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Life, Culture and Politics from BrisVegas
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Frist!
Just thought I’d mention for those in SA, I saw a little ad in today’s paper for Lord Monckton’s speaking engagement at South Adelaide footy club next week, “the facts you need to know before a carbon tax is introduced” lol anyway down the bottom of it
“Sponsored by Ann Bressington MP”
The same Ann Bressington that ran on Nick Xenophon’s ticket in ’06 for the SA Legislative Council, who also introduced legislation to ban the sale of bongs, pipes etc and proposed a bill to drug test every high school student in the state twice a year. She also wants the drinking age raised to 21.
The harms of fluoride: Ann Bressington
Jacques De Molay’s posts have a resonance for me, I live pretty much at the centre of where and what he/she’s talking about.
Anne Bressington is Xenophon’s substutue in state politics after his moving to Canberra, but she is a different kettle of fish.
I thought she supported the people trying to save St Clair park from developers, but to many she is also a socially conservative populist.
She is, of course, an Upper House rep, the electoral system allows for subgroup representation as it’s based on quotas; like the fed Senate, it allows for groups excluded to some extent from the lower house two party monopoly some representation and voice.
The banning of pipes is neither here nor there, but the mindset it repesents is a worry, pointing to something similar in Sen Conroy’s obsessive desire to control internet content.
Surely, compulsory medical testing of very young people is bizarre and intrusive and seems a logical consequence of the conservative mindset that has already gifted us with silly wars and recessions, the protracted and continuing boat people saga, the NT Intervention and Dr Haneef.
They are control freaks and they want not only our bodies but our souls.
Lord Monckton is a step too far, it’s cranky.
.
Rupes with a touch of the guilts? This is the problem with a world led by the nose by the dictates of our lower drives. No conspiracy needed. Everyone one understands at an emotional level the concept of ‘self-interest’. I’d be one of the last, in the queue who’d give Rupert Murdoch the benefit of the doubt, but I tend to believe him when he says:
His son is perhaps not as ‘old fashioned’ much more a man of his times.
They say the father is never as good a man as the son, which I’ve always thought to be a weird saying as it implies we’re on some sort of downwardly spiralling degenerative path, and surely that can’t be right? But it seems with Rupert, his spawn (all of us) know how to play the game he set up and have known no other, but Rupert perhaps like Thatcher was, is now appalled at the consequences of their naive-at-the-time, driving impetus’. Beasts of relentless self-interest unleashed on us all. Me! me! me! I! I! I! The ‘free market’ and it’s major propagandist arm a conspriacy of paranoid, fearful egos. Welcome to the world.
Tanks be to the great and good Lordy that we have a woken up to that one. Just in the nick of time.
“perhaps like Thatcher was … appalled at the consequences of their naive-at-the-time, driving impetus”? Any links to show that Thatcher was appalled by her own handiwork? I would have thought she was completely unrepentant. And even though I agree with your general drift I would think that Murdoch is just doing whatever is necessary to wriggle out of the consequences of his actions.
I am a dentist with more than 35 years experience and Anna Bressington’s opinion on the harms of fluoride is an unsubstantiated load of claptrap.
Post-carbon-Sunday polling out.
Nothing to see here – move along.
Ian M. Not evidence exactly, but one of her colleagues talked about her in Adam Curtis’ ‘The Living Dead’- The Attic,. He speaks of her looking remote and detached at a social gathering on a beautiful, birds are singing, sun is shining kind of English day possibly he said “she was looking into the future and not liking what she was seeing.” This was sometime after realising there was nothing that could be feasibly called the British Economy. Make up your own mind it’s an very good doco and amongst others a good portrait of Thatcher.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thktYyfiOP0&feature=related
As to Murdoch wriggling out of consequences, why does this have to involve some widely accepted measure of bald-faced lying where we all conspire to ’1984′ life as fiction? It is so stupid. There is no future anywhere anytime for humans wherein bullshit reigns supreme. It is doomed because it is BULLSHIT. Like not real.
It’s exciting but.
OBR: you don’t vote to establish the facts of science and nor do polls represent anything other than the facts of mass sentiment. That Australians aren’t ready to take responsibility for their lives comes as no suprise to me. On a whole I’m unimpressed by my fellow citizens and have been for a long time. By a narrow squeak of minority government we’ve managed to get a carbon reduction scheme on the table. Hooray. Can’t tell you how much I’m enjoying your powerlessness. Added to this is the wonderful exposure of the stinking corruption at the core of the MSM. There is the real possibility that the steady drip feed of delusion and lies on which Australian mass sentiment has been built may actually be curtailed. Get ready to go cold turkey and face reality.
Rupert’s mention of the Great Dame is certainly interesting. I wonder if he’s been getting some grief down the blower from Cruden Farm? Dame Elisabeth has certainly never been shy in telling him when he’s screwed up in the past.
@9 akn – you, and so many of your left-wing compatriots at the moment, really do personify that magnificent human condition – Hope.
“On a whole I’m unimpressed by my fellow citizens and have been for a long time.” – why aren’t I unsuprised at the atypical holier-than-thou attitude to the voters?
As for powerlessness – you must know the feeling well – 11 years of it, no? Yes, the Opposition is meant to be powerless. The Government is meant to have the power. So, for a powerless Opposition I’d say Abbott’s not doing to bad. The supposedly unelectable Abbott has:
DefeatedTurnbull on the back of white hot rage at Turnbull’s ignoring the policy wishes of his base.
Caused the unprecedented fall of a first term ALP PM without going to an election.
Almost won (when previously widely described as unelectable) his first election aagainst a first term government and forced the ALP to have to sell it’s soul to the Greens and break a significant election promise in order to do so and is now the millstone around their neck.
Has forced the ALP into worst polling numbers in history and has surpassed the PM as preferred PM.
Not bad for powerlessness.
As for the next two years to the next election – who knows? Maybe Abbott will crash and burn and the PM will be ascendant. Some how I doubt it (anybody recall someone called KK?).
As for unravelling the anti-carbon dioxide package – well I see plenty of opportunites in that problem – continued restructuring of our tax and transfers and signficant opportunites to slash the size of the public service – in particular any programs to do with climate change.
I would also love to see a DD election after a mandate winning election in order to clean out the unrepresentative swill.
… and apart from KK, how’s Bligh polling? The saviour of the floods needs another climate change induced disaster pronto.
Was amused to hear on NewsRadio that some “environmentalists” have bought Triabunna native forest woodchip mill and are planning to turn it into an eco-tourism resort, to the horror of local residents. I admit I couldn’t hear the whole segment over my children’s shouts, but I am pretty sure they didn’t say these obviously unbusinesslike dreamers were the owners of the Kathmandu clothing company.
Link @8 good film making, Ian Curtis always is. However I don’t think it really says what you think it says, at best it is a case of projection or grandiosity on the part of obsrevers when in fact she either just was feeling the need for a nana nap or at worst ruminating on EnochPowell’s dictum that all political lives end in failure.
I’m afraid I don’t comprehend your chastisement re Rupert trying to wriggle out of the consequences of his actions. I can only say that I’m sure he loves his children etc but that doesn’t mean he didn’t know what was going on.
OBR, getting a bit shrill aren’t you?. No opinion poll will change the reality of climate change.
OBR: I was hoping you’d pick up on the ‘holier than thou’ attitude and ascribe it to ‘left wing’ views. In fact my ‘leftism’, if that is what it can be called, is reactive to the self serving cowardice and cringe making, self satisfied complacency of what Pauline called ‘mainstream’ Australians of whom I presume you consider yourself to be representative. I come from a long family line of Australian non-conformists whose non-conformity frequently took the form of ‘leftism’ but whose essential characteristics were a capacity and willingness to live their lives according to their own lights rather than in craven subordination to the sort of bullying and hectoring most completely, currently characterised by your hero Tony Abbott but previously exemplified by the stultifying John Howard. People like us don’t need political heroes or leadership – we do it ourselves which is in stark contrast to the majority of Australians. If that sort of attitude leads you to conclude that I have ‘holier than thou’ views then so be it and all power to those Aussies whose ability to think and live independently so galls you mainstream ‘Strayans.
akn. You do what yourselves? Think and live independently? The funniest thing I have heard on this blog.
Seems the denizens of the Yakima Health district in the US would rather die of colon cancer than tolerate a perfectly innocuous bum joke on a billboard. (Story here).
Anthony I strongly recommend that you keep your hands above the desk when composing your posts.
Otherwise people might conclude that you are smugness personified.
Not to mention delusional.
@11, Oh yawn Razor. Yes, Abbott is a very competent wrecker, we already knew that from his wrecking of the Republic debate.
And he can run. And swim. And cycle. A lot.
But if he’s going to be PM, he’d better start explaining to us, sharpish, what else he’s good for, other than wrecking, running, swimming and cycling…
*crickets*
Well, GregM and Tinydancer, I’m starting to enjoy this. Here’s a roll call, just off the top of my head, of outstanding independent thinkers who I count as associates but who you’d regard as wankers and troublemakers: Frank Hardy (mainly for his 1968 The Unlucky Australians); Owens, Mundey and Pringle; Chicka Dixon; Fred Hollows, Roland Robinson, Dorothy Hewwett, Gary Foley (Tent Embassy days). Then there’s my great grand uncle who was a member of the IWW, a homosexual pacifist who enlisted in the great war after being sent white feathers for resisting conscription but who went on to win medals for valour for service in a field ambulance unit in France, my own uncle who flew in the Battle of Britain (a ‘leftist’) and my childhood neighbour James Comerford. Other independent thinkers of my acquaintance were a WWII vet who served in ‘Sparrow Force’, the irregular Australian unit in Timor, who went on the become a significant trades union leader and numerous Greeks, Italians and Spanish who worked the docks and heavy industries of Newcastle who had an impeccable understanding of class politics.
And I’m not even having to work the memory hard here.
You mainstreamers are dullards and conformists.
It seems people don’t love being taxed after all.
I would like to second the comment by Mercurius @ 20.
Tinydancer: you’re laughing because the possibility independent thinking is incomprehensible to you? Is this another consequence of the dominance of po-mo teaching over the last two decades?
akn. Left school 31 years ago. Sorry mate but more pontification and more rubbish. Did you study grammar at school You keep independently suporting a tax which won’t change a thing and which has no incentive for change. Then take your superhero suit off.
So this is Australia, 2011.
Suspicious fire at Julia Gillard’s old high school
One day after her National Press Club address where she reminded us all of where she attended school …
Another day, another death threat
We’ve seen a Frankston “community meeting” where Aboot attended (Merc commented on this ) in which a Greens voter was told “she didn’t belong” and told “crawl back under a rock” and then pursued down the street by a staffer for LNP MP Bruce Bilson. We’ve seen meetings large enough to be attended by Hockey and Brandis in which people have spoke of armed insurrection and others where assassination of the PM has been canvassed. We’ve had countless emails where scientists and academics have been threatened with lethal harm.
Unlike some of my more voluble left|st peers I’m disinclined to throw the term f@scism about. I come from a tradition that is very careful about the terms it uses. This was a term reserved not for reactionaries, but rather, those engaged in coordinated extra-legal violence and intimidation of the left, the workers movement, minoritiies and the socially marginalised. We may not have yet ticked all these boxes, but we’ve ticked quite a few, and it now seems hard to dismiss out of hand the idea that amidst the radical fringe of the denier community we may actually have a nascent f@scist movement, fostered, it seems clear, by the space being created by big dirt, big filth, big print and the LNP.
We need to be very aware that the “people’s revolt” that Abbott proposed may not be purely a rhetorical flourish but something far more dangerous. Abbott has stated that if people think he’s been busy so far, that this is nothing compared to the torrent of anger he is proposing to unleash. This seems a clear admission that the bile and hatred we are seeing is carried out with at least, his tacit approval.
I believe we should remind him of this on every occasion we can.
Yes indeed – Australia 2011. Just like the U.S. 2009-2011 – Tea Party makes its presence felt. Interesting coincidence isn’t it?
It is also a great coincidence that the man who helped bankroll the U.S. Tea Party (along with with Koch Bros. and others) is himself under the spotlight for the practices of his newspapers in the U.K. and also now in the U.S.
But hey, here in Australia News Ltd. has promised to conduct a “review” of its publications over the past three years, three being the magic number – not five or six which might highlight a time when it was much easier to hack into voicemails etc. when analogue was the go.
I’d be just as interested to find out a little more about the linkages between the infamous Godwin Grech email, Malcolm Turnbull and Steve Lewis of News Ltd. but I guess the “review” wouldn’t cover such ground.
Tiny Dancer: soundin’ bitter there ol’ thing. The new left had more sex too.
So did the psychedelic left, akn, although we probably didn’t have quite as much intellectual rigour. I think you’re right – they’re jealous.
Meanwhile, from the deeper reaches of the Murdoch Führerbunker:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/elite-few-spearhead-the-anti-murdoch-campaign-over-phone-hacking-scandal/story-e6frg996-1226095205385
Shorter Murdoch Minion: “Freedom = access to murdered girls’ voicemail.”
DI (nr): there’s a whole distinctively Australian left typology that needs doing within which the psychadelic left has earned its place. My mob were more the armed wing of the hippie movement than anything else; ferals from before the word was applied to humans.
Katz: the author of that tripe is one Brendan O’Neill who will be speaking at the Centre for Independent Studies Big Ideas Forum in Sydney on July 31.
Sydneysiders?
Shorter Murdoch Minion: “Freedom = access to murdered girls’ voicemail.”
Give it a break Katz, no one is defending the actions of the NoW.
And while I have often thought that The Green-Left Weekly would be better if it was put out of business, I accept that it is a necessary consequence of freedom of speech. On the other hand, the noises Bob Brown is making about enquiries and editorial guidance are completely out of order for someone who professes to be a democrat.
The Right never had actionable sexual impulses until fantasies about Margaret Thatcher vivified stagnant libidos. Unsurprisingly, thereafter, rightist sex was an ugly, ugly thing.
Hence, Catallaxy.
Fran @ 26
So a fire was undertaken at Unley High School in Adelaide because Julia Gillard mentioned it in an address to the National Press Club?
Has anyone noted the typical demographic profile of school arsonists, and checked it against the demographics of who watches addresses to the National Press Club, or for that matter reads the newspapers or watches the TV programs where they are discussed?
This could be a sure winner of that LP drawing a long bow competition.
PeterTB,
you cannot be serious? I mean, are you feeling well?
You’re, admittedly, only vaguely, comparing News Ltd to The Green Left Weekly, but at this stage it’s definitely time to detach from the keyboard.
Brendan O’Neill works himself into a self-righteous froth over nothing. No one has called for censorship. Instead Murdoch’s critics are by implication asking consumers of Murdoch’s news product to break their habit.
There is nothing wrong with that. And who can buy a Murdoch rag these days without feeling a little … dirty?
akn – all power to those Aussies whose ability to think and live independently so galls you mainstream ‘Strayans… You mainstreamers are dullards and conformists”
A little bitter? And shrill?
Good work on the list. Keep the make believe going. Wait for the revolution. It’s coming.
(That’s not a death threat. It’s what the left do best when they’re not talking through their bottom)
comparing News Ltd to The Green Left Weekly
They both share the same freedom to put their points of view.
See?
Tiny Dancer, try getting your tiny brain around the fact that the old left/right division is as about redundant as everything else you crap on about. Like your hero, you’re stuck at about the middle of the last century. The world moves on -get over it.
And PeterTB, only one engages in criminal and unethical behaviour. I’ll let you figure out which one it is.
Oppositions don’t win elections – Governments lose them. Ever since I’ve known that dictum I’ve seen it hold true. And the logic of it is that Oppositions should play small target politics.
Given, as the current PM has so effectively demonstrated, circumstances change, then appart from “small map – big hands” type strategy stuff Oppositions are best served by not getting bogged down in the weeds of detailed policy releases.
If the public don’t like it, then that will be one of the factors that they take into account when deciding how to vote.
I have no idea why Phillip Adams is so highly regarded. I used to read his columns and even tried listening to his show but still don’t see what the hype is about (much like Tim Winton). Anyway – I did hear of one usefuul piece of advice from him about Abbot – those long rides and runs give a person a lot of time to think and that is what makes Abbott dangerous. He is absolutely right – once you get ino the zone you can often reflect on other things than just your run/ride/swim. Perhaps the PM should think of doing some exercise.
Further to akn’s point, Geoff Lemon on The Drum gets stuck into complacent and pampered Australia:
only one engages in criminal and unethical behaviour. I’ll let you figure out which one it is.
Same could be said of the NSW Education Department – making about as much sense. Have you any evidence that the behaviour was anything but isolated? No? Thought not.
I have no knowledge of such behaviour at the GLW, but Bob’s enquiry will bring it out, no doubt.
Don’t get out much do you Peter TB, or do you just pretend to be stupid. Isolated to what? News International?
“Did the Herald Sun publish a call to assassinate Julia Gillard?”:
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/purepoison/2011/07/16/did-the-herald-sun-publish-a-call-to-assassinate-julia-gillard/
I·so·lat·ed/ˈīsəˌlātid/Adjective
2. Having minimal contact or little in common with others
Where is your evidence that the behaviour was not limited to one News business unit?
In your case though Anthony that’s just because of your devotion to worshipping the five goddesses.
“Part of me would love to see the squawking indignant right-to-luxury crowd learning how to live in the dust, scraping out dried plants from the earth and hoarding their remnants from the Beforetime.”
Geoff Lemon gives it up. This piece really demonstrates what the left is about – hurting those who don’t believe in their cult like ideologies.
The left hate the right despite the right providing all those jobs, the economy as well as supporting the spoons from the left.
Go figure this adrien. No right and you don’t have a life. Go and live in a cave and stop being a hypocrite.
Does anyone know if Robert Mugabe has been invited to CHOGM in Perth later this year? I’d like to think we could avoid that evil on our soil, but I’m not sure if Zimbabwe is still suspended from the Commonwealth. And will there be any mention of the continued anti-gay laws (and harassment) in Commonwealth countries such as Uganda, Trinidad & Tobago, Jamaica (and Zimbabwe)? Or are the colonial era sodomy laws a convenient legacy for 21st century bigots?
chookie @13
the Triabunna mill has been purchased by Greame Wood and Kathmandu Lady (don’t recall her name atm).
And, of course, is had _nothing whatsoever_ to do with Mr Wood’s record donation to the Greens and hypocrite Brown’s subsequent lobbying on behalf of the eco-tourism venture. Nothing to see there, either.
Tiny Dancer @38: one of the most eccentric non-conformists, not a revolutionary in any political sense but a genuine cultural revolutionary, was Derek Smith of Flinders Island who gave me a bed and a lesson in foul weather when I needed it a long time ago. He lived in a ramshackle house that he shared with his daughter, several hairy nosed wombats (one called Botham), multiple Cape Barren Geese and wallabies. They sat around his fire at night along with anyone else who cared to drop in. He had the best private collection of Australian art hanging on his walls that I’ve ever seen and notable particularly for a bloke with the arse out of his pants. They were gifts from artists who were grateful for his hospitality to ‘outsiders’ before Flinders Island became a destination. Happily, he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in 1993 for his contribution to conservation in the Furneaux Islands (http://www.itsanhonour.gov.au/honours/honour_roll/search.cfm?aus_award_id=878423&search_type=simple&showInd=true).
So, representative of ordinary Strayans, me and mine lay claim to a particular national heritage: that of Lawson, Dame Mary Gilmore, the Jindyworobaks, oodgeroo noonuccal and dear old Derek Smith (amongst others). We’re the mob who listened to the Warumpi band’s Blackfella/Whitefella and took their advice (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVVGygQAQT0).
I’ll admit that I’ve been on a rampage here on LP today but I’m heartily sick of being polite to people whose constribion to Australian national life amounts to nothing more than the sheer poundage of Macdonalds they’ve managed to send throught the system for use as fertilizer.
Oh.. and what exactly do the Greens and others expect industry to do with the low-grade waste from timber operations once the mill is shut down in a few years? Shall we burn it in a smouldering heap or bury it? Maybe it’ll become fodder for some subsidised ethanol energy operation.
I have today been inexplicably cheered by the news (via Pavlov’s Cat on Facebook) that Hollywood has cast Tom Cruise in an adaptation of a series of novels where a crucial plot point is that the protagonist (Jack Reacher) is 6’5″ tall. I’m not imagining it, the world really is that screwed up. Mwahahahahahahaha.
PeterTB,
freedom of the press does not entail invading private citizen’s right to privacy, stealing their information, or interfering in a criminal investigation, all activities in which News Ltd. most profitable entity, New of the World, were engaged in. How is this kind of criminal activity related to, “[News Ltd journalists] putting [their] point of view.”
Further, to compare a weekly political newspaper with the resources and the size of circulation of The Green Left Weekly and the News of the World is rather droll. You are simply not to be taken seriously.
Adrian@42
Thanks for the excerpt you have quoted of Geoff Lemon at the Drum.
It shows just what a wanker Geoff Lemon is.
Having drinkable water on tap is not a privilege. It is the product of science and engineering that we paid for with our taxes and rates, knowing fully well what we would get for our money.
tigtog @52: Reminds me of this classic.
Yes tigtog, its effed up alright. My 15 yo (gay/out) son and I are playing U-Tube cultural competitions. His selction, a song of deep human alienation from Nero: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llDikI2hTtk; mine Marilyn Manson’s ‘Put a Spell On You’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPw1i9dAJiQ).
freedom of the press does not entail invading private citizen’s right to privacy, stealing their information, or interfering in a criminal investigation, all activities in which News Ltd. most profitable entity, New of the World, were engaged in.
That’s a straw man adrian. No one has suggested anything of the kind.
akn – obviously my family’s service at Stet Cabinet level, nurses, pharmacists and law enforcement, my service in the ADF, building a business, employing people, paying them etc pales into insignificance in the face of your awesomeness.
I apologise for upsetting your sensibilties.
GregM: the scientists and engineers whose competence and skill provide drinking water are the same classes of people who now urge us to take global warming seriously. The right doesn’t own technical skill, science or engineering. Your attempts to represent your views as technico-rationalist are febrile and hollow.
OBR: no, your family’s contribution is as honourable as anyone else’s. My point is that there is a history and tradition of Australian non-conformism, in which I would include the left, that mainstream ‘Strayans disparage. They do so at peril of subordinating precisely those sorts of people and voices whose resolve and creativity will be sorely needed as we head into the deepest crisis in human history: the ecological crisis.
Besides, what? You employed people and paid them too? What a hero. I don’t know what it is about the ‘Strayan petit bourgeois that makes them the bearers of such moral virtue that everyone else has to kiss their arse in gratitude. Me, I don’t just remember the days when we made the boss class kiss our arse for even turning up on Monday morning, I still embody it. See Johnny Paycheck’s classic ‘You Can Take This Job and Shove It’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPrSVkTRb24).
Anthony, I’m afraid your hands have strayed below the desktop again. You must stop it or you’ll grow hair on the palm of your hands.
I have nowhere suggested that we should not take global warming seriously. I have thought we should do so since the 1970s when I realised that spewing millions of years of accumulated fossil energy into the atmosphere over hundreds of years would lead to no good.
However that is a separate issue from how we get reliably drinkable water.
Although I don’t expect LP’s resident rabbit @42 would be able to comprehend that. Or you to either.
There are a heap of women who post on Catallaxy. Judith Sloan, Tal, and Gabrielle are the leaders of the pack.
Why does LP have so few women?
GregM: well, you’ve been worried about global warming since when? The 70′s? What prescience. The rest of us were down the Franklin or up at Terrania Creek. You’re an eco-champ mate.
He he, some reality check for ‘pathetic’ carbon tax claim, courtesy of intelligent and informed consumers. Even reported by new$ business . Is the tide turning, sanity to prevail again?
Oh and duncan, re your ‘low grade waste’. Take your bullshit and mix it thoroughly with the ‘waste’ at a C/N ratio of 3:1 and you’ll get perfect high grade compost. In Chinese the word crisis is composed of two characters. One represents danger, and the other represents opportunity.
Anthony , any intelligent person with an interest in the environment in the 1970s would have realised what I realised. If you did not then it’s just that you are not intelligent or interested in the environment. I think it is the former.
@66
fantastic,
so instead of making something useful like particle board, MDF or paper, we’ll make a steaming pile (oops.. better watch that methane, GHG you know) of mulch to plant geraniums in.
Genius on a stick, that is.
GregM: bollocks.
Did we meet each other at Terania Creek, or up at the Daintree blockade, or down the Franklin? Or even down outside Eden in the campaign against woodchipping native old growth? What about over in the jarrah forests of WA? No? Really, I’m shocked to have somehow missed such an intelligent environmentalist as you in all my years of active engagement.
Putting something on the line counts mate. Maybe you’d be better off watching your super accumulate.
Have you read this thread, Joseph?
It’s the online equivalent of macaques hurling faeces, without the charm.
duncan, don’t give up your day job.
Compost ain’t mulch. When processed at above suggested ratio aerobic composting does not smell (or emit ammonia) nor give off any methane. Adequately moistened and aerated, the ammonium is converted by bacteria into plant-nourishing nitrites and nitrates through the process of nitrification. However, composting can also be used to generate biogas through anaerobic digestion, such as is commercially done with ‘rubbish’ dumped in landfills.
And I bet you, I get more profit pound per pound for premium compost then you’ll get for cardboard paper.
Googie Withers has died.
It’s my birthday tomorrow.
Well said ootz which brings to mind another Australian non-conformist worth his weight: Bill Mollison.
Oh well, Mercurius, I’m sure the men wouldn’t have it any other way.
akn
“”"Did we meet each other at Terania Creek, or up at the Daintree blockade, or down the Franklin? Or even down outside Eden in the campaign against woodchipping native old growth? What about over in the jarrah forests of WA? “”"”
Thats a lot of walking, or did you ride a recycled bamboo bicycle?
Notwithstanding your acerbic wit and intelligence Mercurius you are an effete presence. One of the lessons I learned in the 70′s was that it was the job of men to deal with reactionary men and we do so while leaving you holding a perfumed kerchief to your nose on the sidelines.
akn, you’re an inspiration.
Well, I’m enjoying Robert Altman’s “Nashville”.
Gee Geraldine Chaplin is cute until she smiles. Then all you can see is Charlie in drag. I can guess why the A roles dried up so quickly.
jumpy, mechanical engineering has found that bamboo has some properties that can’t be surpassed by any human made compound. So it is not surprising to see that this material has been used to manufacture bicycles which provides them with outstanding vibration damping qualities as well as crash tolerance.
And don’t be so dismissive of recycling, who knows you may find yourself one day soon indulging in such activity too. The progress from rubbish to resource is only stopped by lazy unproductive thinking. We’ll make an enterprising opportunist of you yet!
46 today.
Jumpy: I rode my manservant.
“constribion to Australian national life” – surely you jest. how pathetic
Couldn’t let this go unanswered…(emphasis added)
Errr….but that’s pretty much the contemporary definition of privilege. Not the etymological meaning of ‘private law’ of course, but very much in line with the modern usage — as in, exercising a prerogative through economic (or social) advantage.
But like most people who have and routinely exercise privilege, you can’t see it. That’s cos you’re soaking in it, luv.
And, with that, I shall resume my habitual Tim Brooke-Taylor-like flounce behind the perfumed kerchief. I shan’t wish to deprive akn of an opportunity to be greener-than-thou.
Ootz@78
“”"And don’t be so dismissive of recycling”"”
Never, especially in the garden. I’m currently recycling equine faeces into food with little effort.
Ootz, I do enjoy your comments, your thinking reminds me of a Polish born friend of mine. Conversations with him are always thought provoking and entertaining. Like you ,he is multilingual and well traveled.
My question is, when speaking with him face to face , why would he use the word “fu@king” instead of an exclamation or question mark at the edn of a sentence ?
And would he do it in Russian or German?
I’ve asked him and he doesn’t realise he’s doing it.
Oh my Dog, the tide IS turning and the local branches of new$ corps have collectively taken a chill pill or am I having a full moon induced hangover?
First, in the Courier Mail
Outrage as Tony Abbott compares impact of carbon tax to Queensland floods
Then, in the Herald Sun Malcolm Turnbull in middle of turn to the right
Mercurius: I’ll add good humoured and gracious to your accomplishments after my surly comments. Cheers.
Do we have a TEA Party in Australia? What an interesting proposition. Where is the evidence?
That is the contemporary definiion of privilege among silly people, mercurius.
Sensible people distinguish between unearned entitlement, which is what privilege is, and something which is planned and paid for. Our clean water supply is the fruit of our intelligence and our labour, not something that has been gifted to us.
Where others who do not currently have a clean water supply do get it they will not be privileged but rather will be the beneficiaries of someone’s intelligence and labour, probably their own.
“Shall we burn it in a smouldering heap or bury it? Maybe it’ll become fodder for some subsidised ethanol energy operation.”
As Ootz has pointed out, forestry waste can be easily and profitably composted. This has been happening for about 40 years at the Van Sheiks plant at Mt Gambier SA.
http://biogro.com.au/index.php?page=about-us-3
We can also burn forestry, timber and other mill waste in steam powered electricity generators.
The Kimberly Clark tissue mill at Millicent SA is currently building a combined heat and power generation plant, expected to reduce the mills carbon footprint by around 90,000 tonnes a year. It will save them a packet on electricity too.
http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2011/07/07/3263921.htm
Go akn!
Spent some time around the forests and mill at Eden myself in the past.
On another note however, I’m not quite sure whether todays background briefing story on the Mockton roadshow and the climate denier cabal in Australia fits into the category of comedic and morbid fascination with human delusion, or suggests a real concern for the cognitive ability of some Australians.
background briefing – July 17
Ends with some interesting recordings of the (fascist?) ABC journo being harrassed and physically bullied at a public rally, as Mockton stands on the stage telling the crowd the ABC is a fascist organisation.
Death threats, public harrassment and abuse of people, scientists or journalists with questions seems the primary response from the climate denier cabal.
If they were on another planet, it would be comedic genius.
The irony seems lost on them, when it comes their own practices and perceptions exhibiting more in common with the accusations they so liberally throw around about others. It’s hard to believe it’s not satire itself sometimes.
A Jones as president of the ‘scientific’ Galileo movement?
Who would’ve thought that Australia could become the haven or crucible for the development of such a bunch of nongs?
They (Mockton et al) continue to throw around the f-word, as they themselves pursue the most insulting ad-hominem assaults on anyone who isn’t in sycophantic agreement with burning ever more oil and coal, and the self-aggrandisment of modern man.
It’s piqued my interest in actually turning up at some denier speak event and asking questions actually, but they seem very few and far between where I am.
It seems just turning up with a different opinion or perspective is enough to elicit the brownshirt type response if the recent Abbott ‘community meeting’ is anything to judge it all by.
That is if you can get through the screening process they use to try and manipulate public perceptions.
The anti-science anti-climate mob that’s been whipped up by Alan Jones and his ilk, ably supported by Tony Abbott’s gang of thugs, that’s the evidence. Here’s the evaluation.
* They are bankrolled by mining millionaires with a vested interest in the matter (US Koch brothers / AUS Gina Reinhardt etc)
* They are whipped up by ‘shock jocks’ (US Glenn Beck / AUS Alan Jones)
* Extreme messages bordering on (and in some cases, actually being) hate speech (US Obama=Hitler/Stalin / AUS Gillard=Bob Brown’s Bitch/JuLIAR)
* Threats of armed insurrection (the whole point of the name ‘Tea Party’)
* Threats of political assassination (US automatic weapons outside Obama event, and actual arrests, and actual assassination attempts on politicians / AUS recent comments in the conservative media by its hysterical consumers)
* Whipped up, or at least pandered to, by conservative politicians for their own ends
* Absolute rejection of scientific principle
* Absolute rejection of basic economic principles (US see debt limit negotiations / AUS see “direct action on climate change”, LNP election budget, recent LNP comments about Treasury).
* Absolute rejection of democratic principle (Gillard won, get over it, opinion polls don’t count, and that’s not how democracy works)
If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck …
*WE* did not earn clean running water. I grew up with it, most of us did. My parent’s generation paid for and built it, their parents before that. I don’t remember a time I was without clean running water in my house. I’m not responsible for that – I’m the lucky recipient of it, lucky to be born in an advanced western industrial nation in the second half of the twentieth century. You are too. That’s privilege alright!
You can mouth exactly the same words about some rich kid who inherits daddy’s wealth. “Our immense business empire is the fruit of our intelligence and our labour, not something that has been gifted to us”. You completely elide who is the “us” here, disguising your actual inherited privilege.
And most people who’ve ever lived, are NOT privileged. And you should be thankful for fact that you are in such luck. I know I am, every fucking day I wake up in a warm bed and get showered and dressed in my expensive, luxury, bought-at-Target for $20, t-shirt and my expensive, luxury, just-over-$100 pair of Calvin Klein blue jeans, and pull on just ONE of my several pairs of expensive, luxury, partially leather shoes that I bought from the local mall for a fraction of my weekly wage. Then I mount a self-powered cheap-carbon-burning transportation device that costs next-to-nothing to run each week and can drive just about anywhere I like without even being shot at ever or searched at roadblocks by armed men. Wow! Through an incredible stroke of immensely good fortune, and against all odds, I live like a king!
For the vast majority of humans who have ever lived, existence was not like that at all. We are all the fortunate few.
Privilege is not a bad word. Its just how things are. Some people have it, others don’t, and to different extents. It’s when you can’t recognise it for what it is that it becomes a problem.
And then, if you can’t see how lucky you are to be this privileged, you end up sitting there crying like an overly spoilt child over 9 bucks and 50 fucking cents a week, as if the cost of less than three coffees a week is somehow the worst impost you’ve ever suffered.
Is that right quoll? jeez but when it rains down there it pours doesn’t it? I can report that the open air lockup at Eden Police station is … err…clean but bloody cold in winter. I quite like activist hippies. They were a good mob down there. Cheers.
I suppose Insiders will have Pau Keating on nect week for balance.
Interesting the Ratty couldn’t go on TV without telling at least one lie. The one I noticed was about climate science changing.
TerjeP @85:
Terje, Google “Julia Gillard is a Communist”. The ninth hit you get will take you to the Australian TEA Party website.
Who is upset about “9 bucks and 50 fucking cents a week”? I couldn’t give two hoots about it. We are lucky.
However, this tax is borderline [ableism redacted], based on panic. It will not affect our environment one iota.
If you think that we are going to be a country that relies on wind, solar and wave power then you don’t get it. It is a fantasy.
@Paul Norton, Google no longer serves up exactly the same search results for everybody – the result you see is algorithm-weighted to your computer’s previous search (and browsing) history, so the ninth link that Terje sees may very well not be the same as the ninth link that you see.
no, it’ll be first on Terje’s search results…
Everyone who is anti-carbon-pricing. Everyone who says it will impoverish the rich (usually, they mean, themselves). Everyone who endlessly moans about the “cost of living” but who are completely unreflective as to exactly how they live, especially those who live as if an SS Commodore and a four-bed house with two reception rooms is a birthright.
For the people who can’t afford $9.50/wk are amply compensated for it and they don’t have such luxuries.
It’s also a reference to the Geoff Lemon piece and both your and GregM’s objections to it.
Point taken tigtog. It actually now comes up as the eighth hit on my PC.
Tiny Dancer:
If you think we will continue to rely on oil, reality has some news for you. Things don’t always stay the same. We need to change to adapt. It may be wind solar and wave or something else but we need to look ahead.
Everyone who endlessly moans about the “cost of living” but who are completely unreflective as to exactly how they live, especially those who live as if an SS Commodore and a four-bed house with two reception rooms is a birthright.
How dare those greedy selfish bastards want to decide what their money is spent on? Especially when there are plenty of socialist passengers who are only too willing to tell them what’s best for them.
Bored with political whingeing about carbon pricing I placed the following on a personals site:
Wish me luck.
Dear Tyro,
re: 89
* They are bankrolled by mining millionaires with a vested interest in the matter (US Koch brothers / AUS Gina Reinhardt etc)
No one is paying me or anyone else I know who oppose this system.
* They are whipped up by ‘shock jocks’ (US Glenn Beck / AUS Alan Jones)
I listen to neither and in Perth, WA, the highest rating am talk back is the ABC
* Extreme messages bordering on (and in some cases, actually being) hate speech (US Obama=Hitler/Stalin / AUS Gillard=Bob Brown’s Bitch/JuLIAR)
Extremists on bothsides do it.
* Threats of armed insurrection (the whole point of the name ‘Tea Party’)
Haven’t seen it here in Australia but as I said above – there are extremists on both sides.
* Threats of political assassination (US automatic weapons outside Obama event, and actual arrests, and actual assassination attempts on politicians / AUS recent comments in the conservative media by its hysterical consumers)
The gun control debate in the US has nothing to do with Australia. The Assassination attempt on the US Congresswoman was by a mentally ill man with a bias to leftism from what I’ve seen. Once again – both sides have their extremists.
* Whipped up, or at least pandered to, by conservative politicians for their own ends
Tell me are there no alarmist climate catastrophism predictions being made?
* Absolute rejection of scientific principle
My position is actually based on what the science is telling us – it is too late and given the global political inertia we are wasting time money and resources on anything but adapation.
I think it is a bit rich to state that skepticism is a rejection of scientific principle, especially when the climate predictions are not based on the traditional scientific method of hypothesis testing but rather computer modelling which is failing to accurately predict short-term, let alone long term results.
* Absolute rejection of basic economic principles (US see debt limit negotiations / AUS see “direct action on climate change”, LNP election budget, recent LNP comments about Treasury).
Economic principles are not being rejected. The European data shows no evidence that their system has reduced CO2 output.
Why is seeking a preffered outcome in the US Debt Limit negotiations a rejection of economic principles?
The Opposition does not have access to the massive bureacracies that support economic modelling and management. I don’t expect their figures to be terribly accurate or match reality once they get into government and get the full picture – and that goes for any party.
* Absolute rejection of democratic principle (Gillard won, get over it, opinion polls don’t count, and that’s not how democracy works)
Calling for another election is not a rejection of democratic principles – it an exercise of democratic principles. The Governemnt doesn’t have to have one if they don’t want and the way things are at the moment I don’t expect the, to go to the polls until the very last possible moment.
You are absolutely correct – opinion polls don’t count when it comes to counting the votes on election day, but every politician obsesses over them. The political facts for the ALP are because they already knifed Rudd and they are now beholden to the Greens they can neither change PM or change policy and they have to ride this one all the way down, down, down, down, . . .
Mollison is responsible for advocating more than a few environmental weed escapees [tree lucerne comes to mind as one he championed], and he also advocated the planting of food crops in bushland….I invite anyone who wants to argue in favour of that to join me in my continued attempts to remove asparagus from an endangered ecosystem. I also blame him for every person who thinks that it’s a cool idea to grow a couple of olives in South Australia…..for fucks sake, they grow wild on roadsides…pick them, don’t plant them on bush blocks, and once you’ve gone through the palaver and process required to make the damn things palatable, you’ll think twice about needing to grow your own.
If everyone followed Mollison’s advice we would see a bunch of lifestylers [requiring more land than any individual should ever feel entitled to] practicing their own screwed up version of ecological enlightenment – I meet these people regularly in my line of work – control freaks, all of them. Your bog standard dairy farmer is a more enlightened creature.
The thousands of Italians and Vietnamese in our communities who grow a lot of food in their tiny suburban backyards are a more shining example of ecological activism than Mollison could claim to be…unless you are an aspirational, middle-class white aussie who needs to fork out hundreds to learn how to grow a few veggies.
I am sure that everyone in Austrlia can “afford” the package. except of course if you are in a sector that, over time, is going to be negatively impacted. Imagine living in the Latrobe Valley at the moment – can’t sell your house for a reasonable price and a good chance you are going to be unemployed in the next decade if the ALP and Greens have their way.
It will make no difference to Australian or Global Climate outcomes. However, making the heroic assumption that the rest of the world actually do something (I have more chance of winning Lotto), the CO2 price has to be ramped up and all fuel included – yet it won’t make a difference.
It is an absurd policy stance – “We are concerned about Climate Change so here is our policy, which will physically do nothing for climate change”.
If you can sell this policy to Australians you can sell ice to eskimos.
@ Tyro Rex: Hear! Hear!
@ 94TD: please provide absolute proof that Australia’s reduction of CO2 emissions ” will not affect our environment one iota.”
To help you with your task here is the source of the colloquial use of iota:
Heaven and Earth…now where have I seen that before?
So the wind turbines and solar panels wich are already part of the Grid are a fantasy are they?
Or perhaps you could drop a line to this nice Israeli chap and tell him he’s dreaming?
Furious Balancing: such anger at a fellow gardener. I force fed the permaculture idea into a suburban back yard and it works reasonably well. The problem with olives and asparagus grass – maybe there is something about SA? Like the residents?
Hi everyone, on a different topic, at my blog I’m continuing a little series of posts about the book War Without Mercy that I think I mentioned a week ago. I think it’s probably of interest still to some people here, though way too long.
When somebody is moaning about their “cost of living”, what exactly is so very very wrong with pointing out ways that they could economise?
Choosing to live in a smaller house that costs less to power/cool/heat and driving a more fuel-efficient car is just one way of economising on one’s “cost of living”. Should we just not ever remind people that downsizing is one very valid option?
I was out walking this afternoon, when I passed my local church – some stupid Protestant sect – and saw a sign on their noticeboard about atheism. I can’t remember exactly what it said, but it was something offensive about atheists not not having purpose in life, or some other crap. I looked around for a sharp object to scratch over the offending message, but I could only find a stone, so I scratched away over the message. I was sorely tempted to throw that stone through one of their precious stained glass windows, but then I saw a piece of dogshit nearby, and at the risk of faecal contamination, I picked it up and smeared it all over the sign. Message sent. My hand smelt like crap afterwards, but at least it smelt better than the crap they were peddling. Wait till they hold their church service this evening and see my handiwork. They’ll be getting a lesson in karma.
Tig Tog, yeah that right, for the glibertarians downsizing is a dirty word and is just something that’s left for the truly welfare-dependent poor – “you don’t need an education, or healthcare, or more than one pair of shoes, you bludgers off the public teat.” …
Well done silkworm on your malodorous but spontaneous and authentic response to such provocation.
silkworm and akn (in support)
You should both be ashamed of yourselves. silkworm’s action is both illegal and immoral – and an attack on the freedom of the church that silkworm vandalised to express its point of view.
PeterTB: illegal and immoral? Go Silkie!
akn, I’m not in the least bit angry, just passionate. My fellow gardeners are the aforementioned Vietnamese and Italians, my Mum, as well as my late grand-dad. I grow a lot of food in a very small space, so yeah, I know it’s possible. I just think there are more fruitful and less costly approaches to growing food than the permaculture plan. French biointensive methods are more useful for small spaces and you don’t have to plod your way through the holier than thou – saving the world delusions of the permaculture enthusiasts.
“”"”I was out walking this afternoon, when I passed my local church”"”"
It was never yours.
You just revealed your self as an intolerant gutless vandal.
I pity you. Get some help before you go to far.
PeterTB is right. It was illegal (dog shit should be placed in the nearest rubbish receptacle) and immoral (it was a waste of perfectly good dog shit).
Razor, your straw men @ 102 are so numerous, is this a deliberate tactical response to send your hordes pouring straight down the barrels of the machine guns and hope we run out of bullets?
Let me deal with en-masse;
Anecdote is not the singular of data. Furthermore, a movement can be “bankrolled” and no-one at all is getting paid. Just the necessary organisational monies, or services in-kind, need be provided for. Hardly any of the tea parties would have known that the Koch brothers were bankrolling their movement, even as they freely participated in it.
Irrelevant even if it is true (and I don’t accept that as the case anyway). The point is the commonality of modus operandi and rhetorical content between the Tea Party and the anti-carbon-price crowd.
That’s just pure nihilism. The difference between 2 degrees and 4 degrees is Human Civilisation. Second the “carbon wedge” approach to emission abatement seems to me to be able to deliver significant emission reductions.
This stuff is just the usual anti-scientific red herring that’s been rebutted again and again and again. Start here.
Also, its contradictory to the paragraph preceding it. If you believe “its too late” for abatement you must accept the basis of the science. Either that or you are doing the usual denialist trick and being disingenuous.
Right, so market-based mechanisms are complete duds but unscientific and economically disastrous direct government intervention a’la The Coalition’s “Direct Action Plan” is a big winner?
Explain why Tony Abbott thinks he knows better than Treasury. It’s now his policy to reject Treasury advice in favour of outside “consultants” he will bring in. He might not have the advice now, but when his plans were finally subject to Treasury scrutiny (an LNP policy) and found to be completely worthless – dishonest even – his response was to beat up on Treasury and insist his worthless auditor’s signature fig-leaf constituted seriously economic analysis.
No it isn’t. It’s the noise of a petty demagogue (i.e. Abbott) childishly demanding the results to go his way at his demand. A tot throwing a tantrum and tossing its toys out of its enclosure.
The policy that Gillard has introduced is the policy that’s been the ALPs since before 2007. Some of its detail is different to appease the Greens yes, but that detail is not (IMO) significantly different in type from the details that were negotiated with the LNP under their previous leader, before they pulled the reverse ferret and flicked the switch to Demagoguery.
can a mod please close my missing blockquote tag thanks!
[done ~tt]
Furious: fair enough then. I’ve a mate who grows most of his food hydro-style and, to my surprise, it is good tasting stuff. I mentioned Mollison as a ‘free thinker’ mainly because of his historical role in reinvigorating an interest in gardening. Should’ve added that other old commo Peter Cundall while I was at it.
Oh, pulease Silkworm (and akn ) that is just as juvenile as the denialist rabble you rail so strongly against. Are you really so devoid of insight as to not see the irony? That is seriously psychologically disturbed behaviour for a grown adult and to do it, let alone boast about it and be commended by others is weird.
On that note, i think that will be my last ever post a LP. I’m out.
It is impossible to have informed adult conversations in this context.
Thanks to all the decent minded people i’ve met here over the years.
PeterTB may indeed be correct in all ways in relation to defacing with de-dog-faeces. However, you have to grasp the antagonism inherent in the public argument that Silkie reponded to which is that atheists have meaningless (pointless?) lives. Quite inflammatory, so Silkies actions are legitimate critique, I reckon.
I’m not supporting the vandalism, although I fully understand the outrage. This, for instance, is the current poster outside the nearby Anglican church, where I sometimes go for social occasions because other members of my family are members of the congregation.
I have told them that I am not going to be attending any function at the church while that poster is on display, because the whole fear-God-because-he-can-cast-you-into-hell-but-he-loves-you-really-and-just-wants-you-to-obey-his-rules message is one that I find sociopathically offensive.
Would I fear God if I actually believed that the God of the Semitic religions was an accurate portrayal of an eternal interventionist deity who could punish me in the afterlife as promised in the sacred writings? You bet I would. I just wouldn’t believe that he was only threatening me and limiting my choices because he loved me – that’s abusive bullshit.
tt @ 108 As a Westie, I’ve had a lifetime of putting up with the arrogance of elites telling me and my kind how to live. TR’s comment @ 97 is not providing helpful lifestyle advice, since TR can’t know the circumstances of the people he is deriding. The comment is so loaded with ignorance (of what motivates and sustains the working class) and arrogance that I felt that the only appropriate response was a sarcastic one.
tt @ 122
Do you similarly resent atheistic attacks on the religious?
sublimecowgirl please reconsider abandoning ship as you are a voice of some considered reason and you would be sadly missed.
That’s right, because I’m obviously not one of the working classes? Because, why, exactly? I’ve worked my whole life. I grew up ‘poor’ by Australian standards. What would you know about that? You just want to heroicize yourself as a ‘Westie’, as if that gives all the deep insight you’ll ever need. Its just a bullshit cop-out.
The fact is, I’ve escaped my background and gone out and learnt enough to know that ‘poor’ by Australian standards is still royalty by plenty of others.
Not that I think we should aspire to those very low standards. But those standards ought to give us some perspective on our own, something you appear to completely lack.
$9.50 a week. For someone earning $100,000k+ with no kids! That is not ‘poor’ even by Australian standards. Anyone who says otherwise is a whinger, or a disingenuous demagogue looking to advance some other sort of agenda.
In other news, its seems that Samoa just beat the Wallabies. All point and laugh at the rugger-buggers (upper class twits that they tend to be)!
Sublimecowgirl writes of Silkworm’s outburst that it is “seriously psychologically disturbed behaviour for a grown adult”. Oh yeah? How about priests effing little kids? That’s ok, then, is it? Because whenever I even see a Church, that’s what I think of: organised paedophiles with delusional ideas, retirement plans and institutional support for relocating from parish to parish or to another country to avoid criminal liability. There are no churches, so far as I am aware, tha are free of this taint.
I can sympathise with PeterTB’s outrage at the attack on a church sign.
But I don’t agree that the church’s “freedom to express its point of view” has been restricted. The church is still free to broadcast its message (although it might need a Freedom Hose before normal transmission can resume).
However, PeterTB may wish to reflect on the inadequacy of invoking “freedom” in defence of the church’s message. Since Christian theology necessarily invokes a totalitarian world view in which souls have the “freedom” to either accept Jesus or burn in hell for eternity; PeterTB might be on more solid ground just invoking the moral fact that nobody should end up having their property smeared in dogshit, even if they are freely expressing a totalitarian and intolerant message.
akn@128
That comment is exactly why Sublimecowgirl left.
Don’t you see?
Well, yes, quite so. And also apropos my earlier remark @70…
What SC said at 120. I think you’ve just joined the crazy people we instinctively back slowly away from, Silkworm.
PeterTB at 124, what would the atheist equivalent of the ad Tigtog links to be, exactly?
So the left tell me how I think and vandalism is fine if it has a left bent.
I agree with Sublime Cowgirl.
(I have been posting here as “Terangeree”, but as spam robot has targeted me this weekend, I will now reveal my real name).
This forum used to be a place for rational comment and intelligent debate, but that has been destroyed over recent months.
And bragging about smearing faeces over someone else’s private property — and being congratulated for it — is really the nadir of intelligent comment.
On a side note, it is my birthday today. I think that removing myself from Larvatus Prodeo will make for a good self-given birthday gift, as I will no longer have to deal with the idiots who have combined to destroy what was a pleasant, illuminating and intelligent corner of the Interwebs.
さようなら。
Saw a man the other week with a T-shirt that read ” Science flies you to the moon, Religion flies you into buildings”
I thought it was a bit funny.
But would a Nun be justified in smearing shit on it?
No.
Some might think silkworm’s offensive, but at least he’s not a bore like Tiny Dancer, whose whole world seems to be viewed through a stale left/right division – like a broken record on and on he/she goes about the evils of ‘the left’ whatever the that represents in his mind.
Samoa beat the Wallabies? – must be the fault of the Left.
And well said Tyro Rex.
Just doing up some medals of valour for independent thinking to help akn, aka the warrior.
jumpnmcar @ 135,
No sky fairies up there
Jumpnmcar, that was my church growing up. I went to that Sunday school until I was 14. Then, as I learned about evolution and paleontology in high school, I started to have my doubts about what I was being taught in Sunday school. I went to the pastor who ran the church and put my concerns to him, and he told me that science was wrong about evolution, and that the dinosaurs never existed. I realized then and there that this guy was a fucking moron, and I turned my back on Christianity, and I’ve never looked back. About 5 years ago I ran across the pastor – he was about 80 years old – in the street and we said hello to each other, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him what I really thought about him and his demented religion.
My feelings of antipathy have deepened over the years, especially when I consider the damage that it is doing to children’s minds, especially regarding the teaching of science, and also, like Tigtog, over the fear they instill in kids about burning in hell forever. Then there’s the paedophile scandal in the Catholic church, though the Anglicans aren’t immune to that either.
I’ve thought about the next time I go walking, whether I should take a pair of gloves for picking up dogshit and smearing it over their notices, or whether I should take a magic marker and write over their decrepit rantings with clever one-liners of my own.
Last week I went to a humanist meeting, and one of the guys there was talking about the conflict between the militant atheists and the accommodationists. He said that the accommodationists were achieving more by working with liberal Christians on bringing the school chaplaincy funding issue to the High Court. He also told me that the Rationalists were into the more militant stuff. Good luck to the accommodationists, but the rationalists sound more like my kind of people.
I’m neither a Christian nor an atheist. In fact I’m none of the common labels and would have to write an essay to state my position. So I’ll skip that.
There is a lot that is offensive about what some Christians do and say. But the certainty and intolerance of many atheists offends me also. I do have friends who are Christians. I respect then utterly.
Silkworm appears to carry some emotional scars. Smearing dog shit on notice boards seems to me to be a personal indulgence which is extremely unlikely to contribute to any positive change.
Do you think though, that an acceptable advertisement campaign should be allowed to include a claim like:
And that’s without even beginning to consider the truthfulness of the claim.
There is also a very unusual connection between the NoW-scandal and the smearing of dog sh!t onto a church bulletin board. (Right, PeterTB?)
Up until the phone-hacking of private citizens– i.e. citizens who were not involved in making a living by being in public life, it was fair game in the UK to investigate, by almost whatever means, the lives of people in “public life.” This meant, listening to their private phone messages, following them around, investigating their private lives, etc. etc. The main justification for the acceptability of this behaviour by journalists, was that people in public life make their money by what the public think of them. It’s therefore in the public’s interest to be told about Hugh Grant’s relationship with a prostitute, for example.
A church is also a public institution (at least the main churches) and their bulletin board is in the public domain. As a member of the public, I have some interest in what they are saying about me. You note, it is not strictly a proposition that the church is making, “If God exists, then wouldn’t it be a shame to have your soul burn…” (A shame for who, btw.)
And in any case, giving the parents of a murdered girl false information, like NoW did, which led them to believe that their daughter was still alive, might not be so easy to repair, but hosing down a weather-proof bulletin board, if worse comes to worse, shouldn’t be too hard.
As an atheist, I’m not sure that I could be offended by anything that a Christian might say about atheists.
I mean: “atheists will burn in hell”. Oh, I’m really scared.
@135 That is perspective. Thank you.
@140″”"I’m neither a Christian nor an atheist. In fact I’m none of the common labels and would have to write an essay to state my position.”"”
Ditto
Overall, there is to much “categorisation “, pigeon holing if ya like.
I try not to do it ,because i don’t like it being done to me. ( I try)
Silkworm, at 14, my pastor (Lutheran) was telling our confirmation class that the bible was written by people with limited knowledge of science and that it was amazing that their account of creation in the bible was so close to what has actually occured, as a series.
akn, evil shits will use any means, including religion, to satisfy their urges. Most people are good, religious or not.
Incurious and Unread,
what about, “We can’t employ you, you’re not JHW!”
Still not scared? Probably not…There are more extremist views out there and some of them are scary. The real issue though, for me, is what to do when, as a parent, you’re faced with decisions related to how your child should be exposed to religious belief.
To come back to silkworm, you all realise, I hope, the irony of his/her position: S/he grew up in a religious community, which s/he decided was based on traditional belief and is unable to explain the world in which s/he lives, only to be confronted by:
‘If you don’t believe in God, your life is meaningless!’ I think that’s a blatant taunt. And I think that such an experience could be deeply personal.
TR @ 126 : $9.50 a week. For someone earning $100,000k+ with no kids! That is not ‘poor’ even by Australian standards.
cf TR @ 97 – just watching those goal posts shift.
“I turned my back on Christianity, and I’ve never looked back”
You do spend a lot of time looking in the rearview mirror though Silky.
sg @ 133: PeterTB at 124, what would the atheist equivalent of the ad Tigtog links to be, exactly?
Atheists have no equivalent. That’s the whole point. But I fail to see how an outreach that is not forced can be offensive to anyone.
Take it, or leave it – the choice is yours
Peter TB @ 146 – what goal post shift? You’re either making it up as you go or you don’t know the detail of the carbon pricing package. The $9.50/wk is what the average *uncompensated* person (i.e. 100k/yr income) will pay if they don’t change their energy consumption behaviour. Everyone else pays less.
No one on a truly poor income will pay a cent extra that’s not compensated in the tax system or their family benefits or pension. And they’re ahead if they can change their energy consumption patterns.
Someone on 100K/yr with one dependent child will pay about $543/yr extra and get $391/yr in compensation. If you don’t have kids, you’d get $3 but then again, $10/wk is not gonna send them to the wall either.
PeterTB at 124, what would the atheist equivalent of the ad Tigtog links to be, exactly?
@97 you issued a blanket condemnation of a class of people whose speculated aspirations and purchasing decisions you derided as inappropriate.
After I had called you on your arrogance, you @ 126 introduced income scenarios – unmentioned @97 – in order to obfuscate in a pathetic attempt to retain some dignity.
Tyrro Rex@97.
Please try to understand that I don’t object to paying the carbon tax, although it will cost me a good deal more than $9.50 per week and for the reasons I gave to Anthony I think it will be a futile attempt at carbon abatement.
However having it or paying for it won’t be a privilege. Having a clean environment, just like having clean water, is not a privilege, but something that you pay for and should pay for.
I & U said
It verges on the risible at times. I work opposite a fundamentalist christian and he says — so you must think me delusional, then?
Yes I do, I reply, but as long as your delusion doesn’t hurt anyone’s legitimate interests, I’m OK with it. All of us have, at best, partial insight into the nature of the universe.
He’s actually quite a nice guy, and we get on very well, despite our profoundly different outlooks. I’d be quite sad if he went to work some place else. He’s interested in ideas, and we’ve had many engaging conversations. He invited me to his wedding, and I attended.
And just for the record, I don’t endorse or excuse vandalising signs outside of churches. Part of the notion of free speech entails the view that one has no right to insists on not being offended by what others say. Provided one acts lawfully, one can be very loudly offended in response, but what Silky did was quite wrong.
That said, perhaps the degree of offence was so great that his/her judgement about what was fair dealing was impaired. It does seem from the remarks above that (s)he has some ongoing issues in relation to his/her personal experience of religion. Often, when people have unresolved issues of this type, they lash out, and not always in ways that most of us would find apt. Pain is rarely salutary, and Silky may well be continuing to experience it.
Joe @ 145 re silkworm. I recall sublime cowgirl describing herself as a ‘recovering Baptist’ so I think we can assume that she too grew up in a religious community that was ‘based on traditional belief’. My own background was similar: I could equally describe myself as a recovering Baptist if I chose to.
sublime cowgirl has made it clear that she finds silkworm’s actions unacceptable, and I can only agree with her. All three of us share similar upbringings, yet only one of us feels compelled to respond so strongly to what is unarguably a thoughtless and insensitive provocation. Perhaps there really is something in that protestant/catholic divide that eludes sc and myself.
Its clear that silkworm has major issues with the church (in its broadest sense), and in one sense I’m sympathetic to that. Nonetheless, I find silkworm’s vehemence so confronting and so mismeasured that my instinct is to defend that which I have rejected. And that’s a very strange space to inhabit.
I’m with Brian: it’s all about respect and tolerance, and that is a two-way street.
Petertb, it might help if you could quote accurately – you are mixing up your threads. I did not issue a blanket condemnation, then introduce “income” – the entire debate has been in the context of who is uncompensated for the carbon pricing scheme. Sorry if you can’t cope with context, but do try to keep up.
Fran, hugs for your post.
‘what Silky did was quite wrong’ FULL STOP.
And so far there has been no apology and restitution. So first things first. The correct response is to tell Silkworm to go clean it up, or if this has been done already by some other INNOCENT person, make a small donation (but enough so it hurts) and pledge to not do it or similar again!
This behavior is not tolerable.
As people know I am a communist, so I am a Dialectical Materialist and thus an atheist. But to be anywhere that is left of centre one has to first be a democrat and I am a revolutionary democrat. I take freedom of speech very seriously and have had attacks on mine often enough and usually from the pseudo-left.
Only after the offence has been dealt with ought mitigating explanations of why the assault on all our freedoms be heard.
The essential issue has not been dealt with yet! This site as a whole ought to deal with it.
We should all speak clearly; go clean it up!
Issues of deepening democracy are no doubt going to be an ongoing theme and there must be a sound foundation for any site to be thought of as left of centre.
the guardian reports “Breaking news: LATEST: Police investigating the phone-hacking scandal have arrested a 43-year-old woman. It is understood to be Rebekah Brooks. More details soon …”
Yep, Brooks arrested. About time. http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2011/jul/17/phone-hacking-live-blog#block-10
What Fran said @ 153 & 154.
patrickm – much as I agree with aspects of your sentiment, I do believe that ultimately it is a matter for silkworm and his/her conscience. We are not privy to a full account of silkworm’s encounters with religious institutions: his/her visceral responses suggest something beyond mere ideological difference.
I’d much rather silkworm come to his/her own decision about this. While I think it is appropriate that you & I to express our disapproval of silkworm’s actions, I also believe we should trust silkworm to form his/her own opinion about our response.
Silkworm – you wimp. Why don’t you strap on a vest of semtex and just walk right into the congregation and let them find out what you really mean.
Better still – the IRA did this really cool thing in Northern Ireland where they got a sewarage tanker and filled it full of petrol and then drove up to a British Army OP and turned on the pumps and lit it – now that’s really getting your poitn across.
Of course you could then go for the old hat of Death by Boeing/Airbus.
I mean – you can decide which laws apply to you and which don’t.
I don’t have anything much to add to my previous comments. And I’ll bite…
A small anecdote: good friends of mine used to routinely vandalise the cigarette advertising on a road-by sign, back in the early 90s, when cigarette advertising was an issue. I think that religion is arguably at least as dangerous for your health as smoking cigarettes is and also not real healthy for the people around you.
This is not a freedom of speech issue, as far as I am concerned. Is it fair to say to someone, “If you do not believe in a proposition, for which there is no objective evidence, your life is meaningless.” I want to just draw your attention to the instrumentalisation of a meaningless life! What should we do with a meaningless life?
Perhaps, though, we should be so self-confident as to say, I don’t care what you say– even though you say that my life is meaningless. But at this stage there is no longer a basis for communication.
And what is it that’s so offending? The sh!t or the symbol of sh!t? If it’s only the sh!t, that can be washed off with a hose. Convincing someone who has been told from a young age that using a condom doesn’t mean you’re going to suffer for eternity, may not be so easy to remedy.
It is not possible to decide which laws apply to one, but it is possible to decide about which laws one respects!
Kept in proportion this is a minor crime, which would not warrant prosecution. How many children have done something similar? Why are people really upset about this?
One day taunts like that might get you hurt, OBR. FWIW I agree with Feral Abacus at 161. I think it’s particularly appropriate to express disapproval in light of Akn’s approval, but there’s a difference between disapproval and condemnation.
Joe
I suppose I can see where your analogy is going with cigarette advertising, but I don’t think it is comparable.
Firstly, the cigarette billboard is an exercise in commercial promotion rather than an expression of commercial interest.
Secondly, the claim they are making was at the time, selling a dangerously lethal poison. One can recover from religion, but there’s no evidence that one can ever recover completely from smoking. Problematising the promotion was a legitimate alternative POV, not comparable to denying free expression of opinion to religionists
How about instead I make a donation to the church of your choice? Who should I make the cheque out to, and how much would you suggest?
Joe @ 163 said
Whereas there is an abundance of epidemiological evidence that smoking is a major health risk for smokers and those around them, I’m not aware of any epidemiological evidence of measureable health risks associated with religious persuasion.
Joe, it may well be your opinion that “religion is arguably at least as dangerous for your health as smoking cigarettes”, but I can’t say I share an ex-smoker’s anxiety re my risk profile.
That sounds like quite an extreme action compared to my little act which will cost them basically nothing to clean up, but if that’s what you recommend, well then, OK. I’ll do it.
OMG, I think we’re all tangled up.
Frstly, I don’t think that the dangers of religious thinking should be relativised. I’m a big fan of Christoper Hitchens.
Secondly, this has nothing to do with free speech, as far as I’m concerned. Nothing.
Fourth, this is, as a crime, more of a nuisance than something to start getting concerned about.
Five, a case can be made that this is politically unacceptable behaviour, but that has not been made by anyone yet.
FA,
I like your comments a lot. And there may be no epidemiological evidence to suggest that religion is bad for your health. In fact, I have only ever seen evidence to the contrary. The same can also be said for racial discrimination.
There are good cultural and political reasons for seeking to remove religion from society. Cast your eye over history…
Thirdly, I lost count
Sixthly, I’m a pretentious fool!!
I did that to some of my players in a D&D RPG once. The resulting scramble, panic and slaughter was quite entertaining. Science-fantasy! OBR, you and I are clearly masters at it!
Brooks has been arrested by officers from both investigations (blah-ting and blahblah-veteen; sounds like a suede song, that one). This means she’s going to be charged with bribery. That presumably opens up the US authorities to hit Murdoch with the foreign corrupt practices act.
I think Murdoch should be arrested on espionage charges. And, given his citizenship history, forced to live on vegemite-on-toast in the lockup. The NoTW tells me that he’ll get a soft life in prison, so he’s got nothing to worry about.
@173 – I’ve seen teh security footage of it and heard the Squad Commander interviewed – they went into their bathroom and turned on the showers to survive.
I was raised as a Methodist, hence Uniting Church, we left the UC when we were preached to about Nookenbah and became Anglicans. I am now an Atheist and while I enjoy reading Dawkins and Hitchens take to religion with a stick and acknowledge the terrible crimes committed in the distant past and against children more recently, however the great Monethiestic faiths have achieved so much good also and continue to do so. As an aside, hopefully Islam can go through some form of reformation, as Christianity did, very soon that culls the extremists and allows it to adpat to modern notions of human rights.
There are plenty of legal ways to make effective protests. Graffitti and vandalism really get my goat up. If I was the Judge on the case of the pricks who graffitid the Sydney Opera House I would have thrown the book at them. My post above was basically another way of asking where the line gets drawn.
You must be kidding. You only have to look at the deaths associated with religious banning of contraception and safe abortion in countries where “traditional” religion holds sway. As we speak reproductive rights are also being stripped from women in the US, again, due to fundamentalist religion. I would also point to the ongoing problem of suicide due to the bullying and persecution of gay. lesbian, trans and other marginalised people (Jesus hates gays, people!) as well people attacking and murdering them – where the most virulent examples are also in the US, but Australia is catching up.
Religion is very harmful to your health if you’r not male and straight.
#re122′s comment, that is a pretty rash statement from an organisation once reckoned as relatively progressive within society, but apparently Sydney has gone very
“right” in the North Shore sorts of places.
But someone like Rowan Williams is a better indication of the more useful strand in Anglicanism. He’s more an Erasmus type, ripe and thoughtful, than a firebrand like Luther (or Jensen, on some issues).
You suppose the Anglicans are a bit like the ALP. They have the right pulling in one direction and the left pulling in the other, the two groups no longer see the same thing or understand what perturbs the other. Its another example of the end of the department-store era and fragmentation.
Why are people really upset about this?
I think it’s likely that someone else’s granny or grandad will cop the job of cleaning up the mess.
Delightful
Joe: Secondly, this has nothing to do with free speech, as far as I’m concerned. Nothing.
This has everything to do with free speech. If people aren’t free to express their opinions in a legal manner through signs on their own property, things have come to a sorry pass.
Would you be comfortable with people vandalising “Collingwood” or “Vote Green” bumper stickers for instance?
But PeterTB, don’t these signs constitute a threat, rather than just free speech? What if I put up a sign saying “give up god or suffer the terrible consequences” with a picture of a target on a priest?
Speaking as someone who got a generous helping of Bertrand Russell and Philip Adams on matters religious in my late teens, I can’t see any merit in silky’s actions. When I was at La Trobe University in the late 1970s and ealy 1980s, I much preferred to engage in long, intelligent good-natured arguments with the Christian Union (whose members brought inexhaustible reserves of patience and courtesy to such conversations), bring satirical wit and irony to bear against the Grand Inquisitor types (or whatever denomination) and put aside philosophical differences with the Student Christian Movement in order to cooperate with them in rooting out a particularly nasty and manipulative fundy cult that infested the place in 1982-83.
What if the sign had read, “Jews have no reason to live without Jesus”? What would you do?
@silkworm, I can understand you having the impulse. I think you were wrong to give in to it.
“What if the sign had read, “Jews have no reason to live without Jesus”? What would you do?”
Well, it made me laugh.
For something completely different – over at Australian Policy Online, someone described as a lecturer in politics writes:
“If it were up to Gillard and Conroy they would introduce Internet filter legislation today. But the reality of the new political paradigm is that the Labor Party’s legislative agenda will now be set by the Greens until the next federal election.
The Gillard government is not going to want to go to the polls early on the back of a double dissolution – because they know that they will lose office and likely be in opposition for at least two terms – so they will ideally only introduce legislation that they know , or think they know, the Greens will back. To do otherwise – and introduce legislation that is going to be defeated would only make Labor seem even more defeated than they currently are.”
The article is headed : “With the Greens now in control of the Australian Senate is the Gillard government’s plans for Internet censorship dead asks Jo Coghlan. ”
A lecturer in politics thinks the Greens are in control of the Senate ???
Jo Coghlan should be made to do the research that would show how many times in the past the ALP and Libs had voted together, against the Greens.
My dogshit message made me laugh.
Silkworm, there are social norms. It is not acceptable to urinate or expectorate on the street. Many of us are not happy about dogs defecating in public places and I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a regulation where you live to that effect – or at least against leaving it there.
I would suggest from the reaction that you breached a social norm. It is your right to do so, if you are willing to wear the opprobrium, but I for one am not happy about you skiting about it on our blog.
Silkworm – I know that you perceive the sign as a form of violence towards you, but why did you respond with physical violence?
And is physical violence likely to make things worse, as in harden feelings all ’round?
Christians and other moralizers here will be pleased to learn that the church has removed the offending dogshit from their noticeboard and that the offending anti-atheist notice still remains.
Silkworm you had a reasonable chance to think about this and yet you obviously still think you have the right to not be ‘offended’ by this sign and were reasonable in your actions. You ought to donate a fifty to that church on the spot and apologise. You ought to think hard about what has been said to you by fellow atheists like me. I am not moralising but seeking for others what I want for me and you. You have the mindset of the typical thug and people here will treat you accordingly. You have no requirement for the first four letters of your nic.
For others there is another case of thug rightwing behavior that is current and requires denouncing. We have all seen that Green Peace has destroyed the work of agricultural scientists and it ought to be denounced for what it is. But the thing is this pseudo-leftist conduct will once more be identified as reactionary conduct from the left. Who will be first cab off the rank to reject this conduct? How ought Green Peace be dealt with for doing this? A promise not to do it again and a $50 would not fix this! So, what is to be done as a proper response from anyone concerned with democracy and wanting to defend rationality and science?
it would have been better if you had cleaned off the dogshit yourself and left them with a note telling them how offensive the notice on their noticeboard is to you and the reasons why you feel as you do.
It would have given them something to learn from and think about and perhaps change their attitudes for the better.
I cannot see why you get so worked up about religion. When I came to the same athiestic realisation as you when I was sixteen I went through some months of pain as I realised what a wrench this would be from the indoctrination I had received, and would continue to receive through the remaining two years of my secondary education, but then I moved on and got on with my life.
sg: What if I put up a sign saying “give up god or suffer the terrible consequences” with a picture of a target on a priest?
Probably nothing, even though that would very nearly be a real threat. Look what happened when Sarah Palin put cross hairs over a map!
This is not to be compared with a church showing a signing saying “something offensive about atheists not not having purpose in life, or some other crap” – which is no kind of threat at all.
Agreed – its moral repugnance is offensive, but it’s not a threat. It may (probably does) indicate an underlying half-baked intolerance that is worth low-level monitoring in case it erupts into something more actively persecutory, but at the moment it is not a credible threat.
patrickm, I don’t know if you’ve been over at JQ’s and that’s aimed at me.
If so, my thoughts on the Greenpeace action are over there. As far as comparisons go it was planned as part of a reasoned campaign (though you may disagree with the rationale) and by whippersnipping the crop they avoided any damage beyond the absolute minimum to achieve their aim.
Silkworm’s obfuscation of the offending message may have been justifiable (I still think not for words alone but I’m not silkworm) but smearing the dogshit was a step beyond. It may be very bourgeois of me but this leaves me more worried for silkworm than the church who’ll probably see it as a badge of honour.
And apologies silkworm for any condescension in this, I’ve never met you (AFAIK) so could be completely wrong about you.
paul what is JQ’s ?
John Quiggin
Patrickm, possibly Jehovah’s Witnesses (commonly known as the Jay Dubs), W being next to Q on the keyboard . But I suspect he is referring to John Quiggin’s website.
More specifically Quiggin’s post on Greenpeace whippersnipping a CSIRO wheat plot because it involved genetic manipulation, albeit only of wheat genes.
I’d have to say I totally agree with Quiggin on this one. They had planned animal and human trials to check any adverse health outcomes.
petertb, tigtog linked to a poster from a church saying “believe in god or go to hell.” This is a threat, no? It’s not a threat I believe in, but the institution lodging the threat thinks it’s serious so shouldn’t I be offended by that? Silkworm responded to a different type of (also extremely offensive) poster that accuses me of being valueless. Not pretty. What if atheists put up a poster saying “christians fuck children, they have no moral compass,” how long would it last? In fact, most of recent history consists of the church and/or state banning anything which questions its morals – don’t you think you should give it a few more years before you start demanding the church be given the same benefit of the doubt as silkworm?
Brian, I don’t know how many times this has to be said, but most anti-GM crop campaigners are much more worried about the environmental consequences than the health ones. And by their nature the environmental consequences are much harder to test. Do you think it’s worth the risk of a terminator gene jumping species? What if lantana becomes “roundup ready”?
I’ve been observing some Round-up resistant native grasses lately. The farmer who has been doing some very vigilant fence-line spraying, I suspect in protest at the conservation work I’ve been doing on the roadside, has inadvertently created a monster! mwahahaha!
Would glyphosate be useful on lantana? I doubt it. None the less there are issues with round-up ready crops, not so much from the risk of genetic transfer – it is more that a singular reliance on glyphosate will inevitably lead to herbicide resistance of other weeds in the field – super-weeds that will spread and create management nightmares in our agricultural landscapes – perhaps not such a huge issue in conservation as glyphosate is not the most useful herbicide in bushland situations. Regardless, I doubt that the trial the CSIRO were doing had anything to do with herbicide resistance, probably more likely to be drought tolerance, or even something to do with CO2…?
I also agree with Quiggin. Greenspeace is a very frustrating organisation, it’s okay for them to do there little operations by stealth, but as a conservationist who comes face to face with the public quite a lot, I hate getting tarred with the same brush. Just lately it has been feeling like the bad old days with people ranting and raving at me, presumably for just looking like a nature-nerd – there is a lot of angst in the community at the moment and I think the timing of this attack was appalling and totally counter-productive.
As the person who apparently added fuel to this fire by commending silkie’s spontaneous response to churchy condemnation of atheists I’d now add that none of the moralizing against silkworm’s actions is persuasive to me. From my point of view, as a victim of CSA, the churches ought to feel lucky that they aren’t ashes and ruins. There is no moral authority in religion until religion cleans out its sewers of hypocrisy which, I suggest, is an impossible task when the foundational beliefs are delusion. Dogshit smeared on a sign? That ain’t nothin’ compared to what some churches deserve. I know that polite company doesn’t like to talk about such things but that is merely denialism. Same old, same old.
sg and fb, there is a specific poison for lantana, but Roundup knocks it fine. For years I’ve cut lantana plants off at the base with a chainsaw, swabbed the cut with neat Roundup and had good success.
The CSIRO experiment had to do with increasing fibre, slowing down the digestion of carbohydrates to improve nutrition, and counter diabetes and bowel disease. AFAIK it had nothing to do with Round-up at all.
Here’s Lateline, The Conversation, Greenpeace Q&A and CSIRO trial information.
Tonight I returned to the scene of the crime to perpetrate my second attack. When I got there I noticed that they’d changed the sign. It wasn’t as offensive, only comparing atheists to thieves. Still, I wasn’t going to let my criminal efforts go to waste. I pasted a small note saying “Atheists are OK. PS Jesus never existed.” OK, maybe that last bit about Jesus was over the top, but what does a criminal care? My stuck on note may be a little harder to get off than dogshit, but at least it is more hygienic. I am comfortable with this level of property violence.
Well, it’s good to see that the conversation continues, silkworm
(It would be interesting to analyse this more along the lines of symbols and property violence!)
akn – more denialism? Put on some more medals
Problems with acknowledging that denialism is an extremely common rhetorical technique, TD?
- Denialism Blog
Brian, I don’t think ’roundup ready’ crops would change things in regard to the efficacy of direct application methods [we use cut and paint on blackberry @ 50:50 around native plants we need to be particularly careful with, but my main use of glyphosate is stem injection of pine and olive trees]. It’s spray applications where there is cause for concern. The labour input required for direct application methods is a heads up as why we need to be so cautious about in field glyphosate resistance, there are solutions to the problem it poses, but ALL of them are expensive.
I think there are plenty of reasons for concern with round-up ready GMOs, but the reasons relate mostly to soil health; lower nutrition rates in crops grown where glyphosate has been in long-term use; significantly increased cost inputs for farmers/land managers should glyphosate resistance occur.
Interestingly, the general belief that glyphosate is a ‘safe’ herbicide has had some rather unfortunate flow on effects. For example when shopping for public liability insurance you will find non-specialised insurers will quote you a few hundred dollars if you are a small operator only using glyphosate; if you use more selective herbicides the cost can go into the thousands – it makes no sense at all. Licensing for spray contractors is similar – glyphosate is treated like it is low risk. I think this rather stupid reality increases the risks of an overuse of glyphosate, particularly with roadside and fenceline spraying, and it is here where we are already seeing glyphosate resistance occurring.
Brian, it’s a general point, not specific to roundup. The potential environmental consequences of unrestricted release of these GMO crops are not only not known but are not being considered by the research organizations. But when environmentalists criticize these crops (let alone take direct action), the response of science groups is inevitably focused entirely on how they’re very careful about the health consequences.
Why is it, do you think, that the advocates of GM crops don’t want to discuss the obvious environmental implications of releasing these genes into the wild?
Also, as I pointed out on Quiggin’s blog, vandalism has a long and esteemed history in activism. Most particularly, it was through violence and vandalism – specifically, wanton destruction of commercial properties, hunger strikes and resisting arrest – that women got the vote. Women died during a violent confrontation with the state that lasted several years, and at the end of it they got the vote.
Also, most of the basic improvements in animal welfare in labs stem from one ALF action that was clearly illegal, as do the majority of welfare improvements in modern farming – especially those to do with chickens.
So decrying vandalism per se is not really a particularly useful contribution to a debate.
sg – “But when environmentalists criticize these crops (let alone take direct action), the response of science groups is inevitably focused entirely on how they’re very careful about the health consequences. ”
Perhaps that’s because the environmental health consequences are already known….? There are myriad invasive pasture/cropping grasses already in the environment, there are probably dozens awaiting import…..that is a real and present risk to the environment that gets little attention compared to GMOs.
sg, Brian has already said that the CSIRO trial involved the manipulation of wheat genes within wheat. When you talk about genetic transfer to Lantana, it’s hard to take you seriously. If you are going to argue against GMOs all power to you, I’m not in favour of them either, but you do this issue a disservice by not availing yourself of some basic information.
There are heaps of problems relating to GM. The American authorities don’t insist on human trials, for example, because they would make the development costs too expensive. Then GM proponents have the cheek to say that no Americans have died because of GM when they don’t even label foods containing GM. Frankly, they wouldn’t know.
Nevertheless, I heard the CSIRO wheat trial explained on Bush Telegraph, and it seemed to tick all the boxes.
fb, thanks for the information about the effect of glyphosate on soil quality, which I didn’t know. Also I’ll try a 50:50 mix.
Can I make clear that in most cases I oppose GM. From earlier posts, on my recall, Quiggin favours it.
@193 – ” Look what happened when Sarah Palin put cross hairs over a map!” – Oh FFS what a load of complete bollocks.
Brian said:
As a frequent visitor there, it would be more accurate to say that Quiggin does not advocate blanket opposition to GM, and favours evidence to establish the usefulness of any GM innovation. That would include trials.
I share this view. Some GM propositions would not meet adequate tests of utility, or pose unacceptably high risks for the benefit that was plausible. In some cases, they might exaggerate inequities or reduce consumer choice. In others, these issues might be moot.
It’s a case by case thing, IMO.
Compare and contrast – anti-GM campaigners rejection of the science supporting GM Crops (based on scientific method experiments testing hypothesis) versus their blind acceptance of the science of Climate change (which is not based on scientific method).
Brian, it depends on soil types. Glyphosate is very problematic in sandy soils, with low organic content, as it requires biological activity to break it down. Because it is somewhat residual in such circumstances it can have an affect on nutrient uptake in crops.
Thanks, fb.
Fran, that’s probably accurate generally speaking, but my recall is that Quiggin tended to dismiss concerns over adverse health effects from ingesting GM foods, whereas I don’t.
I talked about this to a mammalian toxicologist I know. I’d have to say he wasn’t unduly concerned and pointed out that there were significant individual differences in allergic reactions to all sorts of foods, which is where he saw the main effect.
Brian
I can’t recall Quiggin dismissing concerns over foods (I’m not saying he hasn’t — I just can’t recall reading him doing this) and I imagine that if there were sound reasons for suspecting a problem, he’d not dismiss them. His complaint was against essentially cultural objections to GM (i.e those not founded in some evidence from good science)
I’m rather more troubled by the marketing/IP matters, their effect on equity and choice etc. I hate the idea that a company such as Monstanto could contaminate an organic crop and destroy the business through reputational loss, demurrage and IP infringement damages — as seems to have happened in a number of places.
That’s the area I’d especially like the legal system to deal with.
{Monsanto}
Well – I’ll be mighty pissed if all my weeds aren’t wilting in a day or so after Sunday’s effort.
It’s actually bog standard for people engaged in denier behaviour regarding one particular scientific consensus (momentarily accepting for the sake of the argument that this legitimately applies to the anti-GM campaigners) to generally accept most other scientific consensuses. Cherrypicking is one of the most common denialist tactics, whether one is engaged in denying Creationism/Intelligent Design, Global Warming denialism, Holocaust denial, HIV/AIDS denialism, 9/11 conspiracies, Tobacco Carcinogenecity denialism, anti-vaccination/mercury autism denialism, anti-animal testing/animal rights extremist denialism or some other sort of denialism.
Kinda like how you just cherrypicked an arguably less-rigorous scientific technique of computer modelling while disregarding all the other accumulated scientific data regarding climate change which has been gathered in full accordance with the scientific method.
A few weeks back we had a thread on what we’d like banned. As I’ve said a number of times, I am in general, against banning stuff. Unless the thing in question really does subvert the legitimate rioghts of someone, and banning is the least costly (to freedom of the community) of the plausible ways to mitigate the wrong, I’m against it.
That’s not quite the same thing as saying there isn’t a lot of stuff that probably ought not to exist in a world measurably more rational than the one we inhabit (but which you probably can’t stop without banning it). The problem is that while each of us has things we fancy we could do without, in most cases, a significant minority would feel worse off. I think I might have found an exception below however.
The other day I was visiting a friend whose son had got a job delivering junk mail. Inevitably, she was helping him with collation prior to delivery, and, much against my better judgement, since we were chatting, I pitched in.
The pile was impressive and not all of it was cheap. Included was a glossy booklet with high quality photography that would be hard to produce for less than $3 per booklet. There were 702 of them. In a piece of junk mail I received recently, a delightfully produced talking card from Star City Casino invited me to take advantage of some offer. Again, this must have cost at least $3.
I wondered who would object if nobody had thought of producing junk mail. Very few. Imagine that you had seen your last piece of unsolicited nonsense in your letterbox. How distressing would that be? Not very distressing I’m guessing.
I suppose my friend’s son would have to find a different job, but it surely wouldn’t be hard for him to be doing something marginally more useful. In the end, we all pay for junk mail one way or another. We’d be better off all paying for kids like my friend’s son to work tending bushland or visiting chronically sick people in hospitals or similar. The Scope 3 emissions would be smaller and of course the energy and resource use would be smaller too or at worst, better applied. I’m told that large swathes of what he delivers goes straight into bins, and it is common to see the letter boxes of flats spilling their contents onto the areas in front of the entries or piled on top.
I gather that this is almost all produced locally so it would be our GHG/resource footprint from beginning to end.
Maybe we could have a ban on unsolicited/unaddressed mail, suspended only in the 45 days. Everyone producing the material would have to be accredited and be able to produce lists of addressees to match the material they were going to distribute. An accreditation number would appear on each piece of literature. Producers would have to pass random audits and failure could cost the producer the right to produce. People distributing could be fined for putting unaddressed or unaccredited material in boxes, unless they could show good reason for thinking that the resident in question had wanted it.
I imagine that 95% of people would support that.
More broadly though — are there other things we could lose without cost. I recall driving past car dealerships with giant inflatable plastic hominids out the front. I can’t begin to imagine how the lot of any putative car purchaser is improved by such nonsense. Julia Gillard was right to ask that people don’t write crap, but perhaps she should have added — don’t produce crap either.
silkworm, good to see you engaging in dialogue
furious balancing:
are you serious? This problem receives huge attention in Australia.
Once again I note people talking about the health and environmental health aspects of GM crops. This is not Greenpeace’s concern, to the best of my knowledge – they’re concerned about the biodiversity and other environmental consequences (e.g. oversue of roundup). To my mind the health issues aren’t that important – these are easily tested, assuming companies try – whereas the environmental issues are much more complex and very hard for GMO advocates to say they have adequately safeguarded against.
And btw, furious balancing, in talking about e.g. Lantana I’m referring to the general outline of the problem as presented by the opponents of GMOs, I’m not trying to suggest that in this case this wheat will transfer its properties to lantana. Roundup-ready crops are just the most classic example of a GMO that has attracted a lot of attention, so an easy example to use.
Incidentally, another aspect of the GMO debate that is sorely overlooked is the political-economic problems that GMO advocates claim they’re solving. In this case, for example, we have CSIRO developing a wheat crop with a lower energy absorption rate, according to Brian. This at a time when a billion people don’t have enough to eat and a million Australians are too fat. Both of these problems are problems of the global inequality in wealth and trade and structural problems in our societies. They have nothing to do with the energy content of wheat. WTF is the CSIRO doing developing a crop that with a lower rate of digestion of carbohydrates at a time when the world is becoming increasingly crowded and available agricultural land is diminishing? To solve a problem (diabetes and obesity) that has nothing to do with the biological properties of wheat and everything to do with western lifestyles.
GMO advocates do this all the time, claiming to have presented a solution to a world food problem that has nothing to do with biology, and simultaneously presenting a product (like terminator-gene crops) that increases the big agribusinesses’ stranglehold on poor producers. We shouldn’t be getting tricked into a debate about the science and the “health consequences” when the issue is fundamentally one of inequality and the structure of the international economy.
Sg it was more fibre and a slower rate of digestion, not a lower rate.
Also If you’d followed the Greenpeace link I gave above, you’d know that Greenpeace are indeed concerned about adverse health effects.
Fran, the Quiggin post I recall goes back a couple of years before you started commenting here. His blog goes back to 2002. He could have said something more recently that I missed.
Coincidentally, there was a segment on the topic on Bush Telegraph today. Dr Hungerford was considerably more anti-GM than the program notes indicate. The concern was about the effects of GM foods on gut bacteria, where the adverse effects are not likely to show up in the short term.
Silky has a purpose in life — ensuring that no dog turd goes to waste.
sg – “are you serious? This problem receives huge attention in Australia.”
Yes, I’m serious, not nearly enough attention is paid to the issue. I deal with natural resource land managers on a daily basis and I can assure you that the impacts of pasture grasses on native ecosystems are a low priority. I think there are two grasses on the weeds of national significance list and I think both are garden escapees.
sg – “Once again I note people talking about the health and environmental health aspects of GM crops. This is not Greenpeace’s concern, to the best of my knowledge – they’re concerned about the biodiversity and other environmental consequences (e.g. oversue of roundup).”
Hang-on…. so your distinguishing between ‘environmental health’ and impacts on biodiversity here..? Why? For the record, I work in biodiversity management – I’ve talked about the practical implications of glyphosate use, they exist already – again, why the focus on GMOs rather than the real and present risks?
furious balancing, I thought you were above the “why are you focusing on A instead of B?” approach to politics? It’s not as if GMOs are Greenpeace’s only environmental concern.
Nope, in the case of impacts on biodiversity, my point is rather that B poses no greater threat than A, where A already exists and is being managed. That management requires partnerships between agricultural and environmental land managers, Greenpeaces vigilantism in this particular matter is, in my opinion, counter-productive.
Whether it’s counter-productive is a completely different issue. And did you not imply above that the main way to prevent A is to stop pest species being introduced? If GMOs are a potential pest species, what should we then be doing?
Brian, what do you think are the consequences of building a new type of wheat with a slower rate of carbohydrate digestion and higher fibre? Lower overall energy absorption, obviously. What other kind of product would you want to combat diabetes and obesity?
GMOs are being treated by their advocates as technological solutions to a problem that will persist no matter what technologies we introduce. It doesn’t matter how efficient or perfect your wheat crop is, if a billion people are too poor to buy it. And it doesn’t matter how much more slowly carbohydrates are absorbed if westerners continue to live a lifestyle based on sugar, sedentarism and cars. GMOs are not the solution to starvation or obesity.
sg – “Whether it’s counter-productive is a completely different issue.”
It’s not a completely different issue at all – it was actually one of Quiggin’s original points, which I agreed with way back @201:
JQ: “This kind of criminal vandalism, in the “right” cause, appeals to the juvenile instincts that nearly all of us retain to some extent, but it has repeatedly proved disastrous for the left, and the environmental movement. ”
sg -”And did you not imply above that the main way to prevent A is to stop pest species being introduced? If GMOs are a potential pest species, what should we then be doing?”
We should be assessing each case on its merits, not conflating all GMO research with scary terminator seeds, and roundup ready crops, as you have done.
For example I’d be much more concerned about importing a perennial pasture grass from Southern Africa than I would be about a newly developed strain of domesticated wheat.
Ootz @66
“In Chinese the word crisis is composed of two characters. One represents danger, and the other represents opportunity.”
Urban myth. danger + opportunity ≠ crisis. Read this.
Oops, you caught me out rumrebellious! I do a bit of brush calligraphy and am aware of what you are saying. It just sounds a bit pompous if I write “One of Ootz’s dictum says ….” and ‘the glass half empty/full’ thing did not work well in that context. Is there any equivalent proverb or such that makes the same point?
On another tangent, while we Australiars are self-absorbed by our political theater, there is serious trouble brewing elsewere it seems. Not sure what to make of this CIA Veteran Robert Baer Predicting September Israel-Iran War . It certainly warrants closer analysis as it would certainly have massive global repercussions to say the least.
Cravenly, the Gillard government seeks to confiscate David Hicks’ royalties from his memoir.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-21/commonwealth-moves-on-hicks-royalties/2803810?section=entertainment
Hicks was railroaded by a “Military Commission”, a kangaroo court instituted by the Bush clique.
Why is the Gillard government lending credence to this manifest parody of justice?
Peter Garrett just said it was a ” carbon tax” on the ABC.
Just so ya know.