Fair Facts?

Fair and unbiased? Not on issues of the environment and climate change. The Fairfax media empire owns 1/3 of Earth Hour along with the World Wildlife Fund.

Excellent old school journalism by blogger Boy On A Bike.

-- Nora

Fall For Anything

Quick! Bring out the smelling salts!

A Hervey Bay mother swoons when she discovers that her Year 8 daughter has brought home... a 32 year old boyfriend?... Drugs?... A busload of OWS protestors?... Syphillis?

Quelle horreur, what could possibly cause her to go on a "crusade" right up to Education Queensland's head office?

Birgette Linding said she was mortified when her daughter came home earlier this year and recounted how Gideons Bibles had been handed out to students at the end of a Year 8 assembly at Urangan State High School.

How shocking.

And how quickly the anti-religious haters come out in comments, but also adhering to the law of unintended consequences John of Townsville's comment is a revelation: "Good, religion and the bible have no place in Queensland schools." So it would seem.

"Religion (by which they mean Christianity) is unscientific," they cry - ignoring the fact that modern science owes a significant debt to Christianity which provided most of the founding principles of science with the acknowledgement that a rational God created the world rationally and that those rational principles could be observed, repeated and understood.

These anti-Christian bigots are equally as sanctimonious as the religiousfolk they decry, smug as they are in their rigid belief system that all life evolved from nothing and that the reason we're here is because 'gravity did it'.

"We're far to logical, smart, clever, rational to believe in a sky fairy," they argue.

And yet, unmoored by the Christian belief system to use as a framework for rationality or as a foundation for ethics, these same people become easy prey for other gods - particularly Gaia The Earth Fairy who got a shout out this week at the United Nations Climate Change conference in Durbin, South Africa at which our own Climate Change Minister Greg Combet attended (carbon-neutrally, of course).

From the conference manifesto:

Rights of mother earth
74. Ensure respect for the intrinsic laws of nature.
75. The recognition and defence of the rights of Mother Earth to ensure harmony
between humanity and nature, and that their will be no commodification of the functions of nature, therefore no carbon market will be developed with that purpose.

Compare this to the instruction given to man in Genesis to have dominion over the earth.

That not is to say that we trash the planet, anymore than a logical, rational human being would trash their own house. But what it does mean, as generations of people before us knew, we are to use the resources it contains to improve our lives and the lives of those around us.

This Gaia-mad, quasi-scientific, pseudo-religion demands the opposite. And if you're poor, and life is a today-to-today struggle keeping body and soul together, you're less likely to consider helping others or have the resources to do so even if you were inclined.

And any propensity to charity (particularly one which cannot be reciprocated) makes no sense within a Darwinian framework in which survival of the fittest is the only law.

So what purpose does it serve to condemn humanity to a hell it can avoid? There's a question for another day.

Such a world governed as the Gaian adherents would have it would not be a nice place to live - but get used to it folks, without the Christian world view and the compassion and grace it teaches, your world is about to get even uglier.

Oh, and a final comment to Our Lady of the Perpetually Offended, Birgette Linding - you are under no obligation to read the Bible yourself, neither is your daughter. If you don't like it, don't look.

And a few questions: Why are you so afraid of the Bible? Are you afraid that if your daughter reads it that she will find something wonderful and life changing? Are you usually so narrow minded?

-- Nora

Rats!

Freaky:

Heather Mills McCartney has urged people to drink milk from rats and dogs to help save the planet.

-- Nick

It's Not Easy Being Green. If You're Poor.

More proof that the environmental movement is based on racism:

When David Cameron flew to India to open a JCB factory for a party donor, green-thinking supporters could rest assured that his visit would be carbon neutral. “We are offsetting all our emissions through Climate Care,” the Tory leader wrote on his blog. “As well as planting trees, they also invest in renewable energy projects in the developing world.”

Somewhere in the Indian countryside, a farmer is about to repay Mr Cameron’s debt to the planet. Climate Care’s latest enterprise is to provide “treadle pumps” to poor rural families so they can get water on to their land without using diesel power. The pumps are worked by stepping on pedals. If a peasant treads for two hours a day, it will take at least three years to offset the CO2 from Mr Cameron’s return flight to India.

Andrew Bolt has public reaction here.

-- Nora

Going Down?

A GROUP of vegans in New Zealand - vegansexuals - are shunning sex with meat-eaters because their bodies are made up of animal carcases.

"When you are vegan or vegetarian, you are very aware that when people eat a meaty diet, they are kind of a graveyard for animals," vegan Nichola Kriek said in the Christchurch daily The Press.

Hilarious.

But it just leaves one question unanswered doesn't it?

-- Nora

Green Hatred

Late last month we made a comparison between environmental types and misanthropes and frankly, I'm not sure we were believed.

But the always entertaining Tex from Wacking Day highlights this exchange on a motorcycle discussion forum (scroll down to A Deep Love Of Humanity):

>> We need a good pandemic we do.
>Unfortunatly I think you're right.

Fortunately we won't have long to wait...

[...]

Well _something's_ gotta decimate this toxic plague known as"humanity" [misnomer alert] or else every other species is in dire peril...

As Tex himself says - charming fellow.

-- Nora

Old Blighty

It's would seem that England's green and pleasant land is neither green nor pleasant, nor for the home owner, their own land.

Clive Aslet, editor-at-large of Country Life gives a bleak view of life in the UK. It's a long piece but worth reading all the way through and wonder if such plans are in the works for Australia.

One might feel differently if one believed officialdom truly had the interests of the planet at heart. But green idealism has become a fig leaf to conceal the bulging organ of revenue increase.

The London congestion charge started off, as the name implies, as a means of unjamming traffic. Like the HIPs, it is changing its spots to become a beast for savaging families, often with young children, who have the temerity to drive seven-seater cars. From 2009 they face a charge of £25.

Outside the zone, the Lib Dem Richmond upon Thames council wants the owners of such vehicles to pay whopping fees for parking outside their own home. It is a convenience that the money raised from motorists goes straight into the council coffers, for councillors to spend as they choose, thereby escaping control-freakish capping by the Treasury.

And so it is with rubbish collection. Don't tell me that councils were principally motivated by reducing greenhouse gas emissions when they halved the rate at which they emptied bins and introduced compulsory recycling schemes. They want to save money and damn the rats.

You have only to look at Southwark. It has retained the weekly bin round precisely because it will help promote sustainability. What? I see your puzzled look and furrowed brow. Weekly collection from the doorstep, as it explains on its website, will allow bin snoops to see more easily who is recycling and who isn't. "If residents are not taking part, a member of the recycling team will visit."

Presumably, there will follow the sort of knock on the door familiar to East German dissidents in the days of the Stasi. More information is being collected through microchips installed in rubbish bins - oh, and they will be fitted with a lock to prevent neighbours using a bin that isn't theirs.

Are these the reasons why England is called Blighty?

-- Nora

Natural Born Killers

If killing animals for meat is 'murder', what sentence should the vegan parents receive having deliberately starved their child to death?

Jade Sanders and Lamont Thomas fed the boy, named Crown Shakur, a diet largely consisting of soy milk and apple juice, the Atlanta court heard.

The child was born in the couple's home and never taken to see a doctor.

He was dead when they took him to a hospital across the street from their flat on April 25, 2004.

He was so emaciated that doctors could count his bones through his skin.

Answer: Life.

We can only hope that it is without possibility of parole so they can't kill any more children.

-- Nora

UPDATE: Speaking of wicked child abuse:

A QUEENSLAND man responsible for the worst case of incest in South Australian legal history has begged a judge to show him mercy.

The 64-year-old, of Gympie, has admitted not only sexually assaulting his three daughters for 20 years but also providing them to his friend and cousin for sex.

The South Australian District Court has heard he started abusing his daughters in 1967, when one of the girls was six.

After decades of acts including bestiality, he moved to Queensland and started a new family.

Mercy? The man deserves the same mercy he showed his victims. None.

-- Nora

Coal Comfort

Greens Senator Bob Brown comes up with his big idea to halt 'climate change'.

Naturally enough, Brown is ridiculed.

So Mr Brown, for taking heat, here's a cocktail named in your honour:

Hot n Fruity
0.5 Shot Dark Rum
0.75 Shot Dry Vermouth
0.5 Shot Crème De Cassis
Mix all the ingredients together in a cocktail shaker. Pour into a tumbler glass filled with cubed or cracked ice. Garnish with 3 fresh raspberries if desired.

-- Nora