DogfightAtBankstown

ready, set, go

Ben Meyers has a fun review of a fun book: Daniel Radosh's Rapture Ready! Adventures in the parallel universe of Christian pop culture

In the end, though, I just can’t share Radosh’s optimism about the future of Christian pop culture. Instead, my hope would be for the demise of this pop culture, and for the appearance instead of a church that knows its own identity – not an identity that can be bought and secured, but one that comes freely and without guarantees, only because it is sheer gift.

Yes please.  Make it go away.

yeah it's not friday

But the Religion of Perpetual Outrage is at it again.

Oh yes, and this was very likely to have been Presbyterians.

wenchuan

Earthquake

"Not one minute can be wasted," Mr Wen said as he visited a collapsed high school in Dujiangyan where 900 students were feared dead and rescuers were still trying to find survivors. "One minute, one second, could mean a child's life."

Tell that too, to the Burmese.

ahem

Didn't watch the Budget.

In fact no TV or radio at all. 

So I can't cast my pearls of wisdom before you.  For that you need the real tragics.

Mark at Larvy Prod provides narrative criticism on the fly while live blogging the Budget.

Tim Blair at his new digs bets on flying words and gives the linguistic analysis.

The Currency Lad goes socio-rhetorical.

John Quiggin provides instant economic noodles.

Peter Martin does the financial analysis ("I'll be the good guy while stuffing cash in my mattress and let the central bank be the bad guy").

I have one question on one of the oddest funding cuts: scrapping the Employment Entry Payment.

Did I hear that right? 

If so, how does that fit into the socio-rhetorical-linguistically-rich-economic-narrative of finances for working families under inflation?

P.S. No point reading Joshua Gans.  He was bored, dammit.

Update: Guy Beres rounds up the MSM commentariat and declares, it's a rabbit proof
fence.

i have absolutely no idea

Why the Sydney Morning Herald chose to publish this fluff piece about a porn king.  Are we supposed to feel sorry for him? Applaud him for being happy to be living back with "mum and dad"? 

What?

The guy has no remorse: he claims to have made his money legitimately but couldn't handle it. He has no regrets - having "lived 10 years at the top" - except for hurting a woman in a car accident.  Credits his family for being the reason for going off the heroin.

Well boo hoo Lasrado.   Maybe next time you tuck your daughter into bed, you can think about whether you would be happy to hock porn photos of her for a bit of fast cash.  Or if you would like to see her as a trollop for some other playboy. 

And if you say no, then you're simply a hypocrite.  You're still a user.  And you're still too late. 

Because that is the question she will always ask herself when she grows up.   

That's your legacy and her unhappy memories.

unbelievable

The belligerence and inhumanity of Myanmar's junta is staggering.

This is the Myanmar Embassy in Canberra's email:
Mecanberra@bigpond.com

Tell them.

eek!

You Are a Colon

You are very orderly and fact driven. You aren't concerned much with theories or dreams... only what's true or untrue. You are brilliant and incredibly learned. Anything you know is well researched. You like to make lists and sort through things step by step. You aren't subject to whim or emotions. Your friends see you as a constant source of knowledge and advice. (But they are a little sick of you being right all of the time!) You excel in: Leadership positions You get along best with: The Semi-Colon

What Punctuation Mark Are You?

I'd rather bypass the euphemism and just be a dash.

lebanon

I haven't had time or energy to blog about the events in Lebanon in the past few days, not that the crisis is over.  Of the Lebanese bloggers I have referenced before - at least those writing in English - only Charles Malik has been updating recently - and his posts are worth a read.

From outside Lebanon, Beirut to the Beltway also comments.

One can only imagine what a difference it would have made if...

it's almost good news

The 'good news' being religious freedom, as in freedom to convert, and apostasize:

PENANG: The Syariah High Court here allowed an application by Muslim convert Siti Fatimah Tan Abdullah, 39, to renounce Islam and revert to her original faith.

The decision by Perlis Syariah Court chief judge Othman Ibrahim, who presided over the case when he was based in Penang earlier, makes this the first of its kind in the country where a living Muslim convert is allowed to renounce Islam since the Syariah Court Civil Procedure (State of Penang) Enactment 2004 came into force on Jan 1, 2006.

Almost.

The devil is always in the detail.

buddha's dead sea

The Schøyen Collection, in Oslo, Norway, perhaps the largest private collection of religious manuscripts in the world, is up for sale.  The owner of the collection, Mr. Martin Schøyen, hopes Norway's national government will purchase the collection for the National Library, and wants to donate the proceeds to a humanitarian fund named in his honour.

The collection includes important biblical manuscripts, one of which was recently sold to the Vatican.   But of considerable interest - at least to the press and also in terms of ethics - is a large collection of ancient Buddhist manuscripts smuggled out of Afghanistan in the aftermath of the Taliban's rise to power, sometimes dubbed Buddhism's "Dead Sea Scrolls". 

In a statement, the Schøyen Library points out that the Buddhist manuscripts are the only ones that do not come from old collections, “but were acquired to prevent destruction, after requests from Buddhists and scholars.” The statement goes on to address the question of whether these manuscripts should be returned to Afghanistan, “after they have been published, and if peace, order, religious tolerance and safe conditions have been established in that country.” But after analyzing the history of Afghanistan, the Schøyen Library concludes that it is “not the right and safe home for these manuscripts in the future.”

Bendik Rugaas, director of Norway’s National Library, has already welcomed Mr Schøyen’s proposal to sell his entire collection to the State. But even if the money is raised, and the sale goes ahead, this does not resolve the question of what should eventually happen to the Buddhist material. Although Mr Rugaas would be happy for the manuscripts to remain in Oslo, John Herstad, director of the National Archives, is among those who support the return of the manuscripts to Afghanistan when conditions are appropriate.

Yeah, that and the Elgin marbles.

Ain't gonna happen, so why the hand wringing I don't know.  Scholars will have more access to the manuscripts in Oslo, with or without the Taliban.

more on nargis

NYT

As we learn more and more of the impact of Nargis, the scale of the disaster becomes more difficult to fathom: perhaps up to 100,000 dead, millions affected.  And the Burmese junta continues to stand in the way of assistance, particularly from Western governments, but even from the ineffective U.N.

Indeed the U.N. itself has been all but whimpering and complicit in the face of such obstructionism.

Even an aid agency like World Vision, while being allowed access, having been present in Burma (Myanmar) for 30 years, has its hands tied.  Most its local workers are trained in development, not disaster relief; it needs to bring in outside help; it can't distribute the tiny, tiny trickle of aid that has already arrived. 

Burmese officials, ever the petty tyrants, have now resorted to deporting search and rescue teams.

For this reason the U.S.'s threats to drop aid by helicopter is not just welcome, but  should be encouraged.  They should just go ahead and coordinate their efforts with other countries trying to assist - in the manner we saw during the tsunami disaster with India, Japan, the U.S. and Australia taking a lead role in certain disaster areas.   Search, rescue, recovery, aid.  Do whatever it takes.

Burmese air capability is next to nothing.  Burmese military might is piffle. And if any of Burma's "friends" decide to take exception, they do so at the cost of condemnation by their own people for such inhumanity.

And where's Rudd? The "good neighbour"?  What are we doing?  What are we prepared to do?  What's $3 million gonna do?  It's not even going to upset China.

On the theology of disasters: First Things reposts a March 2005 essay by Eastern Orthodox theologian, David Bentley Hart, written soon after the December 2004 tsunami disaster in the Indian Ocean: 

I do not believe we Christians are obliged — or even allowed — to look upon the devastation visited upon the coasts of the Indian Ocean and to console ourselves with vacuous cant about the mysterious course taken by God’s goodness in this world, or to assure others that some ultimate meaning or purpose resides in so much misery. Ours is, after all, a religion of salvation; our faith is in a God who has come to rescue His creation from the absurdity of sin and the emptiness of death, and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred. For while Christ takes the suffering of his creatures up into his own, it is not because he or they had need of suffering, but because he would not abandon his creatures to the grave. And while we know that the victory over evil and death has been won, we know also that it is a victory yet to come, and that creation therefore, as Paul says, groans in expectation of the glory that will one day be revealed. Until then, the world remains a place of struggle between light and darkness, truth and falsehood, life and death; and, in such a world, our portion is charity.

As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child I do not see the face of God, but the face of His enemy. It is not a faith that would necessarily satisfy Ivan Karamazov, but neither is it one that his arguments can defeat: for it has set us free from optimism, and taught us hope instead. We can rejoice that we are saved not through the immanent mechanisms of history and nature, but by grace; that God will not unite all of history’s many strands in one great synthesis, but will judge much of history false and damnable; that He will not simply reveal the sublime logic of fallen nature, but will strike off the fetters in which creation languishes; and that, rather than showing us how the tears of a small girl suffering in the dark were necessary for the building of the Kingdom, He will instead raise her up and wipe away all tears from her eyes — and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain, for the former things will have passed away, and He that sits upon the throne will say, “Behold, I make all things new.”

Hope, not vain optimism. 

Which is why in the face of suffering, we protest against those who do nothing, who abandon others to the grave.  For to do nothing is inhuman.

nargis

Nothing exposes the brutality and inhumanity of tinpot tyrants like a natural disaster.

As the death toll from Nargis  climbs to over 20,000, with tens of thousands missing and countless more thousands left homeless, Myanmar's junta is still piss-farting around placing all sorts of obstructions to those willing to provide aid - not even allowing foreign helicopters to use their airspace to assess damage, effect rescues, much less distribute aid.

The category 3 tropical storm, hit the southern coast of Myanmar on Saturday, sweeping away entire villages and leaving the region without electricity and running water; a state of emergency has been declared in the cities of Yangon, Irrawaddy, Pegu and in the Karen and Mon states.

Here's the sort of devastation we are talking about:

The image on the left taken in April 15 shows the Irrawaddy river flowing south and splitting into numerous distributaries. Rivers and lakes are sharply defined against a backdrop of vegetation and fallow agricultural land. The image on the right taken on May 5 shows the entire coastal plain is flooded after the area took a direct hit from the cyclone. The city of Yangon (located by the red rectangle) is almost completely surrounded by floods.  Images: NASA

Early reports suggested that the junta failed to give its people warning of the cyclone's approach or make any other preparations, despite knowing the storm was about to hit.  Today, media outlets are carrying reports that Indian meteorologists gave Myanmar warnings about the cyclone's impending landfall some 48 hours beforehand.

Other reports too, that the army was soon out on the streets of Yangon after the winds subsided to clean up: but that was only in the affluent areas of the ruling elite.  In the meantime  most Yangon residents have been without fresh water for three days.  Don't even ask what those in rural areas are sufferring.

Unable to cope with the emergency, the Naypydaw generals quietly asked Thailand for “food, medicine and building materials.”  The first shipment should have arrived yesterday. China sent a similar batch of supplies. The junta has also begrudgingly accepted assistance from international aid agencies, tending to favour the totally ineffective U.N.  And if assessment of needs is one problem, distribution is another problem.   This without the belligerence and obstructionist tactics of the xenophobic regime. 

No use sending cash to them. They are so isolated in the world's community they couldn't spend it, much less know how to spend it for their people's welfare, even if they are more likely to pocket it.

Besides, they do have a referendum to run.

Despicable.

i didn't realise

This was the reason it was called The Daily Terror.

because any stupid thing americans do

The Canadians can do better.

But I've already told you that.

obamanable showman

Rage boy.

There's a photoshop in that.

Next.

the silent scream of the asparagus

I kid you not:

You just knew it was coming: At the request of the Swiss government, an ethics panel has weighed in on the "dignity" of plants and opined that the arbitrary killing of flora is morally wrong. This is no hoax. The concept of what could be called "plant rights" is being seriously debated.

A few years ago the Swiss added to their national constitution a provision requiring "account to be taken of the dignity of creation when handling animals, plants and other organisms." No one knew exactly what it meant, so they asked the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology to figure it out. The resulting report, "The Dignity of Living Beings with Regard to Plants," is enough to short circuit the brain.

No, it's the product of short circuited brains and an impaired morality. 

Put aside your biases against the source and the author of this article, and start praying for your potted plants.  Because the Swiss have indeed gone potty. Due to concern over recent studies suggesting the pain experienced by fish, Swiss anglers are now subjected to a preparatory course on humane fishing.  So why not plants?

A "clear majority" of the panel adopted what it called a "biocentric" moral view, meaning that "living organisms should be considered morally for their own sake because they are alive." Thus, the panel determined that we cannot claim "absolute ownership" over plants and, moreover, that "individual plants have an inherent worth." This means that "we may not use them just as we please, even if the plant community is not in danger, or if our actions do not endanger the species, or if we are not acting arbitrarily."

The committee offered this illustration: A farmer mows his field (apparently an acceptable action, perhaps because the hay is intended to feed the farmer's herd--the report doesn't say). But then, while walking home, he casually "decapitates" some wildflowers with his scythe. The panel decries this act as immoral, though its members can't agree why. The report states, opaquely:

At this point it remains unclear whether this action is condemned because it expresses a particular moral stance of the farmer toward other organisms or because something bad is being done to the flowers themselves.

The matter of sacrificing unborn children to the god of inconvenience and I'm-just-not-ready is bye the bye.  As is killing off the elderly or infirm.  Just don't pick the daisies.

What is clear, however, is that Switzerland's enshrining of "plant dignity" is a symptom of a cultural disease that has infected Western civilization, causing us to lose the ability to think critically and distinguish serious from frivolous ethical concerns. It also reflects the triumph of a radical anthropomorphism that views elements of the natural world as morally equivalent to people.

Meaning theology matters. The god whom you worship matters.

Why is this happening? Our accelerating rejection of the Judeo-Christian world view, which upholds the unique dignity and moral worth of human beings, is driving us crazy. Once we knocked our species off its pedestal, it was only logical that we would come to see fauna and flora as entitled to rights.

The intellectual elites were the first to accept the notion of "species-ism," which condemns as invidious discrimination treating people differently from animals simply because they are human beings. Then ethical criteria were needed for assigning moral worth to individuals, be they human, animal, or now vegetable.

Rising to the task, leading bioethicists argue that for a human, value comes from possessing sufficient cognitive abilities to be deemed a "person." This excludes the unborn, the newborn, and those with significant cognitive impairments, who, personhood theorists believe, do not possess the right to life or bodily integrity. This thinking has led to the advocacy in prestigious medical and bioethical journals of using profoundly brain impaired patients in medical experimentation or as sources of organs.

The animal rights movement grew out of the same poisonous soil. Animal rights ideology holds that moral worth comes with sentience or the ability to suffer. Thus, since both animals and humans feel pain, animal rights advocates believe that what is done to an animal should be judged morally as if it were done to a human being. Some ideologues even compare the Nazi death camps to normal practices of animal husbandry. For example, Charles Patterson wrote in Eternal Treblinka--a book specifically endorsed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals--that "the road to Auschwitz begins at the slaughterhouse."

Eschewing humans as the pinnacle of "creation" (to borrow the term used in the Swiss constitution) has caused environmentalism to mutate from conservationism--a concern to properly steward resources and protect pristine environs and endangered species--into a willingness to thwart human flourishing to "save the planet." Indeed, the most radical "deep ecologists" have grown so virulently misanthropic that Paul Watson, the head of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, called humans "the AIDS of the earth," requiring "radical invasive therapy" in order to reduce the population of the earth to under a billion.

 

why

Are we not listening to those who know

ABORIGINAL leaders have called for perpetrators of child sexual abuse in remote indigenous communities to be prosecuted through the criminal justice system, rather than be subject to traditional codes of punishment, while demanding police take action to stamp out the problem.

Leaders from the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara lands, in northwest South Australia, have claimed that in the past, police have been "reluctant" to pursue offenders.

Their position is outlined in a submission to the state's Mullighan inquiry into child sexual abuse, whose report on abuse in the APY lands will be tabled in the South Australian parliament this week.

Because we wait for the wheels to turn:

South Australian Police Minister Paul Holloway yesterday said he would not respond to a single submission to the Mullighan inquiry, as it was more important to respond to the inquiry's findings.

A spokesman for Police Commissioner Mal Hyde said police would take the APY submissions seriously.

In his first report, made public just over a month ago, Mr Mullighan revealed some of the allegations put to him about abuse of Aboriginal children.

And that is cold comfort for children in APY lands.

Holloway's response is disgraceful.

aussie blokes

Are turning into a bunch of pansies.

not sure

If I should be surprised that demented ideas such as these should emanate from the ACT or that they should be reported in The Age.

ooooooo, heathen alert!

SkepticLawyer and Legal Eagle have a duelling blog.

Lawyers.

national geographic

Can't tell a Bible from a Koran, or Christianity from Islam.

And they've published a book to tell you about it.

as most people know by now

Australian election strategist Lynton Crosby is being credited with helping drive Boris Johnson to victory in the London mayoral elections, despite the Conservative's first five choices having turned down the offer to run against the mad socialist Ken Livingstone.

No, I think it's because Londoners finally woke up.

And because Boris Johnson has more sense. 

And he is funny.

Update: he's a toff, unkempt and known for lying about a sordid affair. The horror.

look, up in the sky

No, it's a flying jelly fish.

(H/T David Thompson)

shorter tanner

I had a bad time at boarding school (but the education was excellent) and I let it turn me into a bitter, vengeful and emotionally stunted young man.

I liked being bitter, vengeful and emotionally stunted so much, that I decided to stay that way until this, my 52nd year, when I can take it all out on you, without batting an eyelid.

Media interpretation: Oh but he's a chocolate-chilli gay-friendly bona-fide messiah.