Ethics

More mistreatment of live animal exports.

New footage has emerged of sheep exported live to Jordan being mistreated.

Tony Abbott practicing for the triathlon inside parliament.

Tony Abbott practicing for the triathlon inside parliament.

Remember, Tony Abbott in his election campaign promised to apologise to Indonesia, Jordan etc for Australia halting live animal exports after they mistreated the animals in violation of agreements. He also promised he’d then increase the rates at which animals get exported live to these countries.

barnaby joyceBarnaby Joyce, at the bottom of the article linked to claims that the sheep in the video aren’t being treated the way the sheep in the video are being treated.  Although he doesn’t say it so blatantly, instead he chooses to use doublespeak or at the very least something rather similar to doublespeak. Continue reading →

Please help get science and reason in gossip mags. #equality #StopAVN

The ACL (Australian Christian Lobby) has recently started a campaign to get their followers and supporters to get Margaret Court nominated and voted in as a National Living Treasure by the National Trust of Australia.  Women’s Day, one of the most popular gossip mags here in Australia, has a website with a short-list of 100 nominees where you can vote.

In an attempt to counter this, we’d like to try to get as many people as possible to vote instead for Professor Ian Frazer (#32 in the list), the inventor of the Gardasil vaccine.  Reasons why you should support him are given below the jump. Continue reading →

Australian Vaccination Network at Woodford Folk Festival. #StopAVN

I’ve spoken about the Australian Vaccination Network before, but those have generally only been mentions and references, I’ve never really gone in to who and what they are.

EDIT: BREAKING NEWS! It appears StopAVN have done something fantastic and unexpected at Woodford Folk Festival!  Please scroll down to the next bolded “EDIT:” and ensure even if you don’t read most of this, you at least read that!!! 😀

Who are the Australian Vaccination Network?
The Australian Vaccination Network (AVN), despite all claims to the contrary, are an anti-vaccination group.  They are headed up by Meryl Dorey and claim they’re not, they claim they just support informed choice and provide a counter to the governments provides.  However, the information the AVN provide is wrong on almost all counts which means it’s not really an informed choice they’re providing but a misinformed one, and if the governments provides is pro-vaccine, then any stance counter to that surely must be anti?

Their preferred sources of information are not scientific studies, but rather conspiracy theorist sites such as whale.to (a site that collects any and all articles and claims no matter how crazy and unsubstantiated they are), conspiracy theorists such as David Icke (who promotes world leaders and the royal family being lizard people), and people with revoked medical licenses such as the disgraced Andrew Wakefield.

They’ve had their charity license revoked.  In the last two years, only two issues of their 6/year magazine “Living Wisdom” has been released (and despite being so far behind in issues owed, they’re still actively pushing subscriptions).  They regularly cry oppression, censorship and demand free speech, despite blocking/banning anyone who dares counter their supposed-not president Meryl Dorey with information that is nothing more than factual. They have also been caught filing numerous false DMCA requests to hide public and factual information they don’t like.  The Australian Vaccination Network about as hypocritical as one can get. Continue reading →

Christopher Maloney is a defeated quack.

Almost two years ago now I wrote a blog post about Christopher Maloney, Naturopathic Doctor / Not a Doctor / Quack Extroadinairre who had used non-legal threats towards WordPress to shut down a science bloggers blog after the person dared write a post which rightfully called Christopher Maloney a quack.

At the time, Christopher Maloney was throwing out threats of lawsuits left right and centre, and twisting anything and everything he possibly could to make it falsely look like he was being persecuted.  Not long after this, all news on him died off and this was the last the blogosphere heard.  This wasn’t the end of his actions though.

It has now become apparent that Christopher Maloney, Quack, N.D. had utilised his wife’s legal services to sue the original blogger.  A S.L.A.P.P. suit was filed against Mr Hawkins. Continue reading →

ANZ Obstetricians to back female ritualistic mutilation.

This is just horrific.  The Royal Australian New Zealand College of Obstetricians is about to discuss backing the mutilation of women according to 2000 year old goat herder’s barbaric magical rituals.

Their “justification” for this (and I use the term lightly, there is no justification for such horrific non-consensual barbarism) is that it will minimise back-yard amateur illegal procedures which leaves girls scarred for life.

Not that this will be any better.  It’s a horrific thing to do to young girls.  It often leaves women without the ability to feel sexual pleasure and is just another way to demean and put them down further.  Along with the burka and other such bullshit this is just segregation and discrimination.  It’s bigoted sexism that should have been wiped out in the west decades ago, rather than being supported. Continue reading →

Why you need to support gay marriage.

A good friend of mine, Riayn, posted a blog entry earlier today that left me flabbergasted.  An elderly gay couple in the US who had gone to extraordinary lengths to set up the best legal support of each other they could were totally used, abused, and destroyed by the local council.  They had it all, they had it all stolen from them, all because of bigotry and homophobia.  Treated worse than they would have been were they just single, separate people.

This kind of thing is atrocious and everyone involved deserves to have the book thrown at them.  It is a horrendous abuse of human rights, and EXACTLY the reason why we NEED equal rights for gay people when it comes to marriage. Continue reading →

Catchup #2: Catholic Church supports Pedophilia.

The catholic church is reeling at the moment from a disaster of their own making.  For centuries now it has been well known that the catholic church has pedophiles in its ranks.  It has been well known that they often just move priests around rather than booting them out.  This is all starting to catch up with them now as people are coming out left right and centre all around the world telling their stories.

The catholic church are pulling out any and all stocks to try and quieten this down.  Blaming anyone and everyone they can from atheists to secularism, technology, homosexuals, and even the jews.  They’re behaving like a little child “It wasn’t me, it was dolly”.  They’re pleading for people to not be so upset, to give them a break, let them handle it internally.  They’re calling these vile rumours.  They’re not. Continue reading →

NSW schools to get ethics as an alternative to religion.

Right now, public schools across Australia generally have religious education classes.  Thanks to the high involvement and lack of seperation between church and state in this country, generally if someone does not wish their kid to be indoctrinated in these classes, the childs only option is to sit out and do, well, nothing.

The Humanist Society of Victoria have been pushing for a number of years to have an alternative so that kids who sit out of these classes have something productive to do other than sit in a small room with no books and nothing to do but twiddle their thumbs.  This has always been rejected by the religious right and their influences though as it may give these kids an upper hand, allowing them an opportunity to get educated in something the other kids cannot.  They fail every time to see the irony here, they are essentially saying their own course on religion is useless and does not contribute to ones education.

What the Humanist Society of Victoria have been pushing for the strongest, is an ethics class as an alternative.  More irony to the religious right, they are essentially saying the kids who attend religion class won’t learn about ethics.  A quick look at the bible seems to confirm this.

After that very long introduction though, I am finally getting to my point.  It would appear the NSW government has beaten Victoria to the punch.  Out of almost nowhere, the NSW Premier Nathan Reese has announced today that schools across the state of NSW will be getting ethics classes as an alternative to religion. Continue reading →

No good without god?

Atheist Bus 001Of the claims that come forth from religious people, there is one that is probably the most commonly used, and it is the one the majority of theists have in common despite their highly splintered sects.  Whether fundamentalist or name-only, whether christian or pagan, there is one area they generally (not always, but generally) tend to agree.  That area, that argument, is that one cannot be good without god.

It doesn’t seem that offensive a statement, does it?  Really though, it is a horribly offensive and rude thing for them to say.  Essentially they are saying that those who do not have a positive belief in a god or gods are evil people, amoral, completely unable to be good, deceptive, rude, backstabbing, conniving.  How would you feel if someone were to say that to you?

But do morals really come from a god or gods? Continue reading →