environment – Bruce Llama http://www.brucellama.com That's one crazy Llama Mon, 04 Jan 2016 02:22:31 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.5.4 Christians unite in prayer for countries affected by climate change http://www.brucellama.com/2011/11/08/christians-unite-in-prayer-for-countries-affected-by-climate-change/ Mon, 07 Nov 2011 22:39:43 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=2326 [SOURCE]

What?  Say that again:

Christians unite in prayer for countries affected by climate change

That’s what I thought you said.

Christians around the world have joined in prayer on Sunday for poor countries that are already experiencing the negative effect of climate change.

For over 2000 years christians have prayed for world peace, look how effective that’s been.   This is sure to work!

Around 50 countries, including Australia, signed up to take part in Hope for Creation.

50 countries – that sounds impressive.  World wide?  50 whole countries.  Wait… how many churches in each country?  I bet you don’t want to say.

Participating churches devote a section of their services to climate change.

They devote what?  A section of their service – how does that even work in a useful way?  Perhaps they have the kiddies do an interpretive dance.

Organisers Tearfund said there was an “urgent” need for action on climate change

Tearfund?  Are you serious?  They must be because they use quotes around urgent.

Yes, urgent need for action.  Urgent Action No. 1 – stop consuming.

and that the impact of erratic weather patterns was already having a “devastating” impact on impoverished communities and their livelihoods.

“devastating”, made more devastating with the use of quotes.  Brilliant!  Look how serious they are!

Ben Niblett, Tearfund’s Head of Campaigns, said: “We need world leaders to take ambitious and fair action to tackle climate change and provide the finance needed to help poor people adapt and develop sustainably.

Actually, Ben Nibble-it what we need is for everyone to take ambitious actions, no use relying on the leaders.  You can start by getting off your knees and helping with some money, reducing your carbon foot print and ensuring that all people in the world have access to a decent income.

“Hope for Creation combines the power of prayer, the passion for social justice and the determination to speak out, and demonstrates to the world that the church has a strong and united voice to bring to development issues.”

I’d like someone to define “power of prayer” for me.  A strong voice?  By praying?  Yeah, that’ll show the world how passionate you are for social justice.

The day of prayer comes ahead of UN climate talks in Durban at the end of the month.

Lots of things come ahead of those talks – so?

Tearfund is urging world leaders to be ambitious and secure an agreement on funding to help developing countries mitigate against the impact of climate change.

The only people needing to mitigate against the impact of climate change are the rich consumers in the western world.

Mr Niblett said: “Progress on agreeing a fair climate deal for poor communities has been painfully slow.

Well yes, that’s because you’re not doing anything useful.  At all.

On November 6 we will be praying with thousands of others that the process will pick up pace.

Thousands in the 50 countries, god is bound to prick up his ears on that.

We’re asking for Christians everywhere to join us by praying and speaking up for justice for our global neighbours and for action to protect God’s creation.

Yeah, god clearly needs a nudge to protect his creation, he’s so inattentive.  Praying is about as useful as trying to blow away CO2 .   Deep breaths everyone. purse those lips.. and exhale.

I’m staggered at the arrogance of christians.  Calling for pray to sort out climate change is such a weak cop-out and gives the false impression that christains actually give a toss and makes those on their knees think they are actually achieving something.

What a sad deluded world they live in.

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]]> Roast Penguin http://www.brucellama.com/2011/08/29/roast-penguin/ Mon, 29 Aug 2011 05:36:42 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=2216 [SOURCE]

I love Emperor Penguins.  They are so big and flappy.  They are resilient and amazing critters who roam around the Antarctica, breeding and eating and making lots of noise.  And there’s so many of them.

So, when one such penguin arrived in New Zealand and promptly got sick because he was eating sand instead of ice, he was taken in, surgery was done on him and he was nursed back to health to get a free trip on a research vessel back towards home.

Isn’t that sweet.

All to the tune of about $60,000. That’s NZ dollars.

I’m all for looking after our world, and the life that inhabits it.  I’m pretty sure the money spent on saving a penguin who couldn’t get home isn’t money well spent.  Why don’t we nip down to the Antarctic and save the baby Emperor Penguins that don’t get fed because their parent doesn’t return with food, or the egg freezes on  the ice?  We don’t because they’re not in danger of extinction.

That’s money that could have been spent on saving… oh I don’t know…. people in Africa starving perhaps.  It’d buy a lot of rice, at the very least they could tuck into some penguin steak.

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]]> Chinese die for your Ipad http://www.brucellama.com/2011/05/10/chinese-die-for-your-ipad/ http://www.brucellama.com/2011/05/10/chinese-die-for-your-ipad/#comments Mon, 09 May 2011 23:54:51 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=2010 [SOURCE]

Last year I blogged about Foxconn.  They make Ipads for our consummation.  The workers in the Foxconn factory commit suicide.  They leap out of the buildings to kill themselves because of the way they are treated.  Foxconn’s response, wasn’t to make conditions better for the workers, it was to put nets up, probably so they don’t have to pay for the clean up.

A new report into conditions at Apple’s manufacturing partner, Foxconn, has found slave labour conditions remain, with staff complaining of being worked to tears, exposure to harmful disease, pay rates below those necessary to survive and military-style management that routinely humiliates workers.

Nothing’s changed in China.  And you know why?  Because we continue to demand low price gadgets at the expense of other people’s safety.  Because they’re so far away and we don’t know them it’s ok.  This kind of treatment would not be tolerated in Australia, and yet rather than boycott Ipads, or any other piece of technology, we buy, buy buy.  We continue to demand them and to satisfy the corporate greed, they continue to supply them at the great cost of human life.

 

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]]> http://www.brucellama.com/2011/05/10/chinese-die-for-your-ipad/feed/ 3 Useless god http://www.brucellama.com/2011/04/28/useless-god/ http://www.brucellama.com/2011/04/28/useless-god/#comments Thu, 28 Apr 2011 02:30:53 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=1968 [SOURCE]
Encounter is a program on Radio National – part of the ABC.  It’s a sort of religious program that apparently ‘explores the connections between religion and life’.  This week they did a story on the floods in Central Victoria and as Martyn Scrimshaw a salvation army officer based in Bendigo was talking I was talking back to him:

Sometimes you really have to think about the response.

I’d suggest you’re not thinking about your responses enough.

Floods I think are – droughts and floods are probably a little bit easier, in that we live in a country where we will have droughts, and we will have flooding rains, and when the rain comes it does flood.

Well yes, you’ve got that right.  The response is fairly inane.  The question you really need to ask is why do we have floods and droughts if your god really cares?

And to a certain extent, talking to farmers and things,

You talk to things?

it puts hope in, like they might have lost their crop,

Not only have they lost a crop to flooding, but they’ve had many failed crops because of lack of water.

but the fact is that we needed a flood to fill dams, we needed a flood to fill the lakes and reservoirs, the long-term benefit of that flooding rain will be incredible.

OK, I agree, we need rains.  But really, what’s the point?  Surely your god is clued up enough to understand the devastation his lack of attention to details causes.  Rather than allow ten years of drought and then fill the damns over one weekend, why not give us about 30mm of rain a month, enough to keep everything topped up and prevent flooding.  He could also arrange for the rain to happen about 4.00 a.m. so it causes minimal disruptions.  Once a month we should have a bloody good thunderstorm with lots of thunder and lightning, I like a good thunderstorm.

The farmers can plant now knowing that the soil’s moist enough to plant, without worrying about looking at the sky.

I’ve yet to meet a farmer who doesn’t worry about the rain, just the right amount.  They are always looking at the sky, probably hoping now that they get good follow up rains with no more flooding, and then wondering if they’ll get enough water next season.

We just hope that the winter is fairly kind to us. But that’s the country we live in.

Would that be the country that your god created?  Your bastard god must’ve known that eventually we’d be trying to grow crops to feed the world.  Perhaps it was his day off.

How do we explain earthquakes and tsunamis and things like that? I don’t really know, all I know is that there is still hope.

Hope?  You’re hoping for earthquakes, tsunamis and things like that (are they the same things you talk to?).  If you don’t know how to explain them, then talk to a scientist.  Earthquakes happen when the crust of the earth moves.  It’s in big slabs and the slabs rub against each other as they move, causing shocks.  The shocks stir up the water, the water makes a wave and crashes when it hits the land.  See easy, and no need to wonder if god did it!

And while creation might groan, and nature throws these things at us,

If creation could groan, it’d be groaning about stupid religious types who thinks nature throws things.  Nature doesn’t give a flying fruit bat’s piss about you.

it’s out of that that we see incredible human good, how people support each other, encourage each other, that we haven’t got empty pockets, that we can still reach out.

Really?  Could it be that people just really care for their family and friends, their communities.  Not because of an evil god character, but because that’s how we do it in this society.  When you look at the devastation in Haiti after their earthquake you’ll see what little impact a few floods have actually had.  The people of Haiti now live an even worse existence with roaming gangs and no law.  The reason we handle natural disasters so well is because we have good government, wealth and support systems.

I believe that just shows us the good side that God created.

The good side?  So, your arsehole god also created a bad side that causes the death and destruction just so you can see the good side?  What an arse about system you believe in.

Coming up on Encounter:

The King James Bible – The Translation

Sunday 01 May 2011

First in a two-part series marking the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible. This week: the story of how six companies of men produced a new translation that has come to be regarded as one of the greatest works in the entire canon of English literature.

Oh, how exciting. I can hardly contain myself…

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]]> http://www.brucellama.com/2011/04/28/useless-god/feed/ 2 Boats from China http://www.brucellama.com/2010/12/27/boats-from-china/ Mon, 27 Dec 2010 04:07:11 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=1634 [SOURCE]

While people are worrying about boats from Indonesia carry illegal immigrants, some of them being dashed upon the shores of Christmas Island, (which is very disturbing in itself), the State Governement in Victoria, newly elected and all nice and shiny, is suggesting that we allow more ships in from China, their cargo would not be people – well, mainly not people, but shit.

The Government expects that the amount of containers arriving in Melbourne will quadruple over the next thirty years.

I don’t know how many containers we get now, but judging by the amount of shit in the shops in the lead up to Baby Jesus Dayâ„¢ we are getting plenty.  So, where’s all this extra stuff going to go?  Who’s going to buy the extra stuff?  With such a huge increase in incoming goods, we’re going to need more shopping centres, more trolleys, more cars, trucks and trains, more homes, more consumers and more money.

It’s news stories like this that make me wonder just how much we are trying to reduce the amount we consume, with all the talk of global warming, tax on carbon and finger pointing at the worlds major polluters, here we are considering increasing the amount of incoming stuff, thereby adding to the worlds pollution and it’s all ok.

Let’s now link the two stories together, with all the extra goods coming in we’ll need more people, so it’s about time we let the people in, the refugees, and indoctrinate them in the ways of a consumer society, after all, unless we all start getting truck loads of money, how will we afford all the extra shit we need to have a happy consumer life.

I rather suspect this is more about big companies making money that us caring for our society and our environment.  We continue to consume, without enough care, and until we reduce our consumption, no amount of carbon tax will reduce the pollution, no amount of aid will stop poverty and people will continue to find nations like Australia desirable destinations.

There’s all these fossil fuels and minerals in the ground, we dig them up and make stuff out of them, medicinal drugs, tyres, cars, televisions and so on.  We also dig them up and make them into reindeer antlers that we can stick on our cars so that our cars can also join in the festive season.

With all the extra containers coming in, no doubt we’ll be able to put huge antlers on our houses, we can cover all the electrical wires with tinsel,Car with Antlers we can hang giant Santa’s from every power pole and place fake Christmas trees on every street corner, and all because we will have quadrupled the amount of containers arriving on your shores.

I can hardly wait.

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]]> Bygones http://www.brucellama.com/2010/07/04/bygones/ Sun, 04 Jul 2010 03:32:35 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=1491 [SOURCE]

Billy “babe” Muehlenberg over at CultureWatch is struggling with the idea of truth.

Ideas have consequences and bad ideas have bad consequences. Unfortunately in the secular West, the rejection of God – which was meant to bring freedom – has simply resulted in bondage: bondage to bad ideas, bad thinking and bad worldviews.

Umm…. no.  That’s only a ‘truth’ if you think that there is a god.  I think it’s you who has the bad idea, bad thinking and bad worldviews Bill.

Stupid theories always bang their heads against the realities of life.

Bill then goes on and on about reality and how people want to make their own realities and truth.  Which is true, what he doesn’t see is that his own reality and outlook on life is jaded by a silly belief in something that just isn’t true.  God.  He has been banging his head against the reality of life, trying to spread the reality of his gospel with some sort of hope that the rest of us will fall in line and praise his rather pathetic god.

He wants to make points about Julia Gillard, the new Prime Minister, being an atheist.  She seeks to appease those that find her non-belief confronting by saying that it’s ok, she grew up baptist.  He has a real problem with that idea, as she can’t have it both ways.  Alas, again he misses the point, she wants to keep stupid dumbarsed believers happy and comfortable so that it doesn’t have a negative effect on the vote, that is, after all the reality of her world.

He’s closing statement however just sums it all up:

But as truth goes missing, it is time for God’s people to stand up and be counted. Christians are always the true radicals, the true revolutionaries. We go against the prevailing worldview and the spirit of the age. We proclaim black and white in an age of 99 shades of grey.

Uh huh.  Radical.  Revolutionary.  Let’s face it, you really just want the world to stay back when men like you could tell everyone how to live.  You want to be the only font of truth.  You should get out more, the world is not black and white, we have plenty of other things to celebrate and be happy about, you and your ilk need to accept that you no longer have the sway you once did, and rightly so.  You’re not a radical, true or otherwise, you are a throwback to a bygone era, and I’m glad you’re a bygone.

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]]> Committing Suicide – Part 2 http://www.brucellama.com/2010/06/07/committing-suicide-part-2/ Mon, 07 Jun 2010 12:05:30 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=1475 [SOURCE]

Yesterday I blogged about Foxconn.  It seems that the workers in their China factory are so overworked that some of them committed suicide.

Foxconn have decided that that isn’t acceptable and have given their workers a 60% payrise.  Wow, that’s pretty impressive!  There are conditions:

  1. Doesn’t come into effect until October (So stiff shit if you feel like killing yourself now)
  2. It’s performance based after a 3 month review (How do you get better performance if you already work 12 hour days, are only allowed a 10 minute break every two hours and get yelled at all the time?)
  3. There are no details on how the performance is to be assessed.

Sounds like to me it’s just lip service.  And what will Apple do when they discover the cost of their parts has increased?  Will they pass that cost onto you the consumer, will they absorb it, or will they simply go to another manufacturer?

Nice move Foxconn, let’s hope you are really sincere in trying to save the lives of your workers.

 

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]]> Committing Suicide http://www.brucellama.com/2010/06/06/committing-suicide/ http://www.brucellama.com/2010/06/06/committing-suicide/#comments Sun, 06 Jun 2010 10:02:28 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=1468 [SOURCE]

Are you the owner of any computer equipment?  The answer is yes, unless someone has printed this out and handed it to you, you are probably reading this on some sort of device with a screen.  Chances are that Foxconn have had a hand in some component on the device.

I’ve sprayed before about our use of technology and how we rely on China to get our stuff.  We have things made in China because it’s dirt cheap.  Making stuff so cheaply means that we enjoy most of our products at a very low cost and we can consume more.  More consummation means higher profits for big companies and lets face it, that’s the way our system works.

But here’s the human face of our lifestyle.  People are killing themselves.

”Life is meaningless,” said Ah Wei, 21, his fingernails stained black with the dust from the hundreds of mobile phones he has burnished during a 12-hour overnight shift. ”Every day I repeat the same thing I did yesterday. We get yelled at all the time. It’s very tough around here.”

He said conversation on the production line is forbidden, bathroom breaks are kept to 10 minutes every two hours, and constant noise from the factory washed past his ear plugs, damaging his hearing.

Now, they’re making this stuff for you and me.  We let them make this stuff and turn a blind eye to how it’s made.  We buy the stuff from big companies that outsource the manufacturing to the cheapest company they can find.

How can we fix this?  How do we get the companies to pay their workers a decent wage?  Why does this have to hit the press before the CEO’s of big multi-nationals step in to make sure all their staff, including those far away, are adequately looked after?  Finally, what can you do, as a consumer, to ensure that the stuff you buy is made in a fair and ethical way?  You think on that.

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]]> http://www.brucellama.com/2010/06/06/committing-suicide/feed/ 1 Shake me up baby! http://www.brucellama.com/2010/05/08/shake-me-up-baby/ Sat, 08 May 2010 04:33:33 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=1432 The christians, well some of them, are waiting for the coming of their smelly dirty jewish messiah (I don’t imagine cleanliness was high on the agenda back in the year dot). They want so much for the world to end, for all the sinners to be cast into hell that they are on the look out for signs.

Luke 21 talks about signs for the end of the age – it matters not that the signs are common occurances, but you know, that’s ok.

Here are the signs:

There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven.

Wow, earthquakes – how interesting! This is a great one to latch on to. Earthquakes happen every day, hundreds, and every now and then we get a big one. Now, there’s nothing in Luke that says there will be a lot of extra earthquakes, just great earthquakes, but some of our dear deluded christians have noticed an increase in earthquakes.1  Therefore the end of the world is nigh.  Jesus is coming again.  Alas, they always fail to understand that the science of detecting quakes and their strength has been growing over the last 100 years.  So while the records have been more accurate as the technology changes, this is not an indication that there have been more quakes.  The common source of the information comes from the USGS site that clearly states, at the top of the page:

Selected earthquakes of general historic interest.

Wow, famines – how interesting! There are hungry people in the world.  Jesus must be on the way back.  Oh, and look, some of the hungry people in the world also have earthquakes.  Double whammy.

…food shortages continue because many people do not have enough money to buy food or land on which to raise crops. In developing countries, well over a billion people have to live on an income of a dollar or less a day. The majority of these suffer from chronic hunger2

I wonder if they see a link.  Food is short, no money, chronic hunger, no crops.  It would seem to me that the barrier here is that you have lots of money and lots of food and they have none.  It’s within your power to fix this problem, and I would have thought that the word of your bastard god would be enough for you to understand you must feed the poor. Give them some money to feed themselves.  You know, share.  (arseholes)

Wow, pestilence. There are sick people, science can’t seem to find a cure for sick people, there’s an awful lot of them, there’s HIV/AIDS, swine flu, cholera, bird flu.  Oh, and look, poor people seem to get sick, they also live in earthquake country and have no money or food so can’t remain fit and healthy because of the famine.  But don’t worry, it’s a sign that jesus is coming back, so we can’t help you because jesus is coming back and we really want that to happen.

Then there’s the fearful events and great signs from heaven.   There’s the attack on the world trade centre, there’s the ongoing terrorist threat, there’s global warming, there’s earthquakes, famine and pestilence.  There’s comets, planets lining up, threat of meteors landing on us, all from the heavens…

And on and on it goes,  people of faith who think they can predict when their sweet baby jesus is coming back, based on signs that happen every day for hundreds of thousands of years, do nothing to help those in need.  They are so busy looking out for the signs, making sure they’ve said their prayers, that they simply can’t see the truth.

The world is the way it is because of dumb fucks like you.  Stop shoving the food in your face, stop saving the money to buy things, and get out and actually do something to help those in need.  Jesus will love you for it.

  1. My good mate everlastinglife has tabulated the increase for us here ↩
  2.  This is from the jehovahs, they really want the endtimes to happen SOURCE ↩

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]]> The world farts http://www.brucellama.com/2009/12/19/the-world-farts/ Sat, 19 Dec 2009 05:26:39 +0000 http://www.brucellama.com/?p=1106 All these leaders, those elected, those who seized power, those puppets, all of them went to Copenhagen to talk about global warming.  You know, the change in the climate of this planet, the only place the we have to live.  There’s ongoing concern and evidence that the climate is changing.  Did I mention that this was happening on the planet that we call home and that we just can’t move to somewhere with a better view?  There are those that think we are not to blame for the change, there are those that think that nothing has change.  There are those that are blaming the change in the weather patterns on human activity.

You’d have to be pretty bloody stupid not to notice that the ice is melting on mountains, you’d have to be bloody stupid not to notice an increase in typhoons in the Philippines. On going droughts around the world. There are signs man, read the fucking signs.

Regardless of whether or not we can actually save the world, we need to try.  If the changes are a result of our actions, then we need to make some changes, if the changes are a perfect example of the earth doing it’s thing then that is no reason for us not to try and change it.  After all we have been changing the environment to suit ourselves for thousands of years, but this is the biggie.  If we fuck this up we as a species are screwed and as much as we have found water on the moon there is no chance of us all moving there.

So, our beloved world leaders all meet for a chin wag about climate change and what do to about it.  And it descended into a bitch session.  The poorer countries  staged a walk out in protest and the richer  countries just got their own way.

The best they could do was to agree to a three page statement that changes nothing.

But even the leaders of the world’s biggest countries admit that the provisions in the final document will not protect the planet from dangerous changes in global temperatures. [SOURCE]

It seems so obvious to me, we consume, factories make the stuff I consume, factories create pollution by making the stuff that I consume, pollution causes a change in the atmosphere that traps the sun’s heat and cause the temperature to rise because the factories pollute making the stuff I consume.

My answer, reduce consumption.  Why don’t we do that?  Money.  It’s all about economies.  If we stop consuming, factories must stop producing, if that happens then profits fall, people get laid off, companies go broke, admin staff get laid off, our society as we know it breaks down.

At this time of year, Christmas, our shops our full of useless shit.  Row after row of crap that has been produced to meet the demand.  We don’t really need this shit, but large corporations seem hellbent on making it for us, it’s how our economy works.  It’s supposed to be all about supply and demand, but I’m not sure whether we are demanding it or the companies simply make the demand by supplying the shit.

You and me need to take some responsibility for this.  Government and corporations need to take some responsibility.  There is no use talking about reducing emissions (which sounds rather something like Brother Baker was saying during a talk on masturbation) if you don’t tie that in with talking about reducing consumption.

A useless, gutless effort is the talkfest at Copenhagen.

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