Airport. We have now had seven consecutive days above 39°C. That’s a record too.
Australia’s vile heat wave has set homes and property burning from bushfires, but I doubt if Lord Monckton’s due diligence will be of much help.
The good peer is apparently untroubled by such annoying facts as fires and tumbling records. Well, it is summer, isn’t it? As self-proclaimed head and intellectual leader of the global warming denial movement, he has set sights on different things. He is now expanding his influence from aging National Party members and Alan Jones’ listeners to the conservative Christian Church here in Australia.
Lord Monckton is being sponsored by his good friend Pastor Daniel Nalliah, leader of Catch the Fire ministry and president of the nearly formed political party Rise Up Australia. Pastor Daniel has some particularly interesting views on matters of science, the climate, abortion and multiculturalism.
Apparently Lord Monckton will be the man to give the keynote speech at the official launch of his Rise Up Australia political party.
So why Lord Monckton? According to deSmogBlog (http://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/11510), he and Pastor Danny are old friends. In January 2012, Nalliah and his Christian evangelical Catch the Fire ministry hosted Lord Monckton for a lecture as part of his nationwide speaking tour that year – one which was prefaced by a scandal surrounding Monckton’s use of Nazi swastikas.
Quite apart from these somewhat alarming Fascist tendencies, Pastor Danny is what is euphemistically called a ‘young earther’. These ‘young earthers’ are Christians that believe the earth is no more than 6,000 years old. In old terms, they are biblical literalists, creationists and fundamentalists that think Genesis is a factual scientific account, complete with that well-established scientific fact, the talking snake. Further, such people are very keen on sin. Sin is responsible for most of our ills (well, the ones you can’t blame on the talking snake and womankind generally). Sin is punished swiftly by God in this world view, thus Pastor Danny also interpreted the 2009 Victorian bushfires as God's punishment for Victoria's abortion laws. (here he is at odds with another fundamentalist who spammed the Uniting Church, and who blamed the fires on the Uniting Church’s acceptance of homosexuality). Pastor Danny is also Islamophobic, with at least half of his website dedicated to denigrating Moslems. To describe him as a fundamentalist is probably an understatement.
His views on climate change aren’t any better. The rising trend in global temperatures, identified by climate scientists to be caused by the emission of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels and other human activities, is neither here nor there. Pastor Danny believes God is in charge of climate…therefore we cannot change the climate. His website states that climate change science is “a quasi-religious hypothesis unproven by objective scientific facts.” Beautifully simple, and explains why the planet hasn’t warmed in 16 years. God didn’t want it to, of course.
All of this stuff is terribly scientific. Is this the bar and the rigorous testing that Monckton and his ilk would have us measure climate science with? Young earths of 6,000 years old, talking snakes and a God that capriciously punishes people by burning them and their property? No due diligence there, Lord Monckton. No scientific rigor either. Are these two serial pests seriously thinking this ‘science’ is convincing? And that we should extrapolate this rigorous scientific belief to their skeptical climate science claims? Surely they are kidding us!
I can’t wait to see if Prof. Ian Plimer, one time geologist, climate skeptic (we won’t talk about his interests in the coal industry) and absolute atheist (he took creationists to court and wrote a book called ‘Telling Lies for God: Reason vs Creationism’ for goodness sake), turns up to fete Monckton on his tour. Will he be invited to the launch of Pastor Danny's new political party?
Will our friends the National Party, chockers with climate skeptics, see a 6,000 year old young earth and intelligent design as perfectly reasonable scientific hypotheses, and a perfectly reasonable measure of whether climate science is reputable?
Will the Opposition leader, well known for his skeptical views on climate change and his less than skeptical views on limiting abortion, line up to shake the hand of them both?
Both Lord Monckton and Pastor Danny should thank the lord there's no need to mention any factual and demonstrable science when they are discussing climate science to all those skeptics out there.
The rest of us should probably pray, and hope someone is listening.
Tuesday, 8 January 2013
Praying for rain?
(Note: this blog is not meant to smear all evangelical Christians, as I know there are many socially and environmentally aware evangelical Christians out there. It is meant to highlight a particular sort of evangelical Christian, a sort that is rather prolific up here in rural reverend land)
I admit I find the local evangelical Protestants hard to understand. Some of the ideas and beliefs that particularly male evangelical Christians subscribe to are difficult to fathom, and they seem to live in a very small world dominated by a stern and humorless deity. They tend to be conservative politically, and feel women’s place is in the home. They could enter the TV set of Madmen and just be themselves, and no one would think they were out of place.
This week an email arrived in my inbox that announced that one of our evangelical colleagues had decided to call a Public Prayer meeting to pray for rain in our local area.
While public prayer meetings aren’t quite our style of ministry, we were happy to support it, and thought it might be an opportunity to also acknowledge that we should be concerned about where our planet is heading. Such a meeting could encourage people to also think about the causes of these current extreme weather events, and to consider the impact of changes in the climate on the earth, and think about taking some action themselves.
The other ministerial inhabitant of the house replied to the email, and suggested that we could perhaps also offer prayers that took into account the multiple effects that climate change was having on millions of people worldwide. He also provided some prayer sites that looked at the impact of climate change on human societies in many places around the globe, such as Tuvalu. You can find them here:
http://twitter.com/climateprayer
http://www.facebook.com/climateprayer#!/climateprayer
This seemed harmless enough to us, and quite topical in the light of the fact that half of Australia appears to be on fire, and those places not on fire are suffering from 40 plus centigrade temperatures. Scientists were already equating our extreme weather with climate change – see http://takvera.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/climate-change-causing-increase-in.html
The reply we got was therefore somewhat surprising. I doubt we will be praying for that, said our friend. Some people attending will be climate change – or maybe that is global warming - skeptics. Anyway, they are not true believers. And we will be looking to pray, not fight. I myself, as a tin pot scientist, have real questions about the supposed settled science. So my agenda, and not yours or anyone else’s will prevail. Unless of course, they agree with me.
Right then. No prayers for Tuvalu or Kiribati. Instead we will pray for “a change in the Human heart towards the Lordship of Jesus Christ and God's sovereign action response.” Then it will rain, sinners will be punished and all will be right with the world. The bible says so. Insists, in fact. I am reminded of Deuteronomy 28 and its curses. In case you are not familiar with Deuteronomy, the following is an extract from 28:16-68:
Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the country. Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Cursed shall be the fruit of your body and the produce of your land, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flocks. Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out. The LORD will send on you cursing, confusion, and rebuke in all that you set your hand to do, until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly, because of the wickedness of your doings in which you have forsaken Me. The LORD will strike you with consumption, with fever, with inflammation, with severe burning fever, with the sword, with scorching, and with mildew; they shall pursue you until you perish. And your heavens which are over your head shall be bronze, and the earth which is under you shall be iron. The LORD will change the rain of your land to powder and dust; from the heaven it shall come down on you until you are destroyed. Moreover all these curses shall come upon you and pursue and overtake you, until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the voice of the LORD your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes which He commanded you.
You can see the point Deuteronomy is making. So the future is bleak, should you not obey the Lord in very precise ways. And it appears the part of that bleakness is no rain.
If indeed our friend is thinking of Deuteronomy he is patently ignoring the fact that the curses are a result of not keeping the Law, and nothing to do with his concept of individual sin, or indeed with belief in Jesus. Nowhere in the gospels does Jesus ever call down such curses on non-believers or sinners, though he does have a penchant for consigning them to hell in the afterlife, particularly in the gospel of Matthew. The sin however, differs markedly from the sin our evangelical friend is thinking of. Sin in the gospels is not helping the poor and oppressed. It is not sharing the good news with all. It is not recognizing the face of Jesus in your fellow human beings.
The other problem we Protestants have, and particularly evangelical denominations, is the lack of tradition to draw on. Protestant denominations do have a habit of splitting, and forming new denominations. Impoverished by the lack of rich tradition that the Orthodox and Catholics have, evangelical Protestants struggle to justify their ideas and actions.
The reason our friend gave for ignoring global warming (apart from his own and other skepticism) is that prayers for rain have a much, much, much longer history than supposed global warming.
This is all well and good, but what does it mean? Does it go all the way back to rituals of sacrificing virgins? To Apaches doing rain dances in feathered head dresses? To burying bodies in peat bogs? These also have a long and fine tradition of producing rain. Should we try all of these ancient practices in case one of them works better? Adopting the tactic of prayer ‘because it is older’, is bad theology. Saying climate science is wrong ‘because I think so’, is bad research. And voting for the National Party is unthinking politics. (I know that is irrelevant but it seems to be part of the rural evangelical package).
Relying solely on one’s own interpretation of scripture leaves evangelical Protestants at the mercy of their own experience, their own (usually white) culture and conservative politics, and their own prejudices. No tradition means that they can read whatever texts tend to support their own reason, and ignore others that don’t. Throughout history, this means that such Christians have supported institutions such as slavery, have discriminated against women, and are actively anti-homosexual. In modern times, they have also become climate skeptics, and pro-economy-at-the-expense-of-everything-else. Social justice is an irrelevancy, and care for the foreigner and alien is non-existent.
Praying for rain? Or praying that the environmentally expensive and insular way of Western living doesn't change? Are we praying that our eyes be opened, or that they remain shut tight?
It seems to me such praying is designed to make people think they have done something—indeed, done everything that is possible. There is no sense of responsibility here, no sense that by changing our individual and collective behaviour we might just be in time to stop the worst effects of climate change happening. God helps those who help themselves, and our looming environmental disaster is not going to be prevented by divine intervention alone.
I admit I find the local evangelical Protestants hard to understand. Some of the ideas and beliefs that particularly male evangelical Christians subscribe to are difficult to fathom, and they seem to live in a very small world dominated by a stern and humorless deity. They tend to be conservative politically, and feel women’s place is in the home. They could enter the TV set of Madmen and just be themselves, and no one would think they were out of place.
This week an email arrived in my inbox that announced that one of our evangelical colleagues had decided to call a Public Prayer meeting to pray for rain in our local area.
While public prayer meetings aren’t quite our style of ministry, we were happy to support it, and thought it might be an opportunity to also acknowledge that we should be concerned about where our planet is heading. Such a meeting could encourage people to also think about the causes of these current extreme weather events, and to consider the impact of changes in the climate on the earth, and think about taking some action themselves.
The other ministerial inhabitant of the house replied to the email, and suggested that we could perhaps also offer prayers that took into account the multiple effects that climate change was having on millions of people worldwide. He also provided some prayer sites that looked at the impact of climate change on human societies in many places around the globe, such as Tuvalu. You can find them here:
http://twitter.com/climateprayer
http://www.facebook.com/climateprayer#!/climateprayer
This seemed harmless enough to us, and quite topical in the light of the fact that half of Australia appears to be on fire, and those places not on fire are suffering from 40 plus centigrade temperatures. Scientists were already equating our extreme weather with climate change – see http://takvera.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/climate-change-causing-increase-in.html
The reply we got was therefore somewhat surprising. I doubt we will be praying for that, said our friend. Some people attending will be climate change – or maybe that is global warming - skeptics. Anyway, they are not true believers. And we will be looking to pray, not fight. I myself, as a tin pot scientist, have real questions about the supposed settled science. So my agenda, and not yours or anyone else’s will prevail. Unless of course, they agree with me.
Right then. No prayers for Tuvalu or Kiribati. Instead we will pray for “a change in the Human heart towards the Lordship of Jesus Christ and God's sovereign action response.” Then it will rain, sinners will be punished and all will be right with the world. The bible says so. Insists, in fact. I am reminded of Deuteronomy 28 and its curses. In case you are not familiar with Deuteronomy, the following is an extract from 28:16-68:
Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the country. Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Cursed shall be the fruit of your body and the produce of your land, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flocks. Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out. The LORD will send on you cursing, confusion, and rebuke in all that you set your hand to do, until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly, because of the wickedness of your doings in which you have forsaken Me. The LORD will strike you with consumption, with fever, with inflammation, with severe burning fever, with the sword, with scorching, and with mildew; they shall pursue you until you perish. And your heavens which are over your head shall be bronze, and the earth which is under you shall be iron. The LORD will change the rain of your land to powder and dust; from the heaven it shall come down on you until you are destroyed. Moreover all these curses shall come upon you and pursue and overtake you, until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the voice of the LORD your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes which He commanded you.
You can see the point Deuteronomy is making. So the future is bleak, should you not obey the Lord in very precise ways. And it appears the part of that bleakness is no rain.
If indeed our friend is thinking of Deuteronomy he is patently ignoring the fact that the curses are a result of not keeping the Law, and nothing to do with his concept of individual sin, or indeed with belief in Jesus. Nowhere in the gospels does Jesus ever call down such curses on non-believers or sinners, though he does have a penchant for consigning them to hell in the afterlife, particularly in the gospel of Matthew. The sin however, differs markedly from the sin our evangelical friend is thinking of. Sin in the gospels is not helping the poor and oppressed. It is not sharing the good news with all. It is not recognizing the face of Jesus in your fellow human beings.
The other problem we Protestants have, and particularly evangelical denominations, is the lack of tradition to draw on. Protestant denominations do have a habit of splitting, and forming new denominations. Impoverished by the lack of rich tradition that the Orthodox and Catholics have, evangelical Protestants struggle to justify their ideas and actions.
The reason our friend gave for ignoring global warming (apart from his own and other skepticism) is that prayers for rain have a much, much, much longer history than supposed global warming.
This is all well and good, but what does it mean? Does it go all the way back to rituals of sacrificing virgins? To Apaches doing rain dances in feathered head dresses? To burying bodies in peat bogs? These also have a long and fine tradition of producing rain. Should we try all of these ancient practices in case one of them works better? Adopting the tactic of prayer ‘because it is older’, is bad theology. Saying climate science is wrong ‘because I think so’, is bad research. And voting for the National Party is unthinking politics. (I know that is irrelevant but it seems to be part of the rural evangelical package).
Relying solely on one’s own interpretation of scripture leaves evangelical Protestants at the mercy of their own experience, their own (usually white) culture and conservative politics, and their own prejudices. No tradition means that they can read whatever texts tend to support their own reason, and ignore others that don’t. Throughout history, this means that such Christians have supported institutions such as slavery, have discriminated against women, and are actively anti-homosexual. In modern times, they have also become climate skeptics, and pro-economy-at-the-expense-of-everything-else. Social justice is an irrelevancy, and care for the foreigner and alien is non-existent.
Praying for rain? Or praying that the environmentally expensive and insular way of Western living doesn't change? Are we praying that our eyes be opened, or that they remain shut tight?
It seems to me such praying is designed to make people think they have done something—indeed, done everything that is possible. There is no sense of responsibility here, no sense that by changing our individual and collective behaviour we might just be in time to stop the worst effects of climate change happening. God helps those who help themselves, and our looming environmental disaster is not going to be prevented by divine intervention alone.
Saturday, 8 December 2012
Finding where heaven and earth hang together
Some of you reading this may be familiar with the concept of “thin places”. Attributed to Celtic Christianity, a thin place is a place where one can catch a glimpse of heaven from the mundane world, where something of the divine is temporarily visible to those of us normally earth bound. On a blog entitled of life, laughter and liturgy, a contemporary poet Sharlande Sledge is quoted with this description:
“Thin places,” the Celts call this space,
Both seen and unseen,
Where the door between the world
And the next is cracked open for a moment
And the light is not all on the other side.
God shaped space. Holy.
It is a fascinating concept, and has gained some currency in mainstream scholarship. The New Testament scholar Marcus Borg, in his book The Heart of Christianity, writes about "thin places". He describes them as "anywhere our hearts are opened." Thin places can be actual places, or an activity, such as worship or meditation.
I have experienced thin places a number of times in my life, where the veil between heaven and earth unexpectedly and inexplicably lifted. Sometimes these experiences had the force of an epiphany, at other times were a fleeting and tantalizing glimpse of something numinous and ephemeral.
Sometimes one just walks into a thin place.
It has been our custom when we are at home to support our local Farmers Markets. There are two – one in Wauchope on the 4th Saturday, and one in Port Macquarie on the 2nd Saturday of the month. Today was Port Macquarie’s turn, so we arose from our beds at the ungodly hour of 7.00, with a view to arriving at the markets at 8.00, their normal opening time.
We like to leave early because they are popular markets, and this is the last PMQ one before Christmas. Leave your arrival until 10.00 am, and you may as well park in Wauchope and walk from there.
We have our favourite stallholders that we regularly patronize. The Baba Lila chocolate lady claims I keep her in fuel and milk for a month. Ray, the macadamia farmer (who tried to kill me via a huntsman spider concealed in a package of coffee; but that is another story) supplies us with a kilo of macadamia coffee each month. The gourmet food providores who live locally in Wauchope have the best local cheese, relishes and smoked trout, which is smoked in a real smokehouse near Coffs Harbour. We get organic oranges, garlic, beef and pork from local farmers. And an abundance of fresh produce from various market gardeners, including two parishioners in the Comboyne, who grow exotic things like medlars, sapotes, Chinese raisin tree, ice cream bean and yukons.
The Port Macquarie market also has a blacksmith, crafts, painters, soap makers, homemade candles, jewellery, clothing and a variety of homewares and knickknacks. It is a fine place to visit before Christmas if you are looking for handmade, locally crafted gifts. My daughter and grandchildren have benefitted from these stalls a number of times.
One of the other attractions about this market is the buskers. Sometimes they are quite ordinary musicians, playing guitars and singing. At other times they are more exotic creatures, playing a variety of different instruments. There is an African drummer that that makes a regular appearance who makes and plays his own djembes. There are folk bands with indigenous instruments from around the world. Occasionally someone appears with a didgeridoo. They add to the atmosphere, though somehow I don’t think any of them will retire on their busking procedures.
Today there was someone new, from the town of Bellingen, an interesting community around two hours north of us. Bellingen is something of an aberration in the Mid North Coast, as 26% of its population vote for the Greens. It has a large alternative community.
Walking back up the pathway from inspecting the craft stalls, a very different sound was being carried on the wind. Neither of us recognised the source of the ethereal sounds that wound themselves around us. The music definitely had a strange effect on me, a thin place effect, in fact. Perhaps my brain chemicals changed under its influence. Perhaps I really was feeling something of the divine. It certainly transported me somewhere different.
We found the musician a few yards further on. He was playing a Hang, little known German instrument that was invented in 2000. He told us that it was modeled on the idea of the metal drums of Barbados and the Indonesian Gamelan, after first joking it was his mother’s wok. It is wok-shaped, and looks like two glued together at the rim to form a metal orb. You can see it and read about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hang_(instrument)
The Hang was strange enough, but our musician was also a talented didgeridoo player. He also had bells around his left ankle, to give some extra percussive sound. The two instruments together created an extraordinary effect, and the veil lifted. I could feel and glimpse something unearthly, something beyond. I had stepped into a different place, a place where the divine and mundane collided in midair to create something transcendent.
He stopped playing and I bumped back to earth. Our musician, whose name was Jesse, tried to explain that for him, the Hang was somehow unearthly. I suggested ethereal. He agreed. But he also thought that it needed earthing. “That’s why I play the didgeridoo”, he said. “You need to bring heaven and earth together.”
Bringing heaven and earth together. No wonder that music created a thin place. How could it not? As for me, this music somehow made sense of Advent. It wordlessly expressed something of the essence of incarnational theology, where the divine entered the mundane and the word became flesh.
In this world, where things can easily be broken and ugly and miserable, we need thin places. And we need to bring heaven and earth together as much as possible, to create a space where the Advent values of hope, peace, joy and love can sprout and grow and run luxuriantly like a tropical bougainvillea over and through broken lives and despair to bring them life and colour again; a space where we glimpse the kingdom; where we can even reach out and almost touch the face of God.
“Thin places,” the Celts call this space,
Both seen and unseen,
Where the door between the world
And the next is cracked open for a moment
And the light is not all on the other side.
God shaped space. Holy.
It is a fascinating concept, and has gained some currency in mainstream scholarship. The New Testament scholar Marcus Borg, in his book The Heart of Christianity, writes about "thin places". He describes them as "anywhere our hearts are opened." Thin places can be actual places, or an activity, such as worship or meditation.
I have experienced thin places a number of times in my life, where the veil between heaven and earth unexpectedly and inexplicably lifted. Sometimes these experiences had the force of an epiphany, at other times were a fleeting and tantalizing glimpse of something numinous and ephemeral.
Sometimes one just walks into a thin place.
It has been our custom when we are at home to support our local Farmers Markets. There are two – one in Wauchope on the 4th Saturday, and one in Port Macquarie on the 2nd Saturday of the month. Today was Port Macquarie’s turn, so we arose from our beds at the ungodly hour of 7.00, with a view to arriving at the markets at 8.00, their normal opening time.
We like to leave early because they are popular markets, and this is the last PMQ one before Christmas. Leave your arrival until 10.00 am, and you may as well park in Wauchope and walk from there.
We have our favourite stallholders that we regularly patronize. The Baba Lila chocolate lady claims I keep her in fuel and milk for a month. Ray, the macadamia farmer (who tried to kill me via a huntsman spider concealed in a package of coffee; but that is another story) supplies us with a kilo of macadamia coffee each month. The gourmet food providores who live locally in Wauchope have the best local cheese, relishes and smoked trout, which is smoked in a real smokehouse near Coffs Harbour. We get organic oranges, garlic, beef and pork from local farmers. And an abundance of fresh produce from various market gardeners, including two parishioners in the Comboyne, who grow exotic things like medlars, sapotes, Chinese raisin tree, ice cream bean and yukons.
The Port Macquarie market also has a blacksmith, crafts, painters, soap makers, homemade candles, jewellery, clothing and a variety of homewares and knickknacks. It is a fine place to visit before Christmas if you are looking for handmade, locally crafted gifts. My daughter and grandchildren have benefitted from these stalls a number of times.
One of the other attractions about this market is the buskers. Sometimes they are quite ordinary musicians, playing guitars and singing. At other times they are more exotic creatures, playing a variety of different instruments. There is an African drummer that that makes a regular appearance who makes and plays his own djembes. There are folk bands with indigenous instruments from around the world. Occasionally someone appears with a didgeridoo. They add to the atmosphere, though somehow I don’t think any of them will retire on their busking procedures.
Today there was someone new, from the town of Bellingen, an interesting community around two hours north of us. Bellingen is something of an aberration in the Mid North Coast, as 26% of its population vote for the Greens. It has a large alternative community.
Walking back up the pathway from inspecting the craft stalls, a very different sound was being carried on the wind. Neither of us recognised the source of the ethereal sounds that wound themselves around us. The music definitely had a strange effect on me, a thin place effect, in fact. Perhaps my brain chemicals changed under its influence. Perhaps I really was feeling something of the divine. It certainly transported me somewhere different.
We found the musician a few yards further on. He was playing a Hang, little known German instrument that was invented in 2000. He told us that it was modeled on the idea of the metal drums of Barbados and the Indonesian Gamelan, after first joking it was his mother’s wok. It is wok-shaped, and looks like two glued together at the rim to form a metal orb. You can see it and read about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hang_(instrument)
The Hang was strange enough, but our musician was also a talented didgeridoo player. He also had bells around his left ankle, to give some extra percussive sound. The two instruments together created an extraordinary effect, and the veil lifted. I could feel and glimpse something unearthly, something beyond. I had stepped into a different place, a place where the divine and mundane collided in midair to create something transcendent.
He stopped playing and I bumped back to earth. Our musician, whose name was Jesse, tried to explain that for him, the Hang was somehow unearthly. I suggested ethereal. He agreed. But he also thought that it needed earthing. “That’s why I play the didgeridoo”, he said. “You need to bring heaven and earth together.”
Bringing heaven and earth together. No wonder that music created a thin place. How could it not? As for me, this music somehow made sense of Advent. It wordlessly expressed something of the essence of incarnational theology, where the divine entered the mundane and the word became flesh.
In this world, where things can easily be broken and ugly and miserable, we need thin places. And we need to bring heaven and earth together as much as possible, to create a space where the Advent values of hope, peace, joy and love can sprout and grow and run luxuriantly like a tropical bougainvillea over and through broken lives and despair to bring them life and colour again; a space where we glimpse the kingdom; where we can even reach out and almost touch the face of God.
Friday, 30 November 2012
Gold-plating power in the King's navy
I have just received a letter from our erstwhile local state MP, Mr 72%. As the new Co-coordinator of Climate Change Australia Hastings Branch, I get to sign the letters we write on various issues to politicians.
This particular letter was to ask why the NSW State government was using electricity bills as a political forum by including a statement on how much the "carbon tax" had increased electricity bills. This information appears in a little red box on the bill. Like a Readers’ Digest competition, it screams “Important! Read me because I am in red letters and there is a box around me and therefore I must be true!”
For those of you who do not read the Readers Digest and therefore ignore important red lettered messages in boxes, the message says:
"NSW Government estimates that the Federal carbon tax and green energy schemes add about $316 a year to a typical 7MWh household bill – see ipart.nsw.gov.au"
As it happens, our CCA group think that this box is a misuse of legislative powers, in that it requires that this negative message be included on public companies' bills. In our opinion, this message is solely there to have political impact and is selectively misinformative. The red coloured message is clearly meant to stand as a protest against current Federal policy and law in Australia.
As most of us in CCA objected to our household bills becoming political capital, we asked it be removed. Alternatively, we reasoned, if the State government thought this unreasonable, we thought that all extra taxes and charges should be shown. So a full breakup, including infrastructure costs, wholesale pricing and profits, a full and honest disclosure of the true economics of electricity pricing for each consumer, could all have their own important boxes. Heck, we could even colour coordinate them, so our bills looked like little rainbows.
We also suggested that there should be corresponding details about how the Federal government's compensation package had offset any rises caused by the carbon price.
And there are those little details in a report, released in April 2011, from the NSW Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPRT). They found the average price increases of 18 per cent for electricity in 2011/2012 were due to a number of factors including:
•Federal Labor's Renewable Energy Target (RET) (34 per cent)
•additional generation costs, (5.5 per cent )
•additional network costs (poles and wires), (55 per cent)
•retail increases in billing, marketing and metering, (5.5 per cent)
Note that 66% of the above increases are due to State costs.
Not surprisingly, Mr 72% and the State government do not see things this way. Mr 72% has helpfully replied that it is the State government's business to inform consumers of the Federal government's ‘carbon tax’ but not the State government’s business to tell the consumer that they are compensated by the Federal government because that is the business of the Federal government and not of the State government. It would also seem that those huge price hikes as detailed above – caused by the State government's business with power companies, to do with pricing and infrastructure – aren't anyone's business either as they don't get a mention in his letter. Mmmmmmmm.
A friend has suggested to me that this reads like the plot line of a Gilbert and Sullivan Opera. I believe he is right. It particularly reminds me of the Admiral in HMS Pinafore:
”Stay at your desk and never go to sea…and you could be ruler of the King’s Navy”.
Or to paraphrase: “Ignore all the facts and avoid coming clean…and you could be interviewed by Ray Hadley” Or maybe: “I gold-plated infrastructure so carefully, that now I am the NSW deputy.”
The bottom line is that for those of us who have fought long and hard for effective action on climate change, this manipulative political message is offensive, to say the least. The studied ignorance of Mr 72% and his government cronies is offensive. Their aim is not to address climate change. Their aim is not preserve our planet from the catastrophe now being grimly predicted by climate scientists. No, their aim is no higher than scoring cheap political points at the expense of our world and our children.
Tonight John and I attended the annual concert and dinner for our church’s children’s club. We sat at a table with a pleasant young couple and their two children. Someone at one point commented on the weather being hot, as you do at such events. The little girl, who is about 8 years old, informed me that the hot weather was NOT climate change. She was emphatic that there was no climate change.
Despite what some people may think, I am not given to arguing with 8 year olds who can only be parroting what they are taught by their parents (who did not contradict her). Those parents are being taught well by the National Party and their ilk, aided and abetted by News Limited, Fox News, Ray Hadley and Alan Jones.
Mr 72%, the people of this electorate voted for you in good faith. They expect you to make the right decisions for them, in terms of their health, their towns and their future. You are meant to represent them, not your party. Playing political games with their future for the short term gain is doing no one any favours, including yourself.
So one day I really hope you have the grace to be ashamed of yourself. I hope that you come to the full realisation that the sneaking partisan actions of you and your colleagues, aided by the parrot and the budgerigar of 2GB radio, may have devastating consequences far beyond which party is in power in the Federal arena.
Ignoring the science and the problem will not make it go away. Not only will it not mitigate the effects, but it will delay vital adaption strategies, that will adversely affect our water supplies and the land we rely on to produce food.
Do we want a clean energy future or not? Heck, do we want a future? The 4 degree warming predicted now by climate scientists is a grim scenario of species extinctions, floods, droughts, extreme weather events and decreasing food and water. Not to mention climate refugees from low lying nations such as Kiribati and Tuvalu.
Climate change is taking place before our eyes. Time for our politicians – all of them – to take off those partisan spectacles and replace them with for-the-common-good-glasses.
Time in fact, to stand up and be counted, all of us, all of you.
This particular letter was to ask why the NSW State government was using electricity bills as a political forum by including a statement on how much the "carbon tax" had increased electricity bills. This information appears in a little red box on the bill. Like a Readers’ Digest competition, it screams “Important! Read me because I am in red letters and there is a box around me and therefore I must be true!”
For those of you who do not read the Readers Digest and therefore ignore important red lettered messages in boxes, the message says:
"NSW Government estimates that the Federal carbon tax and green energy schemes add about $316 a year to a typical 7MWh household bill – see ipart.nsw.gov.au"
As it happens, our CCA group think that this box is a misuse of legislative powers, in that it requires that this negative message be included on public companies' bills. In our opinion, this message is solely there to have political impact and is selectively misinformative. The red coloured message is clearly meant to stand as a protest against current Federal policy and law in Australia.
As most of us in CCA objected to our household bills becoming political capital, we asked it be removed. Alternatively, we reasoned, if the State government thought this unreasonable, we thought that all extra taxes and charges should be shown. So a full breakup, including infrastructure costs, wholesale pricing and profits, a full and honest disclosure of the true economics of electricity pricing for each consumer, could all have their own important boxes. Heck, we could even colour coordinate them, so our bills looked like little rainbows.
We also suggested that there should be corresponding details about how the Federal government's compensation package had offset any rises caused by the carbon price.
And there are those little details in a report, released in April 2011, from the NSW Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPRT). They found the average price increases of 18 per cent for electricity in 2011/2012 were due to a number of factors including:
•Federal Labor's Renewable Energy Target (RET) (34 per cent)
•additional generation costs, (5.5 per cent )
•additional network costs (poles and wires), (55 per cent)
•retail increases in billing, marketing and metering, (5.5 per cent)
Note that 66% of the above increases are due to State costs.
Not surprisingly, Mr 72% and the State government do not see things this way. Mr 72% has helpfully replied that it is the State government's business to inform consumers of the Federal government's ‘carbon tax’ but not the State government’s business to tell the consumer that they are compensated by the Federal government because that is the business of the Federal government and not of the State government. It would also seem that those huge price hikes as detailed above – caused by the State government's business with power companies, to do with pricing and infrastructure – aren't anyone's business either as they don't get a mention in his letter. Mmmmmmmm.
A friend has suggested to me that this reads like the plot line of a Gilbert and Sullivan Opera. I believe he is right. It particularly reminds me of the Admiral in HMS Pinafore:
”Stay at your desk and never go to sea…and you could be ruler of the King’s Navy”.
Or to paraphrase: “Ignore all the facts and avoid coming clean…and you could be interviewed by Ray Hadley” Or maybe: “I gold-plated infrastructure so carefully, that now I am the NSW deputy.”
The bottom line is that for those of us who have fought long and hard for effective action on climate change, this manipulative political message is offensive, to say the least. The studied ignorance of Mr 72% and his government cronies is offensive. Their aim is not to address climate change. Their aim is not preserve our planet from the catastrophe now being grimly predicted by climate scientists. No, their aim is no higher than scoring cheap political points at the expense of our world and our children.
Tonight John and I attended the annual concert and dinner for our church’s children’s club. We sat at a table with a pleasant young couple and their two children. Someone at one point commented on the weather being hot, as you do at such events. The little girl, who is about 8 years old, informed me that the hot weather was NOT climate change. She was emphatic that there was no climate change.
Despite what some people may think, I am not given to arguing with 8 year olds who can only be parroting what they are taught by their parents (who did not contradict her). Those parents are being taught well by the National Party and their ilk, aided and abetted by News Limited, Fox News, Ray Hadley and Alan Jones.
Mr 72%, the people of this electorate voted for you in good faith. They expect you to make the right decisions for them, in terms of their health, their towns and their future. You are meant to represent them, not your party. Playing political games with their future for the short term gain is doing no one any favours, including yourself.
So one day I really hope you have the grace to be ashamed of yourself. I hope that you come to the full realisation that the sneaking partisan actions of you and your colleagues, aided by the parrot and the budgerigar of 2GB radio, may have devastating consequences far beyond which party is in power in the Federal arena.
Ignoring the science and the problem will not make it go away. Not only will it not mitigate the effects, but it will delay vital adaption strategies, that will adversely affect our water supplies and the land we rely on to produce food.
Do we want a clean energy future or not? Heck, do we want a future? The 4 degree warming predicted now by climate scientists is a grim scenario of species extinctions, floods, droughts, extreme weather events and decreasing food and water. Not to mention climate refugees from low lying nations such as Kiribati and Tuvalu.
Climate change is taking place before our eyes. Time for our politicians – all of them – to take off those partisan spectacles and replace them with for-the-common-good-glasses.
Time in fact, to stand up and be counted, all of us, all of you.
Sunday, 4 November 2012
Honi soit qui mal y pense: shame to him who thinks evil.
While I know this is being written a little bit after the event, I still think the accusation of misogyny against Tony Abbott is still worth exploring. What is bothering me the most is that males keep wanting to define ‘misogyny’ as the attitude of someone who hates women.
Many otherwise respectable interviewers have bought into this debate. Tony Jones on Lateline kept asking Wayne Swan whether he agreed Tony Abbott was a women-hater. Many less respectable journalists have done the same thing - Piers Akerman, Andrew Bolt and Paul Sheehan all ranted and raved about it. And whenever I raise it (in context) on Facebook, people – men – want to correct me, direct me to dictionaries and sneeringly tell me I do not know what the word means.
As it happens, I do know what misogyny means. I also know that language evolves, something that my erstwhile male friends apparently do not.
Mike Secombe, in Word of the day (12 October 2012 http://www.theglobalmail.org/blog/word-of-the-day/421/) points out that the word has changed its etymology. He quotes the Oxford English dictionary, and New York Times writer on language, the late William Safire. Safire says: “The word misogyny has since its earliest recording in 1656 meant “hate or contempt for women.” The etymology of misogyny is straightforward: In Greek, miso means “hatred,” and gune means “woman.” A misogynist is a woman-hater. When I looked up the word … in the Oxford English Dictionary online, however, I noted that the meaning of misogynist had changed, slightly but significantly. In 1989, the definition was “hatred of women”; in the 2002 revision, the definition was broadened to “hatred or dislike of, or prejudice against women.”
Julia Gillard correctly labeled Abbott a misogynist. He has clearly displayed prejudice against women when he said, on various occasions, gems such as: “if men have more power generally than women, is that a bad thing?”
Or that men might be “by physiology and temperament more adapted to exercise authority or to issue command.”
Abbott also challenged the “assumption” that women’s under-representation in positions of public power was “a bad thing”.
Secombe asks whether we should call this evidence of prejudice against women. I certainly think it is, so Abbott is, by definition of the Oxford English Dictionary and William Safire, a misogynist.
So why do otherwise rational men wish to leap to Tony Abbott’s defence?
I have discovered the answer to this. They all must have been reading the opinion of that unlamented and aging zealot of left wing politics, Bob Ellis.
In Sydney University’s newspaper Honi Soit, one Michael Koziol (October 17, 2012) interviewed this poor excuse of a man on how he viewed the world, the universe, the past and women. It was eye opening. Like Mary in the gospel of Luke, Michael Koziel waited breathlessly at the feet of the master or pearls of wisdom to be dispensed like manna from heaven.
For my part, I have to say Bob Ellis actually gives misogyny a really bad name. Misogyny would do well to disassociate itself from Bob Ellis. Misogyny is a pleasant state of being compared to the raging pot of bitter cynicism that is Bob Ellis. But I digress. Let us examine the article, which you can find at http://www.honisoit.com/2012/10/and-so-it-goes/#comment-2942
Bob Ellis is introduced as a writer. He may have been one once, even a good one. Apparently he even blessed the hallowed pages of Honi Soit, becoming editor in 1963.
Bob deplores the change in university life. What, no alcohol in the Union after 7? This is tantamount to the death of civilization. This alone guarantees the death knell of all creativity.
But this is not what weighs most heavily on his mind. Instead, it is the events in Canberra, including the now famous Gillard speech against Abbott, that has colonized his brain.
Ellis argues that forcing Slipper from the Speaker’s position sets ‘a scary and dangerous precedent'.
I now quote from the article:
The implication of his persecution, Ellis says, means that “two billion males who have derided the female part and are still living must be removed from their jobs”. The hysteria and the overreaction stem from what Ellis calls “wowser feminism”, and it incurs a wrath he might have once reserved for old enemies like John Howard.
“It’s a threat to everything. It has thus far destroyed the world by impinging on the electoral chances of Al Gore through the unhidden scandal of the blowjobs of Bill Clinton. Gore would not let Clinton, as he begged, campaign in Arkansas, which was then lost.
“The Gore presidency would have saved the world from global warming [but] wowser feminism destroyed the Gore presidency. And it may do worse. It’s horrible.”
So there you have it, fellow females. Those of us who are feminists are to blame not only for the miserable Slipper’s demise, but also for the fact that global warming continues checked.
In case you think this is not enough to be blamed for, Ellis goes on to blame ‘wowser feminism’ for the destruction of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and the European Union. The woman he coerced into sex was obviously a fascist plant. Ellis sums it up:
“So wowser feminism has firstly destroyed the world, secondly the world economy, and now it’s coming after Australian freedom of speech.”
Ellis also doesn’t think Tony Abbott is a sexist. Mmmmmm. Apparently it is OK to stand in front of signs that say ‘ditch the witch’ and Gillard is ‘Bob Brown’s bitch’ and not be seen as encouraging sexist behavior.
Gillard, of course, has asked for this. After all, says Bob, “she’s never been to a play, she’s rarely been to a film with subtitles, she hasn’t read a novel since she was 18”. Says it all really. How much unfit can she be?
And there is that other dreadful woman of power across the sea, Hillary Clinton. Ellis describes the Clinton of 2008 as being of “towering frigidity”, describing her as “a stranger to consistency, sincerity and (at a guess) oral sex”. And Bob would know, wouldn’t he? Never mind about Hillary’s husband’s infidelity, Hillary was “frigid”.
Apparently Bob has also questioned how serious the allegations of sexual harassment are in those hallowed halls of the Australian Defence Force Academy.
“Women, it seems, are tough enough for service on any battlefront but not tough enough to be peeked at in the shower,” he wrote.
Of course, Bob knows about this as well. His polite and respectful descriptions of women in public have earned him the right to make such remarks. What would we women do without Bob to tell us we deserve to be peeked at in the shower? These remarks have really contributed to the debate about sexism. So if you don’t mind, I’ll just get back to my kitchen and start knitting those saucepans once more (see earlier blog).
The gallant author of the piece thinks that Ellis’ critics are wrong to see him as a misogynist. “This is a serious charge that demands serious evidence”, says young Michael. “How fair is it also for a younger generation to condemn an elder for not subscribing to the absolutist feminism of today?” he continues.
I would say absolutely fair. Bob Ellis’ views are appalling. Does he seriously believe that women, who he has blamed for destroying the world via global warming, the world economy, and Australia’s freedom of speech, will take him seriously and not see him as a misogynist?
Well, just in case you missed the point, Bob, let me tell you. I completely reject the notion put forward by yourself that “wowser” feminism is “destroying the world”. I totally reject responsibility for the economic problems of the European Union. And all feminism’s fault there is global warming? Oh, please. Let’s not talk about the companies with fossil fuels interests, and the politicians who support them. Let us blame all those nasty feminists, who through their wanting to reject sexism, and abuse of power, violence against women, and who are demanding a decent and civil society, are clearly destroying the very fabric of our world as we know it. Bob Ellis, you give even misogyny a bad name.
To come back to where I started. You go, Julia Gillard. You articulated what many women have experienced and felt, and were not able to respond to. You touched a nerve in our collective psyche, about bullying, sexism and creepy men like Bob Ellis who think because they are men they can get away with their offensive and misogynistic remarks.
I really don’t care about Peter Slipper’s sleazy schoolboy texts. But I do care about women being seen as equals. Despite the criticism she copped from the press, I felt Julia Gillard did defend women and their right to be heard, to hold positions of power, to be themselves. Now if only her male colleagues could follow suit.
Many otherwise respectable interviewers have bought into this debate. Tony Jones on Lateline kept asking Wayne Swan whether he agreed Tony Abbott was a women-hater. Many less respectable journalists have done the same thing - Piers Akerman, Andrew Bolt and Paul Sheehan all ranted and raved about it. And whenever I raise it (in context) on Facebook, people – men – want to correct me, direct me to dictionaries and sneeringly tell me I do not know what the word means.
As it happens, I do know what misogyny means. I also know that language evolves, something that my erstwhile male friends apparently do not.
Mike Secombe, in Word of the day (12 October 2012 http://www.theglobalmail.org/blog/word-of-the-day/421/) points out that the word has changed its etymology. He quotes the Oxford English dictionary, and New York Times writer on language, the late William Safire. Safire says: “The word misogyny has since its earliest recording in 1656 meant “hate or contempt for women.” The etymology of misogyny is straightforward: In Greek, miso means “hatred,” and gune means “woman.” A misogynist is a woman-hater. When I looked up the word … in the Oxford English Dictionary online, however, I noted that the meaning of misogynist had changed, slightly but significantly. In 1989, the definition was “hatred of women”; in the 2002 revision, the definition was broadened to “hatred or dislike of, or prejudice against women.”
Julia Gillard correctly labeled Abbott a misogynist. He has clearly displayed prejudice against women when he said, on various occasions, gems such as: “if men have more power generally than women, is that a bad thing?”
Or that men might be “by physiology and temperament more adapted to exercise authority or to issue command.”
Abbott also challenged the “assumption” that women’s under-representation in positions of public power was “a bad thing”.
Secombe asks whether we should call this evidence of prejudice against women. I certainly think it is, so Abbott is, by definition of the Oxford English Dictionary and William Safire, a misogynist.
So why do otherwise rational men wish to leap to Tony Abbott’s defence?
I have discovered the answer to this. They all must have been reading the opinion of that unlamented and aging zealot of left wing politics, Bob Ellis.
In Sydney University’s newspaper Honi Soit, one Michael Koziol (October 17, 2012) interviewed this poor excuse of a man on how he viewed the world, the universe, the past and women. It was eye opening. Like Mary in the gospel of Luke, Michael Koziel waited breathlessly at the feet of the master or pearls of wisdom to be dispensed like manna from heaven.
For my part, I have to say Bob Ellis actually gives misogyny a really bad name. Misogyny would do well to disassociate itself from Bob Ellis. Misogyny is a pleasant state of being compared to the raging pot of bitter cynicism that is Bob Ellis. But I digress. Let us examine the article, which you can find at http://www.honisoit.com/2012/10/and-so-it-goes/#comment-2942
Bob Ellis is introduced as a writer. He may have been one once, even a good one. Apparently he even blessed the hallowed pages of Honi Soit, becoming editor in 1963.
Bob deplores the change in university life. What, no alcohol in the Union after 7? This is tantamount to the death of civilization. This alone guarantees the death knell of all creativity.
But this is not what weighs most heavily on his mind. Instead, it is the events in Canberra, including the now famous Gillard speech against Abbott, that has colonized his brain.
Ellis argues that forcing Slipper from the Speaker’s position sets ‘a scary and dangerous precedent'.
I now quote from the article:
The implication of his persecution, Ellis says, means that “two billion males who have derided the female part and are still living must be removed from their jobs”. The hysteria and the overreaction stem from what Ellis calls “wowser feminism”, and it incurs a wrath he might have once reserved for old enemies like John Howard.
“It’s a threat to everything. It has thus far destroyed the world by impinging on the electoral chances of Al Gore through the unhidden scandal of the blowjobs of Bill Clinton. Gore would not let Clinton, as he begged, campaign in Arkansas, which was then lost.
“The Gore presidency would have saved the world from global warming [but] wowser feminism destroyed the Gore presidency. And it may do worse. It’s horrible.”
So there you have it, fellow females. Those of us who are feminists are to blame not only for the miserable Slipper’s demise, but also for the fact that global warming continues checked.
In case you think this is not enough to be blamed for, Ellis goes on to blame ‘wowser feminism’ for the destruction of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and the European Union. The woman he coerced into sex was obviously a fascist plant. Ellis sums it up:
“So wowser feminism has firstly destroyed the world, secondly the world economy, and now it’s coming after Australian freedom of speech.”
Ellis also doesn’t think Tony Abbott is a sexist. Mmmmmm. Apparently it is OK to stand in front of signs that say ‘ditch the witch’ and Gillard is ‘Bob Brown’s bitch’ and not be seen as encouraging sexist behavior.
Gillard, of course, has asked for this. After all, says Bob, “she’s never been to a play, she’s rarely been to a film with subtitles, she hasn’t read a novel since she was 18”. Says it all really. How much unfit can she be?
And there is that other dreadful woman of power across the sea, Hillary Clinton. Ellis describes the Clinton of 2008 as being of “towering frigidity”, describing her as “a stranger to consistency, sincerity and (at a guess) oral sex”. And Bob would know, wouldn’t he? Never mind about Hillary’s husband’s infidelity, Hillary was “frigid”.
Apparently Bob has also questioned how serious the allegations of sexual harassment are in those hallowed halls of the Australian Defence Force Academy.
“Women, it seems, are tough enough for service on any battlefront but not tough enough to be peeked at in the shower,” he wrote.
Of course, Bob knows about this as well. His polite and respectful descriptions of women in public have earned him the right to make such remarks. What would we women do without Bob to tell us we deserve to be peeked at in the shower? These remarks have really contributed to the debate about sexism. So if you don’t mind, I’ll just get back to my kitchen and start knitting those saucepans once more (see earlier blog).
The gallant author of the piece thinks that Ellis’ critics are wrong to see him as a misogynist. “This is a serious charge that demands serious evidence”, says young Michael. “How fair is it also for a younger generation to condemn an elder for not subscribing to the absolutist feminism of today?” he continues.
I would say absolutely fair. Bob Ellis’ views are appalling. Does he seriously believe that women, who he has blamed for destroying the world via global warming, the world economy, and Australia’s freedom of speech, will take him seriously and not see him as a misogynist?
Well, just in case you missed the point, Bob, let me tell you. I completely reject the notion put forward by yourself that “wowser” feminism is “destroying the world”. I totally reject responsibility for the economic problems of the European Union. And all feminism’s fault there is global warming? Oh, please. Let’s not talk about the companies with fossil fuels interests, and the politicians who support them. Let us blame all those nasty feminists, who through their wanting to reject sexism, and abuse of power, violence against women, and who are demanding a decent and civil society, are clearly destroying the very fabric of our world as we know it. Bob Ellis, you give even misogyny a bad name.
To come back to where I started. You go, Julia Gillard. You articulated what many women have experienced and felt, and were not able to respond to. You touched a nerve in our collective psyche, about bullying, sexism and creepy men like Bob Ellis who think because they are men they can get away with their offensive and misogynistic remarks.
I really don’t care about Peter Slipper’s sleazy schoolboy texts. But I do care about women being seen as equals. Despite the criticism she copped from the press, I felt Julia Gillard did defend women and their right to be heard, to hold positions of power, to be themselves. Now if only her male colleagues could follow suit.
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