A fence in Israel...

... between Jews...

From the Guardian:

" The Jerusalem city authority has erected a fence in a nursery school playground to separate ultra-orthodox Jewish children from a secular Jewish kindergarten that shares the same building and garden. The wire fence is to be covered with sheeting to block visibility from one part of the playground to the other. The nursery schools are in the Kiryat Yovel neighbourhood of Jerusalem, an area that has seen a growing ultra-orthodox population in recent years, to the dismay of many local secular Jews.

The secular kindergarten, Pashosh, opened in September with the aim of attracting more secular families to the area. But ultra-orthodox parents have complained that the female staff of Pashosh are immodestly dressed and that they do not want their children mixing with children from a non-religious background....

Pashosh has about 10 children aged under two. The ultra-orthodox nursery school has about 20 boys and 20 girls, in separate rooms with separate entrances, aged three to four. Staff at the ultra-orthodox kindergarten declined to speak to the Guardian.

One ultra-orthodox parent, picking up her daughter, said she was saddened by the fence but reluctantly accepted its necessity. "I don't want my children to see immodest women," said the mother...

The Jerusalem city authority declined to answer questions about the fence but issued a statement saying that "with the aim of meeting the needs of all of the neighbourhood's pupils, both secular and ultra-orthodox, the [municipality] decided to divide the existing building ... The fence will be built as part of a wider perspective that provides for the quite different needs of the community as a whole." "

How do you keep your community whole when one group of children are not allowed to be with another?

To be clear it's the ultra-orthodox parents who wanted this fence ... But if one Jewish community cannot stand for their children to look upon the wider Jewish community, and this is pandered to ... where to Israel from there?

What does that bode for future generations?

And what kind of statement does that make?

"Blood Guilt... yeah sorry there was never any such thing."

"Pope Benedict XVI yesterday became the first Pope to contradict personally the teaching of Jewish ''blood guilt'', releasing excerpts from a book to be published next week. That teaching, used to justify and perpetuate hatred culminating in the murder of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust, was formally rebutted by the 1960s Vatican Council, but the Pope's personal endorsement was welcomed yesterday by Jewish leaders as a landmark attack on the foundation of anti-Semitism."

We're living in the year 2011AD, and the Church is still making it's mind up over whether someone born yesterday can be guilty of something that is alleged to have happened two millennia ago....

Lawyer smokes both Bible and Koran

Time for one more post after all.

A university lawyer in Brisbane has decided to contribute to the burn-a-Koran craze sweeping approximately 50 total idiots in all of North America.

...by smoking a marijuana joint rolled from both the Koran AND the Bible.

He posted himself doing this online. I haven't seen the video and - since it can't be much to look at - I'm not putting it here. You can find it if you go looking.

He expects to be fired but the police will not be charging him with anything.
I reckon he actually stands a good chance of keeping his job. I reckon he SHOULD keep his job.

I have a split attitude to religion.... I personally think there is probably no God period, definitely no God as is imagined by any of the Abrahamic faiths. I think religion is enormously destructive in the public domain. I want religion to have nothing whatsoever to do with the law, politics or education, but I'm mindful of the vulnerabilities of people who - against my preference - do believe in it.

Do I think there is absolutely any value on someone getting high on the Koran or the Bible...?
No.
Not in any sense at all, if you get my meaning...

I think religion is a load of shit. But I don't say that to timid grannies coming out of Sunday prayer.

I'll make another observation about this guy, however: He wasn't a Joe Average just doing it as a lark. He is an organisational member for the Brisbane Atheists, meaning... This is HIS religious expression. His way of saying how he wants the world to be.
And that's where I get edgy: I don't want an atheist crusade because nothing good will come of that.
I want an end to religiously motivated political acts of ANY stripe whatsoever.

Shades of grey, drab green, dull blue

Wouldn't be horrible if you walked down the street and one entire gender was forced to wear the same sort of clothing...
A cartoonist's view of the burqa ban ( related post ).

Brooker's mosque commentary

Charlie Brooker offers an ultra-precise description of what the so called Ground Zero Mosque will look like...

"The planned "ultra-mosque" will be a staggering 5,600ft tall – more than five times higher than the tallest building on Earth – and will be capped with an immense dome of highly-polished solid gold, carefully positioned to bounce sunlight directly toward the pavement, where it will blind pedestrians and fry small dogs. The main structure will be delimited by 600 minarets, each shaped like an upraised middle finger, and housing a powerful amplifier: when synchronised, their combined sonic might will be capable of relaying the muezzin's call to prayer at such deafening volume, it will be clearly audible in the Afghan mountains, where thousands of terrorists are poised to celebrate by running around with scarves over their faces, firing AK-47s into the sky and yelling whatever the foreign word for "victory" is."

The rest of his article, as published in The Guardian, is here.

(in case you're a reactionary troll... he's "exaggerating")

Directions...

"I'm not a religious person" - Prime Minister Gillard

Prime Minister Julia Gillard, yesterday, on ABC radio's Jon Faine talkback program (which I listen to most mornings):.

Faine: "Do you believe in God?"

Gillard: "No, I don't Jon, I'm not a religious person."

As The Age reports:

"Amazingly, the radio station was not struck by lightning. Gillard hastened to add she was brought up a Baptist, attending the Mitcham Baptist Church. Why, she even won catechism prizes for remembering verses from the Bible. "But during my adult life I've, you know, found a different path," she declared. "I'm, of course, a great respecter of religious beliefs - but they're not my beliefs."

I'd say there's a quarter of a million votes in that alone. The mood of anyone I speak to and hear on the radio appears to concur.

Lest we forget that John Howard, the Prime Minister till 2007 and Bush's buddy, had secret talks with the insidious cult The Exclusive Brethren, who peddled influence via his party, something I'll never forgive him for.

Weird Week

This week isn't even over yet but it has been an extraordinary one in local news.

Magpie lists his five biggest items for the 'How-The-Fuck-Does-That-Happen?' award...

1/ Carl Williams, the baby-faced kingpin of a vicious gang war in the Melbourne underworld in jail for 2 years of a 35 year sentence... beaten to death by another prisoner - on CCTV in a maximum security prison at Barwon Heads.

2/ National Rugby League club Melbourne Storm stripped of two major and three minor premierships and fined $1,600,000 for salary cap breaches in one of the biggest scandals ever in Australian sport.

3/ Nearly 300 allegations of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in this state since 1996, perpetrated by approximately 100 priests.... and in all that just 1 priest has been defrocked as a result.

4/ On the day of the worst bushfires in Australian history the state police commissioner got her hair done and went out for dinner. She now heads the reconstruction authority.

5/ Crown Casino in Melbourne has confirmed that gamblers leave about $4000 a week at tables and poker machines. After 2 years it goes to the State Revenue Office.

Get a room...

Look... I've got nothing against personal faith, and I do not want to be in the business of telling old women and starry-eyed simpletons that their thing about Jesus is a harmful futile exercise... but enough is enough:

As reported today:

"Children were sobbing in distress at the sight of a man covered in fake blood who appeared to be nailed to a cross in the middle of a Geelong shopping precinct on Saturday afternoon, local police say....A Geelong police spokesman said passersby were concerned about the reenactment in Malop Street, particularly by the man posing as Jesus covered in blood. The reenactment was shut down for breaching the peace, he said."

For my overseas readers, Geelong is a large town just west of Melbourne.

It gets better...

" "Kids were particularly upset and crying," the spokesman told AAP. "It was causing a bit of a ruckus ... the parents of these kids who had a six-year-old child that's screaming at someone who is covered in blood and bawling and is crying out loud, they (the police) decided that they would ask them to stop it and move them on." "

And PLEASE... this is not suppression of religious expression:

" "If they want to do that sort of thing they are quite welcome to do it in a place where it's not going to disturb anyone and where people are going there for that specific reason and know what they are getting themselves into." said the police."

Fair? I think so. Oh but... Heaven on Earth pastor Sarah Kenneally defended the whole exercise... i.e. live torture porn in a public place where no-one knows what they're about to walk into.

She said "it was a silent display".

Well how "silent" is a man covered in blood and apparently nailed to a cross in the middle of a shopping precinct???

ENOUGH! Just dig how cool the Easter Bunny is and get a life!

The Empire Strikes Back

Since the Rise of Atheism Conference in Melbourne there has been concerted attack on secularism...

Usual suspects: Sydney Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen and Sydney Catholic Archbishop Cardinal George Pell.

The new Catholic Bishop of Parramatta, Anthony Fisher, got in on the act in his Good Friday address, and said that godlessness in the 20th Century led to Nazism, Stalinism, abortion and mass murder.

Peter Jensen was a bit more general... he said "Atheists hate God".

(No Pete... they don't believe there is a God, and most of them don't even hate you.)

Jensen further said, in his Easter address at St Andrew's Cathedral on Sunday morning... "I have emphasised human loneliness this Easter because that is what expert observers of our society are saying is a real problem ..." (which experts...? the lonely fuckers with nothing to do but observe?) "This philosophy emphasises the individual and individual rights, it invites us to invent our own lives and it undervalues commitment to other human beings."

So...

What is the alternative to inventing my own life...but to leave it to others to invent it for me?

You would like that, wouldn't you, Pete?
Well I don't want your "commitment". Take your presumption and shove it.
I don't feel the need to attack private faith. Just keep it out of my face... fair?

Advice for Pope Benedict XVI

I have in front of me a "Working with Children Check Application Guide and Form"....

Once this is processed I get back a card that certifies I have been subject to police check and that I am not a sex offender and have no criminal record.
The application form is 6 pages long.

After I have completed this and I get my card, it will be okay for me to assist in coaching children's football on a public oval in broad daylight, with all their parents and guardians standing around watching, and in the company of about 20 other adults - parents all - who are doing the same thing, and have the same card....
At no point during the kids football training does anyone even go indoors to a locker room.

Now...
When a psychiatrist warned that a priest may have had a sex-thing for kids... I really don't think it was too much to ask of the future Pope Benedict XVI to have taken it a little more seriously.
Even if it was the 1980s.

Still... he hasn't started another Crusade yet.

The faithless gather....

Interesting statistic...

"The number of churchgoers in Australia is about 9% and dwindling, the diversity of spiritual belief is flourishing and atheism is going off like a frog in a sock" writes Catherine Deveny of The Age, back on February 18th 2009. Rather triumphantly.

In case the expression is not universal... "like a frog in a sock" means very active.

The 2010 Global Atheist Convention being held in Melbourne right now.

If you were planning to go... the website notes: "Tickets to the Global Atheist Convention are SOLD OUT".

Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, will be speaking.

His words: "The enlightenment is under threat. So is reason. So is truth. So is science … We have to devote a significant proportion of our time and resources to defending it from deliberate attack from organized ignorance"

I haven't read Dawkins's book and when I read non-fiction I prefer fact to polemic, but I find the rise of militant atheism interesting.
I don't identify with it because I prefer a mode of mutual non-intrusion...
That is: You don't tell me that your faith takes precedence over empirical fact and I won't give you a hard time for believing something I consider riddled with retrograde nonsense.
Or simply put ... I don't like church nor need God, so leave me alone.

Militant atheism appears to be another consequence of 9/11. Dawkins himself said:

"Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakable confidence in their own righteousness."

Okay I get that, but there is a difference between faith and fanaticism - especially of the killing kind.

There was a campaign in the UK in January 2009 which ran with the slogan "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

I would think some people would resent being told they have to be atheists in order to enjoy life. A lot of people don't even engage the issue - whether God exists or not is not an issue to them. It ranks at the bottom of the "boring" bin while the urgent matters of beer, football and sex dominate conscious thought.

I'm not sure militant atheism helps and, worse, I'm not sure it isn't actually counter-productive.

Religious idiot of the week

The inaugural award goes to Tony Abbott, recently elected by a margin of one party vote to the leadership of the federal opposition.
The next prime minister should the people of Australia collectively lose their mind (stranger things have happened...)

To quote Michael Peruso, chief executive of Sacred Heart Mission:

" I was in Canberra last week and had the opportunity to ask Opposition Leader Tony Abbott whether a government under his direction would continue with the Rudd government's goal of halving homelessness by 2020. His answer was no. In justifying his stance, Abbott quoted from the Gospel of Matthew: ''The poor will always be with us,'' he said..."

Tony...have been asleep all your life?
Spouting quotes from the Bible as social policy is, REALLY, the wrong thing to do here.

Blair unrepentant

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair says he had no regrets over the invasion of Iraq...

No matter the lack of WMDs, the intense public disquiet, the massive number of casualties and the subsequent debacle of a failing occupation... he thinks it was worth it. More troubling, he says Iran presents the same opportunity to mount pre-emptive slaughter.

As you will have worked out by now, I am of the opinion that the war was a catastrophe for the rule of law and the struggle against terrorism. For what little it counts, I was of this opinion before the coalition of the willingly fooled even went into Iraq.

"So you'd prefer Saddam Hussein was still in power?" is the inevitable cheap retort (and strawman argument).
The answer is "no, I would prefer he'd have been removed by means other than full scale invasion".
Tracking this hypothetical exchange to its next evolution, I would then come under attack for hypocrisy and "moral confusion"...

As if moral clarity automatically means "...invade". It does not.
There is nothing clouded about my morality: I think massive unnecessary death is a very bad thing. I think creating a beacon for terrorism in the Middle East was a very bad thing. And I think deception of the public about how, why and when the decision was arrived at... was a very bad thing.

Much has been made of Blair's religious bent in how he arrived at his decisions.

Matthew Parris, formerly a conservative MP, writes:

"Tony Blair is a Manichean, or dualist. He believes that the Universe is best understood as an eternal struggle between the forces of good and evil, in contention for dominance. Christians are supposed to believe that the battle is already won, and Mr Blair’s dualism is (paradoxically) closer to Islamic fundamentalism than to the Gospels. For Mr Blair at least “Axis of Evil” was not just a Bushite soundbite: it was a profound philosophical insight into the meaning of world history."

I'm personally not convinced that Christians are in fact supposed to believe the battle is already won, but whatever... rigid dualism in politics is dangerous, is the point.
All 'our' enemies are not, in fact, friends of one another. Acting is if they are, or as if the fact doesn't matter... is stupidly dangerous. It DOES matter. How destroying Al-Qaeda transformed into taking down a regime who were hated by Al-Qaeda and who had nothing to do with 9/11 will become a paradox of policy that will darkly entertain students, teachers and observers of political theory for centuries to come, should civilisation live so long (I like to think it will).

Parris categorises the different types of people who are bitter about Blair's lack of repentance into original opposers of the war (like me), hindsight critics, and another group: "most ominously of all, a number who have not really repented of their doctrine of muscular interventionism, are now eyeing up Iran, and badly need to distinguish between what happened last time and what might happen if we try it again."

Comments by Parris in The Times Online, sourced here.

Preaching hate in Uganda

First I want to preface this by saying I don't believe all religiously inspired missions to foreign countries are destructive, and I also want to add that it is true that many genuinely humanitarian causes are supported by religious organisations.

I personally am not religious. Doesn't mean I have blanket disapproval of those who are.

But here is the fly in the soup:

This is the start of an article by Jeffrey Gettleman published in the New York Times today:

"Last March, three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about “curing” homosexuals have been widely discredited in the United States, arrived (in Kampala, Uganda) to give a series of talks.

The theme of the event, according to Stephen Langa, its Ugandan organizer, was “the gay agenda — that whole hidden and dark agenda” — and the threat homosexuals posed to Bible-based values and the traditional African family.
For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.”

Now the three Americans are finding themselves on the defensive, saying they had no intention of helping stoke the kind of anger that could lead to what came next: a bill to impose a death sentence for homosexual behavior."

The whole article is here.

Did the three speakers have any inkling that this was a potential consequence of the prejudice that they were stiring up... ? The article is probing but not conclusive either way but...

If they DID... then they have betrayed the spirit of their own faith. And if they didn't, they have demonstrated tragic incapacity to percieve the fricking obvious: that stirring up hate will lead to actions based on hate.

Seriously... stick to saying what a bad idea it is to kill thy neighbour and what a good idea it is to care for the sick and the poor.
Don't go near sexuality. You're not qualified.

As one female TV identity here in Australia said of the Pope and the Archbishop of Sydney's (stupid and outrageous) assertion that condoms contribute to - rather than inhibit - the spread of HIV: "...and who would know better about sexual health than two old men who don't get any?".

Scientology accused of violent crime

Today independent senator Nick Xenophon castigated Scientology as being a criminal organisation and called for an inquiry into their tax exempt status.
He referred to allegations by former members - some of them members for decades - of unlawful imprisonment, coerced abortions, physical violence, and blackmail.

He stated "It is alleged that information about suspicious deaths and child abuse has been destroyed and one follower has admitted that he was coerced by the organisation into perjuring himself into deaths of his two daughters.....These victims of Scientology claim it is an abusive manipulative and violent organisation."
The prime minister was careful with his words but described the allegations as "grave".
He said ‘‘Many people in Australia have real concerns about Scientology....I share some of those concerns. Let us proceed carefully and look carefully at the material he (Xenophon) has provided before we make a decision on further parliamentary action.’’

This morning I was listening to a radio interview between ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) host Jon Faine and a leader-spokesperson for the Australian branch of the church of Scientology. I like Faine as a savage questioner, most of the time.

Faine took the church spokesman to pieces when the latter refused to answer a simple yes-no question as to whether the church would respond to questions honestly if under oath in a court of law.
Under oath....
"I don't care to answer that" is not an okay response. That's contempt of court, and if you lie it's perjury.

The clear implication was that when it came down to a choice between compliance to the law of the land and protecting the interests of the church... the law of the land would be disregarded. I couldn't believe how stupid the spokesman was for tacitly admitting that.

Personally I try not to indulge in casual Scientology-bashing.
True, it looks fun for all their stable of goofy celebrities and, apparently, an inheritance of really bad science fiction as their theology, but each to their own...
It's when they prey on the mentally vulnerable that I get hostile.

There are other cults, at a local level, that I would go after ahead of Scientology. The cult called The Exclusive Brethren probably tops my list because of their extreme separatism and alleged political influence.
But if any of these allegations that Xenophon has aired are true... then they need to answer the charges.

Looking forward to seeing what develops from this.

No such thing as sin

I often think about the fact that we don't live forever, and of the people I have loved who are gone. I realise that the only way I'll see them again is when I die, which implies that I believe there is something greater.
And so I try not to scoff at other people's faiths or hold religion as something that is inevitably destructive.

But then I read stuff like this:

" The mother of an 11-year-old central Wisconsin girl who died of undiagnosed diabetes as the family prayed for her to get better testified Tuesday that she believes sickness is caused by sin and can be cured by God.
Leilani Neumann told the jury in her husband's trial that she thought her daughter's March 2008 illness was a test of her religious faith and she didn't take the girl to a doctor because that would have been "complete disobedience to what we believe."
Dale Neumann, 47, is charged with second-degree reckless homicide in the 2008 death of his daughter Madeline Neumann, called Kara by her parents. His wife was convicted of the same charge this spring and faces up to 25 years in prison when sentenced Oct. 6.
Prosecutors contend Dale Neumann recklessly killed the youngest of his four children by ignoring her deteriorating health. They claim Neumann had a legal duty to take her to a doctor.
Leilani Neumann testified for more than three hours Tuesday, describing the events leading up to her daughter's March 23, 2008, death on a mattress on the floor of the family's rural Weston home as people surrounded her and prayed. Someone called 911 when she stopped breathing.
The mother said that she and her husband believed their daughter's deteriorating condition may have been the result of a falling out with another couple, and called them once the girl was unconscious and persuaded them to come pray for the girl.
She said that although her children had been to medical doctors before, she viewed Madeline's March 2008 illness as "something spiritual."
Leilani Neumann also said that she did not realize her daughter was seriously ill until the day before her death, when the girl was weak and pale and had trouble speaking.
"I asked her if she loved Jesus," the mother testified. "She might have said yes. I know for sure she was acknowledging it. What sounds came out, I don't remember. She was making noises. ... My focus definitely was to pray."
A pediatric expert on diabetes told the jury Monday that even right before her death, doctors might have been able to save the girl's life had she been brought to a hospital. "

...your focus was "definitely to pray". Your focus was to let your daughter die so you could appease your superstition.

God damn you.

Article here.