To the Honourable Chris Hayes,
You are on the wrong side of the debate on equal marriage rights. You’re also on the wrong side of society (in the minority who disagree with gay marriage). You will judged in future to be in the same class as those in the past arguing that Aboriginals remain classified as fauna and women not receive the vote as they have duties in the kitchen to attend to. Do you really want to be in that category of ignorant human beings publicly voicing their support for discrimination.

Make no mistake: this law will change like race and gender inequality was thrown out in the past – you are just making a fool out of yourself in the meantime. I would have thought someone with your background in workplace relations and the like would be well aware of the discrimination laws and how they can be directly and indirectly unfair.

I wonder if you would be so quick to announce you support inequality if you substituted race for someone’s sexuality. The SMH quoted you as saying “‘You do believe in certain things. I can’t apologise for my beliefs,”
(from http://www.smh.com.au/national/we-wont-vote-for-gay-marriage-even-if-party-changes-its-position-say-labor-right-mps-20111130-1o766.html )

You do believe in certain things: but you’re like a racist boasting about how you think black people shouldn’t be allowed to marry outside their race. It’s nothing to be proud of and you should be apologising for your poor judgement.

No one picks their sexuality Mr Hayes, but they do pick whether to be an ignorant, prejudiced homophobic fool.

Do you even know anyone who is gay? Chances are with your views they have kept it a private matter around you if you’ve made your views known in the past. If you weren’t espousing such a small minded view you might find that gay people are just like straight people. Just like when racists actually get around to getting to know people of a different skin colour they find that they were just ignorant in the extreme: you are no different to the racist who has never bothered to take the time to know a person of different skin colour.

As a heterosexual with some sense of fairness I’m not about to dictate that someone else should have special discrimination against them because of their sexuality.It actually makes me cringe when I attend weddings and they get to the part “Australian law defines marriage as between a man and a woman” because I think it is absolutely unnecessary.
Quite how someone else’s marriage affects you is beyond me or perhaps you are worried you’ll have no more excuses and will promptly find yourself married to another male if this bit of discriminatory legislation is fixed?

Anyhow, I’d urge you to reconsider the type of view you have that is on the same side as the racists and the misogynists who choose to discriminate on something which a person has no choice whatsoever. By all means discriminate against people with chosen views, but if you can’t in good conscience replace “gay” with “mixed race” then that’s a sign your views are rather repulsive. That you are a member of the ALP and so woefully ignorant of the need for equality to remove injustice makes me think that you might be better off in another party. I believe the Christian Democrats might have a suitably backward ideology that is more of a fit?

So unlike you, I believe in equality and I think you should apologise for your beliefs. Just as racists and sexist people should apologise and learn some ethics.

You’ve declared yourself to be in bad company Mr Hayes, I suggest you lift yourself away from such a repugnant mob and carry yourself and your views to a level that the “The Honourable” out the front of your title should indicate. “To the homophobic Chris Hayes” would be more accurate at the moment.

regards,
Nathan Lee

Dear Prime Minister Gillard,

Currently you have taken away parents’ and kids’ choice of a secular education by violating our secular constitution and funding the establishment of Christianity in schools.

Preachers preach, teachers teach.
If Chaplains are not there to preach/proselytise or convert (as they themselves have admitted in the past.. see: here for how they defined it and recent comments by the head of one of the organisations that hire almost all Chaplains in Victoria): then why are they religious?
If they are not there (or qualified) to counsel kids then why are they boasting about saving lives and saving suicidal kids?

Would you hire on the cheap?
If a lack of qualified counsellors is the problem: then I suggest you fund more of them. Would you advocate funding Chaplains with a first aid course to fill a gap in brain surgeon skills? Absolutely not. Would you fund Chaplains that know how to turn on a laptop if you found the NBN’s technical staff hiring was a bit hard to find? No. So why risk it with our children.

Religion less and less relevant to more and more people
At a time when church attendance is as low as it has ever been and dropping, when “No Religion” is the fastest growing category and when protecting secular institutions is of paramount importance for a society based concepts of not only on freedom of religion but freedom of religion: why on Earth are you trying to buy votes from religious fundamentalists like the Australian Christian Lobby.

Vocal religious lobby groups protecting their taxpayer handouts
I’m sure your inbox is under assault from a lobbying effort by Scripture Union Qld Chaplains that you for some strange reason decided to give another $222m to in the last budget.

Money wasted
I’d point out that the money could have been spent on many more useful things, like qualified counsellors or more teachers in public schools for instance. Or just general increase in public education funding (as a large chunk of the money for chaplains is going to fund proselytising in private religious schools for some reason.. making it yet another drain on the public purse to fund private education)..

No ability to opt out
You have given parents no opportunity to opt out and the NSCP Chaplains are proselytising by stealth in a number of documented cases (most recently on the 730 report). If there have not been widespread complaints: it is likely because (as I found) complaints go missing (e.g. the official NSCP complaint inbox lost one of mine and Scripture Union Qld didn’t bother answering a question about a predatory chaplain that they had hired who appeared to be grooming a child).

Ban chaplains from schools
This program needs to stop. You need to listen to the people saying the program is not suitable for our schools and not let their voices be drowned out by religious lobby groups who already send their kids to private religious schools.
Let the schools spend the money on real counsellors and real staff not these missionaries in schools with a promise to spread the word of Jesus as far as possible.

Please restore our schools to their secular former selves
If people want religious education then they have that option. Where does a parent go if they want an education that does not include the risk of religious indoctrination.
You have followed Howard’s lead and taken away secular free public education for many to replace it with on-site proselytising/amateur counsellor filled schools.

It is a horrible thing to have done, particularly given the dire funding situation for public health and I hope you will come to your senses.

regards,
Nathan Lee

Note: if you would like to donate to the High Court challenge underway you can do so via here or here.

Rip N Roll campaign snuck this one in. ACL too busy to notice.

So ACL, you just got RipNRolled.

In case you don’t know what the story is about, see this article and this press release. Short story: Australian Christian Lobby organises a bunch of complaints to get an ad taken down for being “offensive”.  Adshel pulls the ad. People find out, get outraged (including me, I wrote to Adshel telling them how spineless they were and that they owed the campaign free advertising for the inconvenience), the backlash causes Adsel to grow a spine and stand up for a safe sex campaign against bronze age morons called the ACL.

The end.

Funnily enough though I have something that clarifies what this organisation means by “evangelise”.

But we aren’t preaching

We’ve had the promise made that ”We are not there to preach to them, we are just there to teach them and give them facts”. I’ve talked to religious people and their definition of “fact” is rather different from normal requirements for proof. e.g. I was discussing with an SRE scripture teacher only last week and he was talking of the “historic fact of Jesus calming a lake”. That’s why they are a poor choice for religious education because speaking with such certainties is indoctrination, not education.

But on with the trip down memory lane to when Access Ministries was CCES and a peek at their core values.

Core values – conversion..  I mean.. evangelising.. Yes. Evangelising!

Access Minstries have a core values page up today which has the following:

ACCESS ministries affirms:
its faith in God, as One-in-Three-Persons, whose redemptive purpose for the world is revealed in the Person of Jesus Christ
that the Lord Jesus Christ proclaimed in word and deed the presence of the Kingdom of God through mission and evangelism—a calling of people to repentance and a declaration of God’s love in practical ministry to others by enabling reconciliation, peace, wholeness and justice

Access Ministries statement of belief today

But if, via the magical powers that be I take a look back in time to when the organisation was called CCES, here’s that same couple of bits from 2001 at least:

The CCES affirms its faith in God, as One-in-Three-Persons, whose redemptive purpose for the world is revealed in the Person of Jesus Christ.
The CCES affirms that the Lord Jesus Christ proclaimed in word and deed the presence of the Kingdom of God through mission and evangelism – a calling of people to repentance (conversion) and a declaration of God’s love in practical ministry to others by enabling reconciliation, peace, wholeness and justice.

CCES's clear definition.

What’s the difference?

I’ll use my nerd skills and show you the complete two bits of text via a “diff” tool and a bit of ugly purple underlining. I’ve added a couple of full stops and changed a dash in order to eliminate the noise, but these are their texts.

Pretty much identical.. Oh, except they edited out a crucial word clarifying what "evangelising" means.

There’s a few changes in how they worded it, an apostrophe change, “her/his” vs “his or her” (I guess couldn’t have women being mentioned first?) and the name change of the organisation.

Oh I almost forgot: there’s the word “conversion” in brackets in the sentence about what evangelism is in order to clarify what this means if people don’t know what the word “evangelise” means. As an aside I love it when religious people throw in stuff in brackets in their texts, like Qur’an 4:34 where by men are informed they can beat their wives which some people realised was bad and inserted (lightly)  as in “(lightly) beat them”.

So when we hear religious types defending the program as being “evangelising rather than proselytising” we now know they mean EXACTLY the same thing: converting souls.. Access Ministries clarified that for us before they did a quick editing job on their core values.

Somewhere between 2001 and today we either had a redefinition of a core value of an organisation or else someone thought it was better if they had another word they could fall back on that meant the same thing, but which was defined on the website with absolute clarity.

Well Access Ministries: we’re on to your stupid word games, thanks for more evidence you’re out to convert all the kids you can like all the other monopoly Christian chaplaincy groups elsewhere in the country. This NSCP program has to stop and secular education needs to be restored.

Here’s some things the recent funding expansion could have been spent on that don’t violate parental right to a free, secular education in our public schools.

Qualified (Real) School Counsellors

Apparently the reason we need chaplains is because we don’t have enough counsellors to go round. Well, in 2010, across Australia, there were 6,743 government schools and as far as I can see from the salary figures for Australian school counsellors that would get us 3083 school counsellors or 2658 senior counsellors.
Let me do the division: that would be around 1 new counsellor to every 2 schools. Just the new counsellors alone would be a 1 to 751 ratio. If you look at the figures for 2008 ratios they’re:

• ACT 1: 850 (1 Assistant Manager, 5 Senior Counsellors, 45 FTE positions for School Counsellors)
• NSW 1 : 1,050 (678 Counsellors 113 DGOs 1 PEOs ie 1 per region across the state)
• NT: 1:2500 when all positions are full  (19 School Counsellors, 2 Senior. School Psychologists, 8 School Psychologists – however, rarely are all positions filled)
• Qld: 1:1,300 in secondary schools (about 350 combined GO and SGO positions)
• SA: 1:3779 for GO,  1:1944 for ECP (GO – 43.4 FTE in the field in 2008, with 3.1 FTE in specialist positions. ECP – 8.9 FTE in the field)
• Tas: 1 :1,800 (36 school psychologists, 8 senior school psychologists)
• WA: 1:1200 to 1:2000
• VIC: no data.

So you can see that those numbers are all blown out of the water (in a good way) if the money had gone to that. Of course the money could go toward the Northern Territory’s problem with hiring staff or to address the states with most urgent need. Or, hell, it could just go to paying the existing ones better pay so more staff are easily found and retained. For a government supposedly concerned about mental health it would surely make sense to hire qualified counsellors with that money rather than preachers who are only really there for a small percentage of the kids who are genuinely religious enough to need to talk to a religious ear.. and even then: only for certain types of advice (e.g. “I think I like my best friend in a sexual way” might not go down too well with an evangelist who thinks gays are sinful or unnatural).

Teachers

Despite Access Ministries actively trying to turn kids against teachers and toward Chaplains via propaganda teachers are the lifeblood of the school and are the real educators.

Teacher ratios in public schools are a problem thanks to the decade or so of the Liberal government under Howard systematically dismantling public education in favour of private education. You remember that right? Back when Abbott was just a RU486 hoarding health minister who couldn’t separate his faith from his ministerial responsibility.

Anyhow, $222m of wasted chaplaincy money could pay for 2220 teachers on a pretty healthy old $100k a year. Or let’s say we pay for a bunch of teachers on $70k, that would get public schools an extra 3,171 teachers.

As of 2010′s ABS figures there are 183,725 teachers.

So we could give them all a $1200 bonus for putting up with the less than desirable funding arrangement that neglects them in favour of funding for extra indoor swimming pools for private schools.

Renewable Energy for Schools

I’ve talked in the past about my view that government buildings should all have solar installations on the roof.

Divided amongst all the schools you could prepare a “renewable energy for schools” programme which would be a lump sum payment of $33k to purchase solar panels for the rooftops of the new school halls. This would help in many ways: it would reduce the electricity bill.

Solar panels could be on school halls

According to Origin energy’s FAQ a 1.5kW system starts at $4k. So let’s say $1k worth of extra cost. So every school could be a 9-10kW solar installation.

So that’s 6743x10kW = 67430kW = 6.7 MW distributed power station. Sure the real yield would be lower that that and you only generate for X hours per day.. But it’s a definite start toward freeing us from fossil fuel dependency.

School Gardens

Instead of learning the “historic fact” from a Christian Chaplain about how all of mankind was forever cursed and kicked out of the garden of Eden each school could get a $33k grant toward creating and maintaining a school garden. The garden could be used to encourage healthy eating or used as an ongoing fund raising device. The added advantage would be education going home via the kids as to what is actually in season, leading to better choices at the super market. With $33K you’d be able to do some serious gardening.

Simply planting some trees might also be a good use of the funding which would offset some of the emissions for heating/cooling the school.

Meals

The money could be used to supply a free apple or orange to every kid in the public school system every day for 20 weeks.

Apples for the students instead! No stories about snakes and gardens needed.

Or perhaps a decent sized fruit salad for half that time.

That’d surely help with the obesity rates and encourage healthy eating.

Books or Technology

Public schools, having to make do with giving away 2/3 of the federal funding to private schools, are lagging behind in adoption of technology like smart boards and computing facilities.  Schools could have $95 worth of extra spend per student on books or technology. So for every 10 students you could fund a laptop. So that’s two extra computers for every classroom. For a small school of 200 students that would be a computer lab. For every 50 students you could have a brand new smart board put into a classroom.

For the price of funding one god fearing chaplain at a school (at $20k of tax dollars) you could give an entire classroom of 20 kids a set of laptops for the year.

If you wanted to splash cash around you could pay a commercial IT consultant, Engineer or Scientist to come in once a week at consulting rates for 20-30 weeks to teach kids about technology rather than bronze age mythology. Which type of inspiration is likely to lead to a career that isn’t complete nonsense and sponging off Govt public schools violating our (supposed to be) secular education system?

Could hire a bunch of roaming consultants to educate the teachers in the technology they have as I know first hand just how little assistance teachers are given. Hell, I was the school technology expert all the way through my schooling from about year 3 onwards (I used to get called up from class in primary school by the high-school teachers to go help fix the clunky Microbee network). Although that was a useful life skill, I now do that with enterprise integration architecture problems.

Disadvantaged students

There are lots of kids in financial, emotional, physical or other disadvantage. I don’t have figures for these, but I guess I’ve touched on the special schools funding.

Let’s assume we can assist students via hiring people at $25/hour (minimum wage is lower, but let’s not be cheap with our chappy cash bonanza). That would pay for 1,184,000 days of paid helper time. So spread over the schools that would be 175 extra days per school, or 35 extra working weeks of hiring someone to come in. So spread that over a few part time people and you’ve got yourself a magic amount of extra assistance with reading, writing etc.

To give you the background: many public schools rely on volunteers currently. Now wouldn’t it be great to pay those people? If we paid $18-20/hour we’d get even more time out of people. Those people would not be there to convert by stealth, preach about nonsense (or in one instance at least of a chaplain grooming children).. No, they’re there to help without preaching.

This would also be a benefit to give people a good part time source of income, particularly mothers/fathers who have their kids at the school and who aren’t working elsewhere.

What else?

What else could the money have gone to that’s school/education related?

Here’s his blog on the matter. He assures his readers that:

The allegations gaining the media coverage are that Chaplains in schools are proselytising. That’s a word you don’t hear very often and it means to try to convert somebody to a religious faith or political doctrine. I can assure our school community that I have never had feedback regarding our Chaplain proselytising.

Perhaps, like any properly performed proselytisation they simply aren’t aware of it and trust that the education department, like when they were at school, is secular and has proper checks and balances in place to prevent it. That clearly isn’t the case if a recent Radio national program on it (transcript here) is anything to go by.

The principal goes on to say:

I am a strong advocate for Chaplaincy and just as strong in my belief that Chaplains must not proselytise or make any judgements about other people’s religious beliefs.

I’m sure he is, he’s had chaplains at the last school and now at this one. Could it be that he is a pathway for Access Ministries into schools? Who needs Chaplains to do the spreading the word if the principals are doing it for Access Ministries?

Regardless, I’ve given him feedback (on the 18th) on an example of proselytising via a comment on his blog (that’s still awaiting moderation on the 21st). How did I find the information? I just looked at a couple of the school newsletters. How many other such things go on without making it into the newsletter?

My reply:

So there’s no proselytising huh? I can straight away show you that there has been religious promotion (in addition to hiring a chaplain):
How about the visit to the school from a Christian Radio station mentioned in the newsletter (1/4/11). Was that organised by the chaplain’s study group member by any chance? Were parents made aware that an evangelical Christian radio station would be coming into the grounds and would be bribing kids with handouts to spread the word of the lord?

89.9 LIGHT FM VISIT
Following an invitation from one of our Year 6 students, Iris Kennedy, 89.9 LightFM came to visit our school on Wednesday morning before school.
There was great excitement as they handed out free ‘Up and Go’ drinks, bags of fresh fruit, single serves of preserved fruit and stickers. Well done Iris and 89.9 LightFM.”

I suppose the stickers were not promoting religion at all huh? And I suppose the student didn’t at all get the idea from sessions with the Chaplain?
Yes, well done 89.9 LightFM: you got an opportunity to preach to all students without parents choosing to opt in.

So how was this announced? Surely it would be made clear that this is a religious group going to be coming in to school grounds.

89.9 LIGHT FM VISIT
Next Monday / Wednesday morning one of Melbourne‘s FM radio stations would like to visit our
school. 89.9 LightFM will be here to hand out stickers and prizes and also do a “live cross” to the school during the breakfast program. They have chosen our school as one of our students emailed them and invited them to come.

No mention of their religious nature so that parents can make an informed decision. No permission slip to participate I’d guess?
So anyhow, that’s just one example of proselytising by stealth that happens when a clear separation isn’t kept between church and the secular education our public system is meant to provide. That’s the problem with having a Chaplain in the first place: there’s no effective way to opt out even if you want to.

So just how many other such things go on. Little visits from church affiliated groups. Courses that are snuck in without mention of their true content? Any of the Hillsong programs by chance (that was reported on the radio as having occurred at other schools)?

I know access ministries runs a course for principals: have you attended that by any chance?

And how exactly do you support the parents who have not opted in to receive Christian Chaplaincy? Or is it automatic opt in and you need to specifically opt out of receiving contact with the Chaplain?

What was the process by which you decided to hire the chaplain in the first place? Was it as thoroughly communicated and considered as the visit from the Christian radio station or one or two vocal Christians? Did you survey the religious makeup of the community? Consider the minority religions?

I’d urge you to reject any future funding and ask for more counsellor time instead. Take the lead from the teachers union and widespread public backlash.

Perhaps a review of the materials the Chaplain is handing out might be in order too. Some material is coming to light that appears to actively try to discourage kids from seeking out help from teachers and only go to chaplains.

The materials I referred to are ones that Mike Stuchbery has brought to light on his blog.

You’ll have to forgive my scepticism that kids (under the instruction of a Chaplain) are entirely self motivated to invite an easy listening evangelical Christian radio station to the school. I guess they were handing out stuff while they sang the message of Jesus to the entire school which is something that the Chaplain has to pretend he isn’t there to do.

Here’s the tweet by the principal, so I’m pretty sure he would have realised the radio was a religious one right?

I suppose a Christian Radio station brought into the school by stealth isn't proselytising?

I wonder whether a Muslim radio station would have been advertised in the newsletter without mentioning the religious affiliation and giving parents a chance to opt in or out (and let’s be clear: people should never have to opt out with religion in public schools, that should be assumed and explicit opt in required for anything).
Proselytising by stealth is what it is called and it has no place in public secular education.

Ban the chaplains and give parents back the secular education they expect.

Bible guarantees! Wow, it must be true then.

Unclear on whether that’s Greenwich mean time or whether it’ll be a rolling event as the day tracks around the globe. So as an Australian I won’t get a chance to repent but those in later time zones will presumably get a bit of lead time, perhaps to arrange for their pets to be looked after by some left behind atheists.

So let’s look on the bright side of the rapture
Let’s assume that all the religious believers are taken up for processing with just the dirty non-believers left behind. Unlike each of those religions, I’ll assume they’re all going to be treated the same: you believe in god/gods then hey – you won the irrational thinking bonus of a lifetime.

Chaplains out of schools
It will get NSCP Chaplains out of our supposed-to-be secular public education system in Australia (so we’d save $222m from the budget recently announced) and stop me from having to complain about the dodgy NSCP mobs (e.g. Scripture Union, Access Ministries) that run this tax funded religious racket.

School time would be more ethical and less bronze age
The only option in SRE time in NSW would be the Primary Ethics course or “non scripture” (I dubbed the trial The first useful scripture lesson in NSW history). So ethics teachers still need to turn up to teach the kiddies next week as they’d be left behind having shunned the nuns. It’s possible other ethics teachers would need to be covered by the Atheists as it is a secular course after all and makes no religious claims.

Public education would no longer be playing second fiddle to private religious schools and would have billions of dollars to spend on much needed facilities, materials, staff and land acquisitions in cramped schools.

Special treatment at all levels. (Image from SMH)

The calls for creationism to be taught in science class would stop.

No more door to door
There’ll be no one knocking on doors in cheap white short sleeve shirts and black ties while you’re trying to get a sleep in. The plus side is that there’ll be little piles of exactly that sort of clothing left around the streets in the post rapture world. Might want to discard their magic Mormon underwear.

Style repellent too.

Peace and quiet
No church bells on Sunday.
No more ridiculously early morning call to prayer in Muslim countries.
No more wailing at the wailing wall.
No more batshitcrazy types picketing funerals.
No more rioting mobs any time a holy book is destroyed.

London's finest out in force.

Discrimination laws will have less exemptions
No religious run businesses/schools left with ridiculous exemptions from the discrimination laws (e.g. allowing the expelling gays or single mothers from schools).

Less nonsense in healthcare
All hospitals left running would offer IVF, abortion services, post rape medical treatment, contraception advice etc. Chemists/pharmacists would all give out medication based on medical need and wouldn’t veto for their own personal reasons.

No nut-cases like this lady picketing female health clinics.

Crazy old bat that pickets a clinic in Surry Hills

No people thinking that scraps of Mary Mackillop miracle placebo items are miraculous. HIV/AIDS treatment and vaccinations could move forward instead of having ridiculous religious leaders impeding the flow of medical aid and advice.

Business and property
The tax system would have a massive amount of money to spend on things as it would stop handouts to the tune of billions to religious organisations.

Sanitarium would have to start paying taxes on its weetbix profits, meaning the tax free status it uses to compete with other cereal companies would evaporate. A slew of other for profit religious owned businesses would no longer be rorting an unfair tax advantage to put normal businesses out of the market.

There’d be lots of prime real estate that could be turned into useful spaces rather than just sitting empty except for an hour a week when a few people get up on a Sunday to do work. The new users of those buildings would pay council rates like everyone else.

Politics and equality would improve a bit
We’d have no more Fred Nile in parliament so someone else would get a chance at the dumbest minister award (plenty of candidates, but Abbott will be gone so the position is open).

Top priorities for Fred.

Gays could get married and have equal rights… you know, like they should have always had.

Child safety
The world’s largest paedophile cover-up group would cease to exist meaning thousands of children would not be exposed to predatory Catholic priests and crimes not covered up then simply shuffled on to new areas. Previous victims could be given free right to loot some of the gold that the Catholic church loves to hoard.

Women’s rights
We’d no longer have clerichead bearded Islamic morons telling us how to beat wives or rape them in a Sharia compliant way and brave Muslim women having to stand up and tell them they’re dickheads.

There's nothing real funny about this, but it makes a point.

Environment and Science
A whole bunch of trees cut down to produce uninspiring religious texts would be saved or used to make more interesting or enlightened books. There’d be slightly more storage room in bedside tables in hotels without the Gideon minions doing their work.

We’d (sadly) lose the learned Cardinal Pell and his climate science denial ways (because as a person who reads the bible he knows better than scientists).

Atheists/Agnostics and secularists can get back to adult matters
And finally Atheists, although they’d have been wrong if the rapture happens would finally get that evidence after thousands of years of waiting.
Secularists will get their separation of church and state they’ve been asking for..

Any others?

I am appalled at the joy our leaders are expressing at the death of Osama bin Laden. There should have been a fair trial and proper court process with life imprisonment (as with our legal system). The death penalty, whether by trial or sniper fire, is something all should oppose, even for the most vile, lest we stoop to their level.

Nathan Lee – Surry Hills

But I guess no amount of writing letters will change that he’s now a martyr and any chance at proper justice (versus revenge) is lost forever.
Not that this whole thing couldn’t have been avoided by Bush simply accepting the offer by the Taliban to turn over bin Laden back in October 2001.

Oh, and it is almost exactly 8 years to the day from the point at which Bush declared “Mission Accomplished”.

Wonder if Trump and the Tea Party Birther nutcases will refuse to believe Osama is dead without the full birth certificate?

UPDATE:
A reply in the next day’s letters may have “jumped the gun” a bit:

I’m not sure if Nathan Lee (Letters, May 3) is kidding, with his insistence that ”There should have been a fair trial and proper court process” of Osama bin Laden. Assuming he is serious, it’s just embarrassing to see how little stomach people seem to have. Does Mr Lee realise that bin Laden would have been firing an automatic weapon at the time he was shot? Perhaps the US soldiers should have read him his rights instead? As far as I’m concerned, a bullet to the head was too kind, and I feel sorry for the fish now feasting on him.

Daniel Lewis Rushcutters Bay

Effective justice depends more on reasoning brains than gut feeling of rage. He was not only unarmed but unless he was naked he was to be shot. Sure doesn’t sound like there was much of a window for him to come out of it alive to be put on trial huh?

This follows on from something I remember from my time in HK whereby duck eggs in China were doctored with a carcinogenic dye.

I’ve mentioned fake food/medicine/supplements from China in my past blog: China may well solve global warming.. Kinda including:

• baby food that looked and smelled ok, but had zero nutritional content. Result: 50 to 60 dead kids who starved to death while the poor parents tried in vain to feed them with milk powder that was pretty much sawdust. (See http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/10/health/main616432.shtml )
• Use of a carcinogenic red dye (called sudan red) in duck eggs because the redder the yolk, the more they can sell ‘em for (see http://french.hanban.edu.cn/english/health/189567.htm ) and also in sauce (http://www.china.org.cn/english/health/209080.htm)
• Fake medical supplies (see http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-01/08/content_10625425.htm and  http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/jul/05/china.internationalnews1 )

Food that’s “Made in China” is pretty scary
It really is a worry to be considering sending any food production toward China. The pollution in China is already ridiculous and getting worse. I wouldn’t trust anything coming out of there to not have lots of heavy metals and carcinogenic crap stuffed in it.

Chinese Oysters: Top quality ingredients!

I’ve already given up trying to get smoked oysters (a guilty scoff-a-whole-tin pleasure of mine) because the only ones in the shops now come from China and I don’t fancy eating the “filters of the sea” from one of the most polluted places on Earth.

I won’t spoil it for you, but just watch as she not only demonstrates that the guy’s just plain wrong about the content of the show but also the inconsistency within the guy’s religion. Of all the problems in Pakistan that twit decides to complain about he picks an actress appearing on a TV show as a huge sin.

Islam has bigger issues than an Actress going on TV

But hey, these types pop up all over the world (including Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali from Australia), divinely inspired by the Qu’ran’s unenlightened views on women unfortunately.

It really speaks volumes when I posted this up on facebook a little while back that someone made the comment that “You do realise she’d be killed within a month right….”. I certainly hope not and hope that she inspires the wider community to examine and question the filthy moral lessons people like this cleric put out there.

No you can’t have pie

The first was in the SMH on the 14th February 2011:

Hrmm.. Notice anything funny with the percentages and pie chart at top.

That’s a funny 52%.. It must be how politicians view most things: majority in favour but treated like a minority during policy making decisions.

Flood is what now? God speech?

The next flood related paper item was this doozy in the conservative opinion journal broadsheet paper The Australian (16th Feb 2011):

Oh, that's why we had a flood. I thought it was just weather.

If that’s how God speaks it explains the smell of the flood waters.

Follow up item
Funny how in the previous post: Trust me, I’m the chaplain I had Danny Allen imply that only people trolling Christians would make such assertions:

In reply to your first little witty caption — did you even bother to click through to Gavin Hudson’s profile? I’m guessing not, otherwise you would have seen that he’s not a chaplain, or even a chaplaincy supporter. He’s an atheist and, like you, is just trolling the SU QLD page to post inflammatory comments.

So Danny, unless the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Australia puts ads in national newspapers to troll Christians: I think it was a fair comment and I shouldn’t be expected to try and pick out trolling from other Christian commentators because, as comedians like Stephen Colbert prove: it’s almost impossible to tell them apart.

Not only are these skygod worshipping quacks completely untrained and unqualified to counsel children (which is a separate matter and not to be confused with this particular “Chappy” and SU Qld’s response to that): they are almost exclusively all employed by one organisation: Scripture Union and almost exclusively Christian (98% or so).

Oh yes, let this guy empart his wisdom to our children on causes of floods

This organisation has the following mission:

Aims:
As a worldwide organisation working with the churches, SU aims:

* to make God’s Good News known to children, young people and families

to encourage people of all ages to meet God daily through the Bible and prayer,so that they may:

* come to personal faith in our Lord Jesus Christ
* grow in Christian maturity, and
* become both committed church members and servants of a world in need.

Now what sort of organisation is SU Qld then in addition to being a blatantly evangelical mob who are leaching off hundreds of millions of tax dollars?

Example of spreading the word..

Well, they’re the type that doesn’t care too much if it employs child predators it seems. Apparently if they’re a Scripture Union Chaplain trying to seduce a 12 year old boy over msn it’ll do what Churches have always done with child predators: wait a while for the fuss to die down and shuffle them on to the next place. You know how it works: if you are truly sorry and ask Jesus for forgiveness then it’s ok right?

From the articles we learn about Chappy Jocelyn Hook:

The female chaplain of Golden Beach State School has today been removed from her job over her suggestive online chats with a 12-year-old boy.

Jocelyn Hook’s employer, Scripture Union Queensland, announced this afternoon that the married mother of three would not be allowed to work at any school “for the time being”.

Ok, so it’s “for the time being” then huh? What exactly did she do pray tell? *cough*

The move followed revelations by the Daily about the chaplain’s behaviour, in which the father of the boy said he was disgusted that Mrs Hook had kept job despite the SU ruling she had behaved inappropriately.

“We have decided to remove Jocelyn Hook from school chaplaincy duties,” SU chief executive Tim Mander said.

“The recent publicity and the publication of her name, her photo and the name of her school has made her chaplaincy role untenable at this time.”

Again the “at this time” type comment. Hmm.. Smacks of EVERY COVER UP the various churches have carried out over the years!

It's ok, "after a time" you can shift them on to somewhere else.

So what about the father who discovered this dodgy behaviour:

The father of the boy, now 13, said his son eventually became uncomfortable with some of Mrs Hook’s online comments, contained in dozens of logs between September 21 and December 30 last year, only to be told: “Trust me, I’m the chaplain.”

and

The father is disgusted over Scripture Union’s contention that Mrs Hook’s behaviour was improper but not predatory and, as such, less worrying.

“I do wonder if this would be brushed off with such a limp wristed answer if the chaplain had been male and he’d been talking to my 12 year old daughter,” he said.

The MSN Conversations of Chappy Joce
And the dodgy MSN conversations, so you be the judge of whether this was a text book case of grooming, or as SU Qld asserts:”The investigation found that although the chaplain’s behaviour was inappropriate, her behaviour was not predatory in nature”.
I currently teach Primary Ethics to kids aged 10-12 and no way on Earth would I (or any other sane adult) be:

• chatting with 12 year old students over msn without parental approval and a damned good reason to do so (I can’t really think of any)
• discussing “hickeys” and then inviting over for a swim
• inviting other people’s kids over for a swim (full stop!) and then offering rewards

These chats read like something directly out of the course all Primary Ethics teachers have to do on “Shining the light on Child abuse” except the scenario is not the dodgy uncle, but a dodgy Chaplain.

You take a look..

Excerpts of MSN exchanges last year between Golden Beach State School chaplain Jocelyn Hook and the then 12-year-old boy.

Mrs Hook’s user name is “Chappy Joce” or “Joce”.

September 28 (messages relate to a date the boy went on)

(2.50pm) Chappy Joce: So… got pash rash!

(2.50pm: BOY: wut?

(2.50pm) BOY: u got a pash rash?

(2.51pm) Chappy Joce: No you do

(2.51pm) BOY: no i dont

(2.51pm) Chappy Joce: Sure I bet u do.

September 29

(10.00am) Chappy Joce: wondered if you were hiding any hickeys

(10.00am) BOY: what?

(10.01am) Chappy Joce: bet u dont know what a hickey is hey… must be gettin old

(10.01am) BOY: i dont kno what a hickey is at all.

(10.02am) BOY: do i want to kno what they are?

(10.02am) Chappy Joce: love bit

(10.02am) Chappy Joce: you know… big read sucky mark on your neck?

(10.46am) Chappy Joce: wanna come over for a swim today?

(10.46am) BOY: umm… not really.

(10.47am) Chappy Joce: fine then!

(10:48am) Chappy Joce: i will let you use my pink laptop and msn

(10.48am) BOY:…

(10.48am) Chappy Joce: if you can’t bear to be away from melissa for that long

(11.27am) BOY: i dont wanna swim, so mum says i hav to stay home

(11.28am) Chappy Joce: just that chattin with melissa is more important! oh well u r a big boy and can take care of yourself

(11.28am) BOY: lmao (laughing my ar.. off)

(11.28am) Chappy Joce: behave… no dancing naked on web cam

(11.28am) Chappy Joce: hehe

(11.28am) BOY: i dont hav a webcam..i dont like them

December 30

(7.49pm) BOY: ? ill have a look thru the list of games on wikipedia

(7.49pm) Joce: crash of the titans

(7.49pm) BOY: ah yeah

(7.50pm) Joce: spank u… i mean thank you

(8.23pm) BOY: mums about to go to ur place now

(8:23pm) Joce: ok thx i better put some clothes on then lol

(8.24pm) BOY: lmao dnn2k (did not need to know)

(8:24 PM) Joce: dnn2k huh

(8:24 PM) BOY: do not need to know

Hrm..

Do Politicians only group-care about financially inept mortgage owners?

Where are the brave politicians defending the rights of one of our citizens? Or indeed the politicians calling for investigations of the claims that the USA broke the law and ordered spying on UN diplomats. Or carrying out DoS attacks: is that not illegal?
We had one poor stupid sod languish in a deep dark hole in Guantanamo because the Australian government didn’t show the balls to demand he be charged or released. The British didn’t stand for it and I don’t see why we should put up with ineffectual government that spends billions of dollars placing soldiers’ lives at risk to keep up a US-Australia partnership which seems to revolve around grinning and bearing the receiving end of international diplomacy.

Politicians were falling over each other to rescue whinging mortgage owners from “unfair” exit fees a few weeks back.
Let’s put things in perspective:

• “Unfair” is shooting (or locking up) the messenger.
• “Unfair” is getting labelled a criminal without proper investigation.
• “Unfair” is letting the media publish content from wikileaks without threat of legal action, but not providing wikileaks the same leeway.

Defending Australian Citizens
So the politicians should grow a backbone and stand up for one of our own. If the current batch of polliticians are going to tip toe around protecting Australian citizens then resign so we can elect people who bloody well will look out for us. Currently our govt seems to care more about the USA’s dirty laundry than well-being of an Australian whistle blower.

So much dirty political laundry eh?

Moral issues with wikileaks
It is a murky area with some of the material leaked from wikileaks. For instance if material naming specific people in dangerous parts of the world. I can definitely see an argument for blanking out names that would identify them to those who would harm them. There are many people doing the right thing and speaking out against evil beyond the range of wikileaks and their concerns. Farmers reporting on scumbags threatening locals for sending their daughters to school or letting authorities know where killers are hiding. Those poor bastards have a hard enough deal in life without ending up dead for doing the right thing.

But exposing the communication that shows Clinton or Rice were ordering actions that would result in the UN head diplomats have their DNA or iris scans collected is not such a situation. I do think there’s an argument for some sort of censorship, but I guess then the problem becomes one of self censorship by wikileaks. I think it’d be a hard decision for the wikileaks mob (or you’d hope) to consider the impact of releasing some of the material it does. As with all things: weighing up the greater good is tricky.

Root cause

I think the problem isn’t so much Wikileaks, the problem is governments playing fucking “X-Files” with people’s lives around the world.

Is this book sitting on the shelves of Govt agencies?

What we desperately need is more transparent government. Wikileaks is a blunt instrument at the moment and like all movements toward more accountability those people/groups benefiting from secrecy are digging in hard. These people watch the Bourne movies and wonder if they could build a better Jason Bourne, the X-Files and scoff at the TV show getting cancer man’s cigarette brand wrong and just KNOW that your standard domestic aluminium/tin foil won’t block out the new brainwave-o-matic interrogator 3000.

Well.. it IS a conspiracy!

Life on the planet is a long play game. These sneaky, short sighted secret spy games damage the longer term goals (if indeed there’s any thought to longer term goals) which are I hope to settle down and get along without war. Taking down the secular democratic government in Iran is one such example: Brits and Yanks install a dictatorship because oil might not flow as freely, now everyone’s talking pre-emptive strikes and women are back to cattle status. Short term win for the USA and UK, but accumulating international political or regime debt.

Personal privacy is important

That’s not to say I’m not in favour of personal privacy: absolutely people should have a right to privacy. In fact, the biggest threats to personal privacy are these governments now complaining about their sneaky back-room dealings coming to light. The same conservative pundits now calling for wikileaks members to be assassinated were the same ones bleating “if you’ve nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to fear” from things like the PATRIOT act and the slew of global privacy/wiretapping/rights erosion (not to mention invasions!) that followed the 911 attack.

An example you might not have heard about but the USA spies on details of international money transfers whether they have anything to do with the USA or not. So you transfer some money to Europe or Asia: CIA gets details of your transfer and hey, might just stick you on a no fly list if for whatever reason they don’t like your taste in under the counter German porno mags.

I’m of the opinion if someone likes dancing naked each evening before bed: who cares. If someone’s into some kinky consensual sex with their partner (or partners): no one’s business but their own.
What politicians do in their own time is up to them so long as they aren’t being colossal hypocrites (e.g. the vocal anti-gay campaigning republicans who always seem to turn up trawling for gay escorts in airport bathrooms or ones who build a career around “family values” only to be sprung shagging around behind someone’s back): then perhaps there’s a public interest.

Trawling for republican hypocrisy.

What you say to your friends, loved ones etc, what your sexuality is, what you eat for breakfast, what films you watch, products you buy is really no concern of anyone else’s whether they be the media or other snooping officials. What you got up to as a kid, which bucks party or boozy night out you saw strippers (or which relation used to be one): that isn’t “public interest” so long as you aren’t sending the bill to taxpayers.

Government transparency is important too

But governments on the other hand I think have a responsibility to their people to act in a responsible, consistent manner with the expectations of society. That means not organising assassinations, trying to destroy democracies to install dictators, not torturing people etc. If “government” was a person: would they be locked up? That’s not to say governments don’t have responsibilities to take some abhorrent action (e.g. wars always involve killing people, but weighing up the consequences of “do nothing” is necessary),

Aah yes, security. Trump card made of eroded rights.

They’re proving to be a walking cliche for conspiracy theorists.
Do they have to appear to use Orwell’s 1984 as the inspiration for whatever back room secret programs they run? Is hypocrisy the first chapter in some sort of “government for dummies” book they all get when they join a government department.

What needs to be done rather than hounding wikileaks
I say treat the root cause: call on the US government to lift its game, not just dumbly join the chorus wanting to assassinate or locking up Australian citizens for exposing the dirt. It seems it was ok to invade citizens’ privacy in the name of fighting terrorists, but a citizen exposing government secrets makes them a terrorist: that needs to change.

Would anyone claim it is a “tricky issue” or “tradition” that black people shouldn’t marry whites? Or would that simply be racist?

Citing tradition, religion or the status quo (as politicians, religious leaders do) doesn’t somehow excuse you from common decency.

Parallels..

If you don’t like gay marriage then it is simple: don’t get gay married or stay at home if invited (you may miss some rather extravagant gay weddings). Don’t for an instant think that supporting a ban is any more acceptable than wanting a ban on mixed race weddings (which I’m sure had another set of unenlightened people in the past crying about the decline of society and death of morality).

You don’t choose your skin colour at birth, nor do you choose your sexuality (when did you decide to be straight?).

You can however choose to continue to be ignorant, prejudiced, racist or homophobic.

(A letter the smh didn’t publish.. Guess pointing out that racism and homophobia are identical was too “out there” for ‘em).

• Exemption to the anti discrimination laws so that Churches could take stone age prejudice into the modern world (can’t have gays or unwed mothers working near Christians: it’d be harder to demonise them if they actually knew some)
• Increased Govt funding of public school chaplains (to the tune of $400m+ rather than spending money on qualified counsellors, an action labelled as “dangerous” by the Australian psychological group)
• removing (or maintaining the lack of) a woman’s right to safe, legal abortion
• no progress on euthanasia laws (after all, if people are suffering then it is god’s will, right?)
• creationism to be taught in schools (see their comment on the national curriculum here)

The ACL's campaign issues bear remarkable similarity..

In fact, if it is a progression towards a more equal or compassionate society: these clowns are against it. If it is a step towards a Christian Taliban style government where every outdated, barbaric garbage law from the bible is blindly enforced by law: then they’re for it. Their version of religious freedom means “massive government legal and funding bias toward Christianity”.

A Secular, compassionate democracy (consistent with say our constitution!) isn’t high on their to-do list.

So here’s my suggestion for their prayer for the Victorian election on their page:

Nathan says:

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

14 November 2010 at 10:09 pm

So I hope you’ll be praying for fairness and equality for all people, (not just straight couples) lest more gay people get persecuted/driven to suicide. It’d be fantastic to see a call from good Christians to deliver fairness in the marriage laws extended to all men and women.

And for the environment as a moral duty to future generations..

And for politicians to launch an enquiry into the paedophiles that the church has continually covered up lest more people have their lives ruined by this organised campaign of deceit..

And perhaps also spare a prayer for a proper secular separation of church and state (e.g. religions pay taxes and contribute back to the rest of society via the tax system).. As freedom of religion can only exist if there’s no funding of religions by govt.

Look forward to seeing those sentiments included in your prayers, I hope the uglier aspects of Christian lobbying are shunned in favour of these more compassionate views.

Or you can censor my views.. Whichever sits best with your conscience.

What chance is there they’ll go that way? It’d probably take a miracle (and they can’t even rustle up anything remotely convincing for Mary Mackillop’s miracle).

If Jesus existed he seemed pretty accepting of people, it’s self proclaimed Christians who seem to be known for their lack of acceptance, misogyny etc.You know what Jesus said about banning gay marriage: nothing. What he said about forcing old terminally ill people to suffer no matter whether they want to die or not? Nothing.  But here we have people claiming to be Christians and making these things their key issues..

Jesus disagrees with the ACL

Perhaps I should say a prayer that they see sense on their prejudiced ways.. Perhaps be a bit less like bigoted scum-bags and more like their spiritual leader supposedly was.

As a side issue I’ve recently become a member of the Secular party of Australia because of the need to focus on separation of church and state (or lack thereof). Especially when we came close to electing candidates unlikely to respect that separation as well as deny science in general.