There is a long-going legal dispute between Christians and Malaysian authorities about the use of the word "Allah" to mean "God" in Malay language (Bahasa Malaysia) Christian publications.

Muslims argue that the word "Allah" exclusively denotes the God of monotheistic Islam. Christians say that "Allah" is an Arabic word that has been used by those of other religious beliefs, including the Jews, in reference to God in many other parts of the world, notably in Arab nations and Indonesia. Catholics in particular say that their use of "Allah" is not something new. They have invoked the word for generations in prayers and at mass in Malay.

A 2009 High Court ruling that allowed Catholic weekly The Herald to use "Allah" in its Bahasa Malaysia section. But the case is remains sub judice after the government won a stay of the High Court decision

Use of the word "Allah" by non-Muslims is constrained by laws that differ between the various Malaysian states and the situation is complex.

Pending resolution of the case, thousands of newly-printed Malay Bibles that include the word "Allah" were impounded. Thirty thousand of them were recently released in Sarawak, but only after they had been stamped with a government seal and serial numbered—without the owner’s consent. In Port Klang, 5,100 Bibles imported by the Bible Society of Malaysia were similarly defaced and released.

The stamp on the inside page of the Bible’s cover says: Untuk kegunaan penganut Kristian sahaja ["For Christian use only"].

(The 'Bible' in the picture is in fact a New Testament with Psalms and Proverbs.)

The Government is something of a bind as some Muslims have resented the use of the word "Allah" by non-Muslims and there has been arson and vandalism of several houses of worship.

The government defended the stamping of the Bibles as "standard protocol", saying that to do so was the only way to release the books quickly as requested by the Bible Society of Malaysia. Otherwise they would have continued to be impounded pending resolution of the court appeal. The minister for Home Affairs complained about Catholic unwillingness to expunge the word "Allah" from the Bible.

In Sarawak, local native Christians are highly upset at what they see as a desecration of their holy book and will make their feelings felt at the ballot box. They will not use the Bibles.

I do not think that stamping an ink-and-paper book desecrates the word of God. Much more serious, however, is the Government’s restriction of the use of the Bible to Christians. Still worse is the tracking of the books through serial numbers.

Through these steps, the Malaysian Government continues to place freedom of religion at serious risk and prohibits most of its people even from reading the Bible in their own language or a language that the understand.

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According to the Canberra Times the Heritage Division of the federal Environment Department will have its budget reduced by 30 per cent next financial year, resulting in 30 job losses and the end of work on important projects.

The division's funding will be cut by $3.8 million, leaving $7.6 million and a list of undone tasks. Projects will end and jobs will go, assessments of new places for the National Heritage List will be reduced to almost nothing and the work program of the Australian Heritage Council will be gutted. The cuts are a departmental response to government-imposed cuts, rather than a specific government decision.

Greens heritage spokesman Scott Ludlam said he was not surprised by the budget cuts. "They have been bleeding them dry by attrition for the past couple of years," Senator Ludlam said. "We don't have a national heritage strategy, what we have is good departmental people working in somewhat of a vacuum and I can't see how reducing staff numbers that way is going to help the situation."

Already there have been failures due lack of staffing in the Department. (Remember the pink batts?).

The Rudd/Gillard Government has shown a distinct cultural cringe, slashing vital heritage and cultural programs and institutions to save few tens of millions, while spending multiple billions on some programs that have been ill-managed and wasteful. But calculated to be popular.

In similar vein the Labor Government slashed the National Capital Commission to save a few million, leaving management and maintenance of the national capital parts of Canberra in disarray. Good management of the nation capital does buy votes in Western Sydney and the majority of Canberra voters are rusted-on lefties anyway.

Now it appears that the ACT Government must consider a broad-based environmental levy on households and businesses to help Canberra maintain its environmental amenity. ACT Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment Maxine Cooper will make the recommendation in a on the management of the Canberra Nature Park.

Old-time Liberals like Sir Robert Menzies must be turning in their graves, as would be former Labor leaders and culture-buffs Gough Whitlam and Paul Keating, if they were not still living!

If the Liberal weren't such ratbags, I'd be tempted to give them a preference vote for the first time in my life.

If the Daily Telegraph (21 Mar 11) is to be believed (a difficult task at the best of times), Prime Minister Gillard has said that her personal stance against same-sex marriage is due to her conservative upbringing.

Ms Gillard said she was "on the conservative side" of the gay marriage issue "because of the way our society is and how we got here".

"I think that there are some important things from our past that need to continue to be part of our present and part of our future," she said. "[...] marriage being between a man and a woman has a special status.

"Now, I know people might look at me and think that's something that they wouldn't necessarily expect me to say, but that is what I believe.

"I'm on the record as saying things like I think it's important for people to understand their Bible stories, not because I'm an advocate of religion — clearly, I'm not — but once again, what comes from the Bible has formed such an important part of our culture."

Ms Gillard said she had a "pro-union, pro-Labor upbringing in a quite conservative family, in the sense of personal values".

I mention this not to argue the case for or against same-sex marriage, but to express astonishment and dismay at the ludicrous way in which Ms Gillard is making public policy.

Ms Gillard's personal upbringing and her personal conservatism are utterly irrelevant. She might attempt to assess the Australian people's views on the question. She might consider the ethics of the matter, or the public policy aspects. But to base public policy on mere attitudes she acquired as a child is unworthy of her and of the nation she purports to lead.

Although I am a Christian myself, I am aghast at the PM's invocation of the Bible. What relevance do 'Bible stories' have to the formulation of public policy on same-sex marriage? None. Some Christians may attempt an argument against same-sex marriage on 'Biblical' grounds, but they would not rely on childish reference to 'Bible stories'!

I do not criticise Ms Gillard for living with a life-partner to whom she is not formally married. But in doing so, does she not demonstrate that, for her, marriage is not important?

Why then does she make public policy about something that is not important to her personally on the basis of ill-informed assumptions about a religion in which she does not believe?

When I become dictator, the following words and expressions will be banned forever from conversation: 'like', 'and stuff', 'you know', 'sort of', 'ummm', 'aah', 'went' or 'goes' (when meaning 'said'), 'no problem', 'but' (at the end of a sentence or clause).

I would have people taught description and the articulation of abstracts.

In City Journal (Winter 2001), Clark Whelton investigates the liguistic phenomenon he calls, "Vagueness, the linguistic virus that infected spoken language in the late twentieth century."

Inability to say things, Whelton says, is "shifting the burden of communication from speaker to listener. Ambiguity, evasion, and body language . . . were transforming college English into a coded sign language in which speakers worked hard to avoid saying anything definite. I called it Vagueness."

Vagueness was on the march. Double-clutching ("What I said was, I said . . .") sprang into the arena. Playbacks, in which a speaker re-creates past events by narrating both sides of a conversation ("So I'm like, 'Want to, like, see a movie?' And he goes, 'No way.' And I go . . ."), made their entrance. I was baffled by what seemed to be a reversion to the idioms of childhood. And yet intern candidates were not hesitant or uncomfortable about speaking elementary school dialects in a college-level job interview. I engaged them in conversation and gradually realized that they saw Vagueness not as slang but as mainstream English. At long last, it dawned on me: Vagueness was not a campus fad or just another generational raid on proper locution. It was a coup. Linguistic rabble had stormed the grammar palace. The principles of effective speech had gone up in flames.

In 1988, my elder daughter graduated from Vassar. During a commencement reception, I asked one of her professors if he'd noticed any change in Vassar students' language skills. "The biggest difference," he replied, "is that by the time today's students arrive on campus, they've been juvenilized. You can hear it in the way they talk. There seems to be a reduced capacity for abstract thought." He went on to say that immature speech patterns used to be drummed out of kids in ninth grade. "Today, whatever way kids communicate seems to be fine with their high school teachers."

In the Boston Globe (10 Feb 2011) Havard economics professor Edward Glaeser provides a welcome boost to my inner-city green credentials. In "Why, if you love nature, you should move to the city" he describes a study of energy use for households with standardized size and income. The study found that households in areas with more than 10,000 people per square mile average 687 US gallons of gasoline per year, while households in areas with fewer than 1,000 people per square mile average 1,164 US gallons of gas per year.

A standardized household in Boston's urban core emits about 6,700 fewer pounds of carbon dioxide from burnt gasoline than an equivalent suburban household.

There are also differences in electricity and home heating between cities and suburbs, mostly because suburbanites have bigger homes, even holding income and family size constant. On average, electricity use is 88% higher in single-family detached homes than in apartments in buildings with five or more units.

Glaeser and his colleagues estimate that, all told, the standardized suburban household in the Boston area produces almost six tons more carbon dioxide per year than the standardized urban household.

Of course, Canberra people can enjoy nature and the inner city at once!

Thanks to PivotX, this site is getting an upgrade. Let my first entry in the new version be an old prayer:

From lightning and tempest; from earthquake, fire, and flood; from plague, pestilence, and famine, Good Lord, deliver us.

The Great Litany, Book of Common Prayer The Episcopal Church, 1979.

Editorial in a series Penny and Pound Foolish

On Climate, Who Needs the Facts?
Published: March 4, 2011

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

PRESIDENT'S F.Y. 2010-11 REQUEST: $2.3 MILLION
HOUSE VOTED: $0

The IPCC is the leading international scientific body studying climate change. Despite criticism—much of it manufactured by climate-change deniers—the panel has for more than a decade provided rigorous and balanced information to policy makers to help guide their efforts to prevent and mitigate the potentially disastrous effects of global warming.

Regrettably, politics trumps science among House Republicans, who recently voted to zero out this country's extremely modest $2.3 million annual commitment to the IPCC. The bill also slashes spending on a half-dozen domestic programs that study the causes and effects of climate change.

The budget for the Energy Information Agency—which gathers information on energy production, consumption and pollution—would be cut by one-sixth. Small but vital Interior Department programs that measure the impact of climate change on animal, plant and fish species and their habitat were reduced and in some cases nearly wiped out.

We have already pointed to devastating amendments to the budget resolution that, unless reversed by the Senate, will undermine the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate greenhouse gases. The bill would also make it impossible for President Obama to meet his promises to help poor countries save their rainforests and deploy clean energy technologies, also essential for addressing global warming.

Mr. Obama asked for $400 million for the World Bank's clean technology fund, $95 million for the bank's program to prevent deforestation and $90 million for its program to help at-risk nations cope with the effects of a warming planet by, for instance, developing drought-resistant crops. The House's answer in all three cases: zero.

An appalling performance. But the worst of it was the House's apparent belief that wishing away the evidence will eliminate the problem.

Injustice comes with the territory
by Jon Stanhope Canberra Times 04 Mar 2011

Imagine that the Federal Parliament were today to pass a law that would allow the Prime Minister, on a whim and without reference to anyone else, to instruct the Governor-General to overturn any — or indeed every — piece of legislation the Queensland Parliament passed on behalf of the people of that state. Imagine that Julia Gillard or Tony Abbott decided tomorrow that Tasmania, with a population of about half a million, was really too small to be trusted to legislate on the same matters as other states, and that the Prime Minister ought to be able to overturn any of its laws without mounting an argument, without going to court, just on a fancy.

It's impossible to imagine either scenario becoming a reality at least not without community outrage. Yet today in Australia the people of the ACT — quickly catching up in number to those living in Tasmania — endure precisely this form of second-class citizenship. Any and every ACT law is vulnerable to being overturned by the Prime Minister, in an act of executive fiat, on a whim, thanks to section35 of the Australian Capital Territory (Self-Government) Act 1988.

It is this section of the Self-Government Act that Senator Bob Brown proposes be amended. From the response of some socially conservative politicians and media commentators, one would imagine he was proposing something extraordinary. In fact, all he proposes is that Australians who, by accident of birth or relocation, happen to live in a territory, have the same rights as Australians living in the states to have their own parliaments legislate on their behalf, and to do so on the same range of topics as the states can legislate, without fear of having those laws overturned without explanation or debate.

Let's be clear: Senator Brown is not seeking to confer superior rights on the territories just equal rights. The claim that Senator Brown's Bill is a stalking horse for gay marriage or other socially progressive agendas is absurd, for the simple reason that any one of the state parliaments in this country could decide tomorrow to legislate for something that could go by the name of '"gay marriage". The ACT could do so too, if it chose. The difference is that if the Commonwealth took issue with a Victorian or Western Australian or South Australian law, it would need to either take the matter to the High Court and argue that the legislation conflicted with the Commonwealth's Marriage Act, or change the Constitution to remove the right of the states to legislate in that area.

In the ACT, the Prime Minister could simply pick up the phone to the Governor-General and tell her to disallow the territory law.

The critics also gloss over the fact that even if Senator Brown's amendment was successful, the Commonwealth would still have a constitutional power to override any ACT law. This is the power that Kevin Andrews relied upon when he introduced into the Commonwealth Parliament legislation that removed the right of the territories to legislate for euthanasia. Undemocratic and egregious as that exercise was, at least Mr Andrews had to stand up in the nation's Parliament and convince his colleagues of the merits of his case. No skulking off to Government House on a whimsy.

I'm saddened by the untimely death of the Reverend Peter J. Gomes, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and long time Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church at Harvard University. He died on Monday evening after suffering a brain aneurysm and heart attack at the much-too-young age of 68. There's an obituary in Havard Gazette.

I have read and re-read his The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart and especially Sermons: Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living. In all he has eleven volumes of wonderful published sermons.

Much more will be told of this remarkable and courageous man.