A Greens senator speaks

I have just read Senator Scott Ludlum's speech on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill (that's the ETS Bill that is tearing the liberals apart)... and I am impressed with this paragraph:

Senators here would have heard me speak before about narrow military notions of military security and the extraordinary theft of resources from
genuine tools of security. Military security can do nothing to alleviate the greatest security challenge of our age, which is climate change.
Traditional tools of warfare are of absolutely no help at all when confronted by a tsunami, a hurricane, a flood, a virus or a water shortage.
The acquisition of arms and the current global military expenditure of $1.2 trillion a year still diverts enormous financial, technical and human
resources from where they are really needed.

Yes, I am a Green and a member of the party, but I am usually a bit "ho hum" on the way we argue "the case". But Scott is saying things here which need to be said. In a world that seems to have no limit on what we spend on toys for boys (we saw them gathered around a helicopter at Russell last week); and no limit on what we might dish out to keep the world financial system melting down...

in such a world, what is there to be done?

An artist's view of Copenhagen

What an article!

Michelangelo and my kids will haunt me
Bronwyn Lay November 23, 2009

In Eureka Street.
(http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=17720 or http://tinyurl.com/yjbfho5)

I have never had children, but Bronwyn's comments about motherhood and where it leads her take my breath away. It is really worth reading the whole article, but here is a small taster of what she says:

"If everyone at the Bella Center in Copenhagen in December was overwhelmed by the sorrow of ‘The Pieta’, the sorrow of the powerless, then the outcome would be brutal. Emissions would be cut by 100% the next day. We would be thrown into war-time mobilisation because everything we thought we had created would seem irrelevant compared to the pain millions of ‘The Pieta’s’ were facing. Economies would go into transitional panic. Monies would be diverted to the developing nations at the coalface. Whole industries would collapse and geopolitics would be thrown into a spin. This will not happen because ‘The Pieta’ being inscribed in every mind at that table is too revolutionary a thought, too irrational, and too sentimental."

It appeals to my "political side". More of her writing is artistic.

Fragmentation of Palestine

A video to watch:
http://www.afsc.org/israel-palestine/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/76850

Graphically shows how the West Bank is being fragmented. I have the
postcards, but seeing it on a video is very strong!

Echidna visitor

Much excitement on Friday when an echidna came around the corner. (I was hanging out the washing and watching a skink sunning itself, of trying to survive a very hot day.)   Skink, took off, fast. It went past me and echidna came on right by the back door. She got stopped under a copper pipe which is an inch off the ground; went back and under a heavy bag of recycling. I lifted that up and it turned around and went back onto the western verandah and under some old solar hot water panels that lean against that wall. There it stayed and proceeded to burrow down. A few hours later it had shoveled dirt over itself, eventually disappearing with dirt right over it! Stayed all day Saturday while we were at the fair and it was still there Sunday morning. But the dirt was off it then.

The echidna has left us. It was not here when we returned on Sunday night. I just checked it again, and it might have made a tunnel!

I have been looking on the web for information and I suspect that the main reason for being visited was that it was such a hot day (Thursday). They do not like the heat and will burrow or find caves etc to escape it.

They mate in winter, lay an egg about 22 days later, incubate for 10 days. When about 7 weeks old they start to grow spines. Then they are put in a nursery burrow. Mother returns every 5-10 days to feed it. At 7 months they are weaned and left on their own.

So if it is a nursery burrow, she should come back every few days.
They have a huge range as well. Goannas and cats and dogs are the main puggle enemies. 

So we might be in for a very interesting few months, or maybe it was just a one off!


http://www.abc.net.au/science/scribblygum/June2000/default.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/schoolstv/animals/ECHIDNAS.htm
http://www.fourthcrossingwildlife.com/echidna_puggle.htm

Did Charles Darwin free christianity to be true to itself?

Today was the feast of Christ the King. But as Ray pointed out, the message is: "My kingdom is not of this world."

Tonight I watched (cursorily) a program on Charles Darwin and the controversy  that he stirred up with the publication of "The Origin of the Species" (150 years ago?) 24th Nov 1859?)

We take it so much for granted these days. I am so aware of the personalities of the non humans around me here in Burra that I forget that sense that homo sapiens is something else, not quite "natural"; certainly not descended from apes!

Did that christian sense that our species is so special stop us from recognising god's love for the whole creation? Did demolishing that allow us to read the scriptures with new eyes and see a much larger "god"? A much larger saviour....

This evening, I was thinking it was a liberation of the church from the Constantinian capture of church into state power.

Demoting "man" from his pedestal (gender specific language is deliberate) allows us to see the Son of Man as enosh; the weak one who saves through the cross, not through state power; not through soldiers fighting for him.

Photos

Photos and comments from the Middle East trip in September 2009 are now on line.

http://members.tip.net.au/~lindafrd/Tourist.html
http://members.tip.net.au/~lindafrd/Political.html

http://members.tip.net.au/~lindafrd/Pilgrim.html
http://members.tip.net.au/~lindafrd/Pilgrim2.html

We don't need more fundamentalism

Colin Coward posted a new blog at Changing Attitude. http://changingattitude-england.blogspot.com/2009/11/hope-in-god-despair-at-conservative.html

He finishes off by saying:

Conservatives think they are defending God and protecting Christianity whereas in reality they are doing exactly the opposite, in the UK and North America as well, ultimately, in Africa, Asia and South America. The world does not need more biblical fundamentalism, back to basics or ‘the clear Word of God’ which will transform society overnight. It needs people with prophetic vision and a passion for truth and love, people whose lives are rooted in prayerful awareness of the revelation of God in Scripture, through Jesus Christ, and in myriad, mystical, tender ways in creation and the practice of the presence of God in daily life.

I comment on my time in Jerusalem that you can see visions of heaven as so many of the world's people gather there in pilgrimage of various kinds. But when one group says "this is fundamentally mine"; we make of that place a hell. (Remember that the Crusaders said that for christians once.)
An answer to fundamentalism might be the way for peace. 
I guess that wars are fought when one group says "I am right; you are wrong".
An openness to ambiguity and paradox is needed to avoid that.

some new photos on line now.

http://members.tip.net.au/~lindafrd/Political.html

Political with some commentary. yes, one is also on the touristy site. Just shows you that classification is an inexact science. (Yes, that was what I studied in University many, many years ago!)

I said I would post the Armenian Genocide Poster text:

see also:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide

RECOGNITION, CONDEMNATION, PREVENTION

The Armenian Genocide is a term used to designate a series of crimes and atrocities committed against the Armenian people during WW1. The events were centrally planned and administered by the Turkish government against the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire.

Between the years 1915 and 1923 the Armenian people were subjected to mass deportation from their ancestral homeland of Armenia and other parts of the Ottoman Empire. The Turkish authorities also carried out deliberate starvation of the deportees, systematic massacres along the deportation routes, and the government sanctioned rape of men, women and children as well as the forced Islamization of orphaned children.

In addition to efforts to annihilate the Armenians, the entire national wealth of the Armenian population was looted by the Turks or confiscated by Ottoman authorities through the enactment of "abandoned properties" laws applicable specifically to Armenians.

The decision to implement the crime of genocide against the Armenian people was made by the Committee of Union and Progress, also known as the Young Turks, the political party that ruled the Ottoman Empire from 1908 to 1918. In addition to avert actions of Young Turk officials with armed elements of the Ministry of War and the Ministry of the Interior, Turkish authorities created a secret outfit called the Special Organization (Teshkilati Mahsusa) whose primary functions were to carry out the deportation and mass slaughter of the Armenians.

The Turkish Nationalists between 1920 and 1923 perpetrated further massacres, expulsions, and depredations of the surviving Armenians. The Kemalist government who toppled the Young Turks and represented a new political movement, shared the common ideology of the Ottoman Empire and the Young Turks to create a new Turkey built on the ashes of over 1.5 million Armenians and their homeland that had been Armenian for the previous 3000 years.

To this day, the Turkish government has denied the genocide, and the crime remains unpunished.

APRIL 24 - THE MEMORIAL DAY OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE



LEGEND OF THE MAP

Red coloured circles: Relative number of Armenians massacred (exact figures are not known)

small red circle: Deportation control center

circle: Deportation concentration and annihilation centers

tiny circle: Deportation stations

Areas of greater or lesser Armenian resistance

red arrows: Major and minor deportation route

dotted arrows: Armenian and Assyrian escape routes

Blue crosses: Localities where the Constantinople Armenian intellectuals were murdered.

The Goldstone report on Gaza

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10232009/transcript3.html
An interview with Judge Richard Goldstone by Bill Moyers of pbs (Public Broadcasting Service).

He says:

Well, certainly. You know, one thing one can't say about the Israel Defense Forces is that they make too many mistakes. They're very, a sophisticated army. And if they attack a mosque or attack a factory, and over 200 factories were bombed, there's just no basis to ascribe that to error. That must be intentional.

and later:

I think it's difficult to deal equally with a state party, with a sophisticated army, with the sort of army Israel has, with an air force and a navy, and the most sophisticated weapons that are not only in the arsenal of Israel, but manufactured and exported by Israel, on the one hand, with Hamas using really improvised, imprecise armaments. So it's difficult to equate their power. But that having been said, one has to look at the actions of each. And one has to judge the criminality, or the alleged criminality, of each.

They chose 36 incidents to investigate. Israel did not cooperate at all. This interview explains some of the objections to his report.
Read it for yourself (575 pages!) from http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/specialsession/9/docs/UNFFMGC_Report.pdf
Yes, the Human Rights Council show bias. But Goldstone in his interview with Bill Moyers discusses that. He is not the kind of man to operate in a biased environment.

Hospitality and All Souls

For All Saint's All Soul's Day(s) I highly recommend Michael's blog:
http://michaelcardensjottings.blogspot.com/2009/11/all-saints-day-reflections-hospitality.html where he talks about hospitality and the queer community. I wanted to quote some but he really should be read in full. But as a taste he has in his conclusion:

"Hospitality is what makes God divine."

On All Souls day I was in Sydney celebrating Bonnie's life. She was a great friend from many years ago who was just so good at hospitality. It was a very real privilege to be at her memorial service and also to have been asked to sing. It was a song she heard me singing and she had told me last year that I was to sing it! "A new commandment I give unto you". I felt that in many ways there was a message from Bonnie herself in it that we could all hear. (I hope).

Thank you Bon, for giving me that job to do and for the great memories we have of your eight years (really only eight?) in Burra as such a wonderful neighbour.