Australian Politics
Can you be Muslim and vegan? What about Jewish or Christian?
From a Christian view point it is crystal clear that being vegetarian and non-vegetarian are both completely OK. The apostle Paul addressed the matter specifically in Romans 14:1-23
"Him that is weak in the faith receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations. For one believeth that he may eat all things: another, who is weak, eateth herbs. Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth: for God hath received him"
Muslims respect the Bible so that ruling should be influential to them too
When Lujayn Hawari decided to become a vegan, she knew her parents would not take it well.
The 27-year-old Palestinian journalist grew up in Brisbane in a "moderately conservative Muslim household".
That meant praying five times a day, observing Islamic holidays and traditions, and eating what her mother cooked — including meat.
Lujayn's parents were initially very unhappy with her veganism, and saw it as an affront to their religion.(Supplied)
So when Lujayn made the decision to stop eating animal products in 2016, her parents were unimpressed.
"It was an argument [at] breakfast, lunch and dinner," she says.
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Australian government throws more cash at renewables, but we foot the bill
The idea that Australia can become an energy superpower is impossible to square with taxpayers stumping up billions of dollars to subsidise renewable energy. If renewable energy is really so cheap – the cheapest form of generating electricity, according to embattled Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen – why would the operators need a guaranteed flow of funds from taxpayers? That’s not how markets work.
To be blunt, Australians have been sold a pup when it comes to the energy transition and the benefits that would flow from it. The notion it would be good for the economy, the climate and consumers is disingenuous – and that’s the best you can say. What has been obvious for some time but has dawned on Bowen only recently is that Labor’s grand plan to have 82 per cent of electricity generated by renewable sources by 2030 had become unachievable.
The commissioning of new large-scale renewable energy projects has slowed to a crawl and the rollout of the required new transmission lines is mired in local resistance, escalating costs and delay. The hope of the side – offshore wind turbines – also is looking forlorn.
Shadow Climate Change and Energy Minister Ted O’Brien has… clashed with Chris Bowen after the Labor MP refused to reveal the “true cost” of the expanded Capacity Investment Scheme. The Climate Change and Energy Minister announced the scheme last Thursday which will underwrite 32 gigawatts of new electricity, which More
The real tragedy of this story is the failure to appreciate the complicated features of the electricity grid and how government intervention generally worsens rather than improves outcomes.
In particular, the downside of large proportions of intermittent generation has been vastly underestimated. There is also a wilful ignorance of the vital role played by dispatchable 24/7 generation.
What has emerged is essentially two markets: a day market and a night market. During the day, it’s common for electricity prices to be negative, mainly as a result of the widespread and somewhat unexpected expansion of domestic rooftop solar panels. At night, prices are much higher and it’s when dispatchable power comes to the fore, particularly if the wind is not blowing.
Another important change has been to interest rates. When interest rates were extremely low, the cost of capital to investors was extremely low as well. Now that interest rates have returned to more normal levels, the cost of capital has increased markedly, particularly for renewable energy installations carrying a lot of debt. Add the escalation in the cost of hardware and the shortage of workers, and the result has been an uncongenial backdrop to large-scale renewable energy investment.
This combined with the fact several coal-fired stations are heading towards closure has led to a degree of panic by state energy ministers as well as Bowen. It is surely ironic that the Victorian Labor government, which frequently proclaims its green credentials, is financially supporting the continuation of two brown-coal-fired electricity plants at unknown expense to the taxpayer.
(Note here that coal-fired plants are not a good fit with intermittent energy as they work on the basis of constant spinning. The cost curves of these plants resemble a bath tub: they decline in their early years and rise sharply towards the end of their lives. For instance, it has been estimated that the annual maintenance bill for the Yallourn power station in Victoria is close to $200 million.)
The mistakes made in managing and attempting to transform the east coast grid are too many to list. Mainly driven by politics rather than engineering and economics, the result has been a fiasco.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers during the ASIC annual forum at the Sofitel in Melbourne. Aaron Francis / The Australian
Treasurer Jim Chalmers during the ASIC annual forum at the Sofitel in Melbourne. Aaron Francis / The Australian
One example is the planned Marinus Link connecting Tasmania and Victoria. Because of huge cost overruns, the link has been halved and won’t be completed until the next decade. The federal government has agreed to take on a larger share of the cost, relieving the Tasmania government from some of the burden.
We are told six wind farms in Tasmania won’t be viable with this smaller link. But here’s the thing: what made sense was for Tasmania to supply dispatchable power to Victoria to underwrite its renewable energy folly, not to incentivise more renewable energy on the Apple Isle. It’s just one example of woolly, flawed thinking.
So, having come to a clear fork in the road, Bowen has decided the government must direct even more money at renewable energy.
The capacity mechanism known as the Capacity Investment Scheme will be used to spur more investment in renewable energy.
It’s worth describing here what the normal role of capacity mechanisms is. They are used in several places overseas to provide dispatchable power to grids when intermittent sources of power are unavailable. They are small relative to the size of the grid but involve gas and coal-fired plants being kept on standby.
The owners of these plants are paid to do so as well as for the power they generate if called on. There are several coal-fired plants in Britain, for instance, that are used in case of power shortages.
In what can be described only as an irrational decision, driven particularly by Victoria, our capacity mechanism includes only renewable energy and batteries, specifically barring coal and gas. It makes no sense at all and was driven entirely by ideology.
Bowen is proposing to lift the CIS from 6 gigawatts to 32GW using reverse auctions to underwrite the returns of renewable energy operators, with taxpayers picking up the tab. Where prices are below the strike price, operators will be compensated, but if the prices rise above that level, refunds are payable. The contracts may last for up to 15 years. It’s just another form of government subsidy following on from the Renewable Energy Target.
The key here is that Bowen wants taxpayers to bear the cost year in, year out – total dollar outlays unknown – of this intervention and thereby shield electricity consumers from even higher prices. It’s essentially smoke and mirrors because the costs still have to be borne one way or another. It’s astonishing that Jim Chalmers is going along with this proposal given the pressures the Treasurer faces to manage the budget better lest ongoing inflationary pressures persist.
There is a fair chance that Bowen’s plan B won’t work even though the higher subsidies should induce some additional renewable energy investment. The growing local resistance in the regions and the rapidly rising costs of renewable energy projects are counter forces. It’s why the minister has an equivocal position in respect of gas because open-cycle gas peaking plants are the obvious complement with renewable energy to firm the system.
It also opens the door to the Coalition to make the case for nuclear. It’s a centralised system that can use existing sites and transmission lines. It also provides prized 24/7 power. Other countries are accelerating their investments in nuclear power. We need to take note.
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From the ski lodge to the sea: our kids will never be free
Kevin Donnelly
As to why so many students wagged school last week protesting about the supposed man-made climate catastrophe and why so many will protest this week against Israel’s right to defend itself against the evil and barbaric invasion by Hamas … there are numerous reasons.
In 2006, Al Gore’s misleading video (in that it contains known errors) An Inconvenient Truth became routine viewing in schools across Australia spreading climate alarmism. One of the three cross-curricula priorities in the national curriculum is sustainability, mandating a deep green environmental perspective on all subjects.
Based on a revisionist view of history involving feminist, Marxist, and post-colonial theories students are taught, Western Civilisation is guilty of imperialism and white supremacy and that there is nothing unique or worth defending about liberal democracies like Australia or Israel.
Israel is seen as an artificial state created by white imperialists that has no right to exist. Hamas terrorists, instead of being evil and inhumane, are lauded as freedom fighters dedicated to liberating Palestinians from years of subjugation.
Students chanting from ‘the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ have no idea of where the Jordan River is or appreciate the land of Israel is the ancestral home of the Jews. It’s no wonder they are so easily duped.
Schools have long since stopped teaching students to think rationally and logically. Clear thinking has been replaced by emotion and cant. Emotion is the deciding factor determining how young people respond to argument and debate about contemporary issues.
‘I think, therefore I am’ has been replaced by ‘I feel, therefore I am right’ and any who believe otherwise are condemned as politically incorrect and cancelled for committing thought crime. The prevalence of cognitive dissonance adds to the heady mix of irrationality and ignorance.
To be human is to search for meaning and a sense of belonging as well as a commitment to something that gives purpose and direction. While the search for wisdom and truth as well as religious belief once provided that need, we now live in a world where subjectivism, ennui, and uncertainty prevail.
For many students climate alarmism is a religious faith where Greta Thunberg is the messiah and whatever the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change dictates reads as holy script. That the world is about to end is taken as beyond doubt leading to young girls terrified they can never be mothers.
Students marching in solidarity with banners declaring ‘free Palestine’, ‘Israel is a terrorist state’, and ‘the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ find purpose and meaning that gives their vacuous lives direction.
As argued by GK Chesterton, ‘When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.’
It is also vital to realise climate change alarmism and antisemitism are just two examples highlighting how schools have been turned into re-education camps where students are indoctrinated with mind control and group think.
Kindergarten children are taught gender and sexuality are fluid and dynamic and not God-given and biologically determined. Boys are taught men are inherently violent and misogynist and the curriculum, instead of patriotism and nation-building, teaches guilt, and self-loathing.
Why this has happened is clear. Drawing on Antonio Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony, over the last 40 years the cultural-left has taken control of the school curriculum and infected vulnerable students with neo-Marxist critical theory and Woke ideology.
After the second world war, Marxist academics argued to win the West, the focus had to be on infiltrating and capturing capitalist society’s ideological state apparatus (ISA). As argued by Louis Althusser:
‘But now for what is essential. What distinguishes the ISAs from the (Repressive) State Apparatus is the following basic difference: the Repressive State Apparatus functions by violence, whereas the Ideological State Apparatuses function by ideology.’
Althusser argues cultural-Marxists must take control of key institutions, including family, church, political and trade union organisations, the media, schools and universities. Turbocharged by the late 1960s Cultural Revolution, the left’s long march has succeeded beyond expectations.
Given schools have become neo-Marxist-inspired indoctrination camps, it’s understandable why thousands of parents across Australia are either home-schooling their children or establishing their own community schools.
Such an education is often religious in character where students are taught to be culturally literate, intellectually robust and morally and spiritually grounded. Instead of vague and ephemeral values, schools are committed to teaching virtues including love, courage, moderation, wisdom, and justice.
Instead of promoting language control, group think and mob hysteria, such an education is also based on rationality, reason and common sense. Much-needed attributes in this time of intellectual dishonesty and conformity and where intolerance is re-badged as tolerance.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/11/from-the-ski-lodge-to-the-sea-our-kids-will-never-be-free/
*****************************************************Moira Deeming’s fight to clear her name continues
The Victorian Liberals are unbelievably "wet"
Moira Deeming’s announcement that she intends to engage in legal action and lodge a defamation case against John Pesutto, Leader of the Victorian Liberal Party, is extremely disappointing. Not because of the road Ms Deeming has been forced to walk, but rather that the party leadership in Victoria cannot bring itself to apologise and retract the disgraceful comments made following the Let Women Speak rally.
Today we have politicians in state and federal Parliament – in the Upper and Lower Houses – brushing shoulders with terrorist sympathisers and crowds that routinely refer to themselves as ‘the New Nazis’. These are individuals who shout thinly-veiled threats of genocide against the Jewish people and the nation of Israel, and who hold signs that make the handful of cosplaying neo-Nazis at the women’s rally look like toddlers.
Let us not forget that those MPs standing with these pro-Palestinian protesters (who are undeniably also pro-Hamas – a globally designated Islamic terror group), are aware of what is being chanted in the streets of Australia, including ‘Gas the Jews!’ shouted on the steps of the Opera House for the whole world to hear.
Why do these MPs escape public shame? Why are they allowed to hide behind the meaningless banner of ‘it’s complicated’ while Ms Deeming remains unable to clear her name from a gate-crashing incident that had nothing to do with her, the Let Women Speak rally, or any of the women attending?
What happened to the left-wing mob that marched on the street in support of women in Canberra – why aren’t they marching for Ms Deeming?
Those left-wing feminists are too busy standing in solidarity with those whose heroes engaged in the mass rape, torture, and murder of Israeli women whose lives don’t count.
We expect the feminists and the left-wing mobs to lack moral integrity … but shame on the Victorian Liberals, and Mr Pesutto personally, for carrying on with this piece of political theatre against Ms Deeming.
This is a Liberal Party that desperately needs rescuing from its sopping wet LINO agenda that has left it as little more than Labor’s doormat where they clean their shoes on the way to the halls of power.
If Mr Pesutto was not unelectable before, he will now enter a new era of ridicule and infamy fighting for – what, exactly? What does the Liberal Party have to gain from this? Even if they were to win? A victory against Ms Deeming would be a victory for Labor. No conservative would vote for a party that strings up its conservative women for no reason at all.
It’s astonishing that such a tragic script could be taking place in the post-#MeToo world where Labor spent an entire election cycle arguing that the Liberals had a ‘women problem’. Mr Pesutto’s Victorian Liberals have a ‘women problem’. They also have a sanity problem.
Missing the point, Mr Pesutto said: ‘The issue has always been whether Ms Deeming called out or distanced herself from neo-Nazi protesters and references when asked to do so by senior Liberals. I will vigorously defend the Liberal Party and myself in any proceedings and will not be asking the party to cover any legal fees.’
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/11/moira-deemings-fight-to-clear-her-name-continues/
************************************Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Evelyn Rae, a conservative Australian political commentator
Margo Robbie -- a beautiful australian
My son Joe at ANU
One of the happiest pictures ever -- Cleo Smith, aged 4
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