The (never ending) Queensland Floods

What do you say about a disaster like the Queensland floods? The loss of life and horrendous property and environmental damage is just astounding.

As someone who has been through flash flooding in both the Flinders Ranges and the Todd Creek, I have a fairly good idea of the terror and helplessness many down south must be experiencing right now. 

There is plenty of other content online which I won't try to reproduce or match here but, for me, this BOM graph of river levels on  the Lockyer Creek at Helidon says it all really:

"Mother nature has unleashed something shocking out of the Toowoomba region. What we have here in Queensland is a very grim and desperate situation" - Premier Anna Bligh

I was expecting the fruitcakes and global warming denialists to start coming out of the woodwork about now and I haven't been let down - see this item just in about 'christian' 'pastor' Daniel Nalliah from the Catch the Fire Ministries who has written on his website that Kevin Rudd is responsible for the floods because he "spoke against Israel" in December 2010 by calling on the Jewish state to allow international inspectors into its nuclear facilities

These fundamentalists (be they religious or political) are what give rise to that other big news story - the Arizona shootings - but that's for another post

Men and Religion



Ever wondered why all of the traditional religions and most of the new ones too (maybe with the exception of the Quakers) were invented by and are controlled by men?  Power, dominance and wealth with as little work as possible is a boy thing in all species it seems!

Cartoon via Values Australia

On a Mission from who to do what??

Today's Bulletin report of the further decline of the NQ Fury held no real surprises for me - they lost again and only managed to draw about 6,500 to their match in Melbourne, so what's new!

What did surprise me (only because I take so little interest in the team or the sport and so hadn't previously noted) was that the financially failing Fury are now (apparently) sponsored by religious charity, Mission Australian - in fact, they are The Fury's principal sponsor partner.

Exactly why a charity would sponsor a sports team is well beyond my logic (perhaps they were concerned that Lifeline and the Salvos are beginning to dominate the local market and they therefore needed more exposure??).  However, and more to the point, I wonder how many people donating to Mission Australia are aware that some proportion of their donations are being used to prop-up a failing football team?

I certainly wouldn't donate to any charity who sponsors a professional sports team in an industry that so extensively promotes alcohol and misogyny.

How are your figs hangin' sinner?

It's true! Look it up...

How to neutralise an idiot

At first I though that this cartoon by Rex Babin from the Sacramento Bee was the ultimate statement about the US "Christian" "Pastor" who has been stirring up hatred across the world with his publicity seeking threats to burn the Qur’an (no! it's not spelt Koran - well only by white Christians anyway)

But then this morning comes the ultimate statement about the 'affair' by a local Queensland lawyer - it puts the whole thing into perspective and makes the US attention seeking "christian" look like the hate-mongering fool he is:

Perfect timing

Easter Sunday - perfect timing for this announcement of an evolutionary discovery!!

Easter messages

I was going to blog about some of the nonsense spoken by Christian leaders this Easter and in particular this incoherent doosey by Anglican supremo Peter Jensen : "Atheism is every bit of a religious commitment as Christianity itself"
However, I found these two posts which say most of it for me:

• An Easter message from an atheist by Jonathan Meddings at Young Australian Sceptics, and
• Unpacking the Pagan Elements of Easter by Austin Cline

Suffice to say, the Christian Churches obviously have their backs against the wall (no pun intended) if they are spending their second most important marketing weekend of the year attacking unorganised atheists and reverting to the use of Godwin’s Law as the Catholic supremo of Parramatta, Anthony Fisher has.

"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful"  Lucius Annaeus Seneca (ca. 4 BC-AD 65)

A truly shocking number

Further to my earlier posts here and here about the hypocracy and ciminality of the Catholic Church comes this via from John Richardson at yourdemocracy.net.au:

Figures from the John Jay School of Criminal Justice estimate that since 1950, an estimated 280,000 children have been sexually abused by Catholic Clergy and deacons.

Truly shocking, fightening and appalling - mind-bogglingly so.

Terrorists by any other name

Further to this post yesterday, I was reminded by John Quiggin this morning that nowhere in the mainstream media have these "Christian" nutters been referred to as “terrorists” or even “terror suspects” as they would have had they been Muslim.

What would JC say ?

Hot on the heels of international outrage at the Catholic Church’s propensity for protecting and excusing (or is that forgiving) child rapists within its power structure, comes news today of that nine members of a US (where else!) Christian militia have been charged with plotting to kill police and trying to wage war on the United States government.

“Prosecutors allege they were just days away from planning to kill a policeman and then launching an attack at his funeral with homemade bombs.

Court documents said the group would then retreat to one of several "rally points" to "wage war against the government and be prepared to defend in depth with trip-wired and command-detonated anti-personnel improvised explosive devices, ambushes and prepared fighting positions".

The Hutaree website says it is "preparing for the end time battles to keep the testimony of Jesus Christ alive".  More at Time.com

I think I see a pattern developing here and it's very scary!  Again, to quote Richard Dawkins:

No, Pope Ratzinger should not resign. He should remain in charge of the whole rotten edifice – the whole profiteering, woman-fearing, guilt-gorging, truth-hating, child-raping institution – while it tumbles, amid a stench of incense and a rain of tourist-kitsch sacred hearts and preposterously crowned virgins, about his ears.

A cartoon is worth a thousand words

From John Sherffius:

From Gus Leonisky:

From Peter Brookes at the TimesOnline

From Mr Fish at TruthDig

Say no more...
...well, almost!  I did particularly like this from Richard Dawkins in a great piece in ValuesAustralia on the world’s most famous cross-dresser:

“Should the pope resign?” No…he is perfectly – ideally – qualified to lead the Roman Catholic Church … a man whose preaching of scientific falsehood is responsible for the deaths of countless AIDS victims in Africa; a man whose first instinct when his priests are caught with their pants down is to cover up the scandal and damn the young victims to silence…

No, Pope Ratzinger should not resign. He should remain in charge of the whole rotten edifice – the whole profiteering, woman-fearing, guilt-gorging, truth-hating, child-raping institution – while it tumbles, amid a stench of incense and a rain of tourist-kitsch sacred hearts and preposterously crowned virgins, about his ears.

Now that's definately the last word!!