Monthly Archives: April 2012
MMP Review
In the 2011 Referendum on the Voting System, held in conjunction with the General Election on 26 November, the majority of voters chose to keep MMP as New Zealand’s voting system.
This triggered an independent review of MMP, conducted by the Electoral Commission, in which all of us can have our say on any changes we’d like to see made to the way MMP works.
TODAY (5 April) is the deadline for submissions for those wanting to present in person to the Commission. Submissions must be lodged with the Commission by midnight on 5 April.
You can make a quick submission. Or you can make a full submission. To make a quick submission, all you have to write is, e.g.,
I believe that to achieve better representation the MMP threshold should be lowered to 2.5%.
Let’s give freedom-friendly parties such as the ALCP and the Libz a better chance next time. And dissuade people from committing “the ends justify the means” atrocities such as “strategically voting” for John Banks to get Don Brash into Parliament.
In the words of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ
What you are about to do, do quickly (John 13:27)
Okay, so that was quoted totally out of context. Never mind. Just SUBMIT! DO IT NOW!
Is your mind so small that you have to fall in with the pack wherever they run?
Have you ever thought about your soul – can it be saved?
Or perhaps you think that when you’re dead you just stay in your grave
Is God just a thought within your head or is he a part of you?
Is Christ just a name that you read in a book when you were in school?When you think about death do you lose your breath or
do you keep your cool?
Would you like to see the Pope on the end of a rope
do you think he’s a fool?
Well I have seen the truth, yes I’ve seen the light and I’ve changed my ways
And I’ll be prepared when you’re lonely and scared at the end of our daysCould it be you’re afraid of what your friends might say
IF THEY KNEW you believed in God above?
They should realize before they criticize
that God is the only way to loveIs your mind so small that you have to fall
In with the pack wherever they run
Will you still sneer when death is near
And say they may as well worship the sun?I think it was true it was people like you that crucified Christ
I think it is sad the opinion you had was the only one voiced
Will you be so sure when your day is near, say you don’t believe?
You had the chance but you turned it down, now you can’t retrievePerhaps you’ll think before you say that God is dead and gone
Open your eyes, just realize that he’s the one
The only one who can save you now from all this sin and hate
Or will you jeer at all you hear? Yes! I think it’s too late.
Black Sabbath. Masters of Reality.
See that bird?
An excerpt from Richard Feynman’s What is Science?
Regarding this business about names and words, I would tell you another story. We used to go up to the Catskill Mountains for vacations. In New York, you go the Catskill Mountains for vacations. The poor husbands had to go to work during the week, but they would come rushing out for weekends and stay with their families. On the weekends, my father would take me for walks in the woods. He often took me for walks, and we learned all about nature, and so on, in the process. But the other children, friends of mine also wanted to go, and tried to get my father to take them. He didn’t want to, because he said I was more advanced. I’m not trying to tell you how to teach, because what my father was doing was with a class of just one student; if he had a class of more than one, he was incapable of doing it.
So we went alone for our walk in the woods. But mothers were very powerful in those day’s as they are now, and they convinced the other fathers that they had to take their own sons out for walks in the woods. So all fathers took all sons out for walks in the woods one Sunday afternoon. The next day, Monday, we were playing in the fields and this boy said to me, “See that bird standing on the stump there? What’s the name of it?”
I said, “I haven’t got the slightest idea.”
He said, “It’s a brown-throated thrush. Your father doesn’t teach you much about science.”
I smiled to myself, because my father had already taught me that [the name] doesn’t tell me anything about the bird. He taught me “See that bird? It’s a brown-throated thrush, but in Germany it’s called a halsenflugel, and in Chinese they call it a chung ling and even if you know all those names for it, you still know nothing about the bird—you only know something about people; what they call that bird. Now that thrush sings, and teaches its young to fly, and flies so many miles away during the summer across the country, and nobody knows how it finds its way,” and so forth. There is a difference between the name of the thing and what goes on.
What is Science? was presented at the fifteenth annual meeting of the National Science Teachers Association, in New York City (1966).
The Child Casualties of the Jihad on Drugs.
Many people including many atheists consider the War on drugs to be a Holy War, and as such they are prepared to turn a blind eye to the great many evils that this opressive war inflicts directly and indirectly upon countless peaceful and innocent victems. They accept heavy ‘Collateral damage’ without loosing a minutes sleep. Indeed they sleep easier because they think this holy war is actually making them safer. Thats ultimately all that matters to them. They are the very definition of hypocrisy… they are quick to point a Judgemental finger at others, all the while pretending they themselves are without sin.
Reading todays NZ Herald I noticed a tiny column…
‘Mother charged with child neglect after P-making chemicals found’
A mother has been charged with neglecting a girl after police allegedly found chemicals and equipment for making methamphetamine at her house.
Karena Heta appeared at the Auckland District Court today charged with having a .22 calibre rifle, supplying the class A drug methamphetamine and the class B drug gamma hydroxybutric acid, known as GHB.
According to police charge sheets, the 49-year-old had custody of a 12-year-old girl.
The charge sheet alleges that Heta neglected the girl “in a manner likely to cause her injury to health” by exposing her to the risks associated with taking methamphetamine.
Read full article here :
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10796213
Now there is no denying that this is a shocking thing for a mother to do. It is absolutely careless and wrong and I would never deny that, yet I want to point out that people who believe such cases simply demonstrate one of the many evils of Drugs *are wrong*. They are in fact failing to apportion just blame against themselves and the government they elect, for creating a social environment whereby Clandestine Drug manufacturing thrives, resulting in children being exposed to Drug manufacture and the underworld.
Of course the Legions of fear driven bigots and Booze guzzling hypocrites, don’t wish to consider their own collaboration in this nasty business. They don’t want to contemplate the reality that if it were not for The politics of Prohibition which they endorse that such drugs would be manufactured safely in industrial areas far away from little children, and using better quality raw materials and safe work practices, thereby reducing the most serious problems that are directly caused by not being able to manufacture such drugs legitimately.
So Ye Self-righteous Jihadists how about turning some of your moral outrage you currently harbour against such terrible mothers and Fathers whom exposed their children to Dangerous chemicals *against your selves!* You share in their guilt. You vote for this scenario. Hang your heads in shame!
Tim Wikiriwhi
Low skilled workers: Go to Hell!
Libertarianz Party leader Dr. Richard McGrath has visited here before … and, judging by the title of yesterday’s press release, I think he must have been reading my series of posts on Hell.
National Party Throws Low Skilled Workers into the Furnace
Monday, 2 April 2012
Press Release: Libertarianz Party
National Party Throws Low Skilled Workers into the FurnaceLibertarianz leader Richard McGrath described the government’s decision to raise the minimum wage as short-sighted command-and-control interference in the economy, and predicted it will cost jobs.
“Raising the minimum wage to $13.50 an hour means anyone whose productivity falls below that level is now even more likely to be laid off,” he said.
“Clearly, Kate Wilkinson would rather have unemployed 16 and 17 year olds sitting at home on their Playstations earning $3.82 an hour on the dole, than earning $10 an hour in training or $13 an hour in a job.”
“This speaks volumes about the priorities and the economic literacy of this government. Like the Labour one before them, they believe it acceptable to consign unskilled kids to the scrap heap by pricing them off the job market, as long as it looks good.”
“If Kate Wilkinson thinks repeated upward adjustments of the minimum wage are just and viable, why doesn’t she lift it to $100 an hour?”
“The Libertarianz Party is the only political party in this country that would help low skilled school leavers and others into work by abolishing the minimum wage, thus allowing a fluctuating jobs market to determine the price of labour.”
“This would create a more transparent relationship between the skill level required for different occupations, the relative overall value of these jobs, and the supply of people willing and able to be employed in them.”
“Without the minimum wage distorting the job market, it is likely that anyone truly willing to work would be able to find a job commensurate with their talents and abilities.”
“Minimum wage laws cause false signals to be generated about the worth of various occupations, which is cruel and misleading for low skilled people who wish to work. My party is saddened to see National going down the Muldoonist road yet again.”
Libertarianz: More Freedom, Less Government
www.libertarianz.org.nzDr Richard McGrath
Libertarianz Leader
Phone: 027 322 2907
Email: richard.mcgrath@libertarianz.org.nz
Throwing low skilled workers into the “fiery furnace” like weeds (Matthew 13:42) is exactly what National’s decision to increase the minimum wage amounts to. In effect, National is telling low skilled workers: Go to Hell!
I prefer the new-fangled “trash” to the old-fashioned “fire” metaphor. Of course, it is the National Party and their wealth-destroying poverty-trap-perpetuating minimum wage laws that should be consigned to the waste-basket of history, not the State-forsaken low skilled workers.
Thanks, Richard, for one hell of a press release!
Lost Keys
Hell in the Teachings of Jesus (Part 2)
This is the tenth in a 13-part series wherein I give you Hell, a little booklet by the inimitable Dr. Jeff Obadiah Simmonds.
Another text used to prove the existence of hell as a place of suffering is where Jesus referred to a place of misery where there would be “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Mt 25.30). Jesus was contrasting those who are in “the Kingdom of God” with those who are excluded from the Kingdom and mourn their unfortunate situation. We tend to project the Kingdom of God into the after-life—”the Kingdom of God” means “heaven,” and therefore those who are weeping and gnashing are therefore also in the after-life, but deprived of entry into heaven, and are therefore in hell.
I would see things somewhat differently. The Kingdom of God exists where-ever God’s rule is manifested. Obviously God’s rule is manifested in heaven, but the purpose of Christ’s coming was to bring this rule—the Kingdom—to earth. The Kingdom of God is therefore not something we enter when we die, but when we submit to God’s dominion by becoming the disciples of Jesus. Those who are outside this dominion are deprived of life and meaning and will suffer. The picture which Jesus presents in His parables are not necessarily of judgement in the after-life.
Jesus taught the coming of this Kingdom—an invasion of God’s rule into this world—in which the rich and powerful would be deprived of wealth and power. In that day, says Jesus, they “will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Mt 8.12) while those who are currently marginalised will sit down to feast in God’s great banquet. But this is not a picture of what will happen when we die, but when this world is transformed by the Gospel and the Kingdom.
As such, the image of weeping and gnashing does not provide evidence of eternal torment of the wicked in hell.
However, some of these “weeping and gnashing of teeth” texts do seem to refer to the Judgement. But here the image of burning fire is used. In the parable of the weeds, for example, Jesus speaks of the wheat being brought into God’s barn, while the weeds are “tied in bundles to be burned” (Mt 13.30). Again, while judgement by fire may be read as an eternal torture in hell, it may more reasonably be read as a metaphor of judgement and destruction—weeds are not subjected to eternal burning, but are thrown into a fire so that they may be consumed and be no more. However, Jesus explains this parable and says that those who cause sin will be weeded out of His kingdom and the angels will “will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Mt 13.41-42). The question is whether the weeping and gnashing constitutes conclusive evidence that those thrown into the fire will be consciously tortured for all eternity.
Will the wicked weep and gnash their teeth while they are being consumed by fire—a short-lived pain which ends in their destruction, or shall we assume that Jesus is speaking an eternity of torture? The Scripture is ambiguous in that the case can be argued either way. I would suggest, however, that the image of fire as destruction tips the scales in favour of an annihilationist interpretation.
A similar parable occurs in Mt 13.47-50. The judgement is compared to the separation of fish caught in a net. The unrighteous, who are “thrown into the fiery furnace where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” are compared to unkosher fish which are “thrown away”. The point that inedible fish are destroyed, like the weeds, and not subjected to enduring torment again may point in the direction of destruction, and not torment, of the unsaved.
Annihilationists say that the annihilation of the wicked is eternal—this sentence will never be reversed. As such, this extinction of being is eternal punishment.