Wednesday, January 24, 2018



Ireland: Catholic counsellors must accept gay couples

I think the church should welcome this opportunity with open arms.  The counselling they offer would of course be Catholic counselling, telling homosexuals that homosexuality is an abomination to God and unless they sincerely repent and cease the sinful behavior they will be judged by God in the hour of their death and be consigned to everlasting hellfire.

And whatever problems they have would be solved by prayer and by marrying a good Catholic woman with a wonderful Irish name like Concepta Finnigan and then having at least 8 children in the traditional Irish Catholic manner.  And your present problems will feel like nothing compared to the problems you will find then.

And the session could be ended by telling the sinner that he should say the rosary every day at lauds, prime, terce, sext, none, vespers and compline.  That would be very powerful counselling indeed and would certainly give the homosexual a way ahead.



Catholic marriage counselling agencies could face closure unless they agree to stop “discriminating” against LGBT couples, The Times can reveal.

The government is threatening to withdraw millions of euros of public funding unless the counselling services agree to change their longstanding policy of excluding same-sex couples from their services on religious grounds. It means that groups such as Accord could be facing closure having already had their funding cut by more than 40 per cent three years ago.

At the moment, the Department of Children and Youth Affairs is paying at least €1.6 million to religious counselling groups that have policies of refusing homosexual couples for marriage or relationship counselling

SOURCE





Stop Feministsplaining Sex to Men

Ben Shapiro
   
There’s a word that has become popular in feminist circles these days: “mansplaining.” The word is a mashup of “man” and “explaining” and refers to men who condescendingly explain the facts of life to women. So, for example, if a man believes a woman doesn’t understand directions and slowly repeats those directions to a woman, he’s mansplaining and, therefore, guilty of cruelty and stupidity.

Well, feminists, it’s time to stop “feministsplaining” sex to men.

The #MeToo movement has been good for America. It’s good that women who have been sexually assaulted and abused are coming forward; it’s good that we’re finally having conversations about the nature of consent and the problems with a casual hookup culture that obfuscates sexual responsibility. But the #MeToo movement hasn’t stopped there. Men are now being pilloried for the sin of taking women too literally — of not reading women’s minds.

Take, for example, “Grace,” an anonymous woman who went on a rotten date with comedian Aziz Ansari. According to Grace, Ansari treated her abominably: He took her to dinner, gave her white wine instead of red, pushed her to come to his apartment and then engaged in a vigorous round of sexual activities to which she apparently consented. She eventually said no — and when she did, he stopped. Later, she suggested that Ansari hadn’t obeyed her “non-verbal cues” — nonverbal cues that reportedly included undressing and then voluntarily servicing Ansari.

In the aftermath, Grace felt used. So she texted Ansari, explaining to him that she felt terrible about the date. “I want to make sure you’re aware so maybe the next girl doesn’t have to cry on the ride home,” she said.

This is feministsplaining sex. Here’s the problem: The condescension isn’t earned. From Grace’s story, it seems she was less than clear in her nonverbal communications but she wanted Ansari to read her mind — and that when he didn’t, she therefore had leeway to lecture him about his sins and, more broadly, those of all men.

It’s not just Grace. Rachel Thompson of Mashable explained: “The responses to the woman’s story are peppered with the word ‘should.’ She should have said no … For many women, uttering an explicit ‘no’ is not as easy or straightforward as you might think.” Well, as it turns out, reading minds is not quite as easy or straightforward as feminists might think. It was feminists who boiled down sexual relations to the issue of consent. Traditionalists always argued that physical intimacy and emotional intimacy ought to be linked. But they were accused of removing female agency with such linkage and condemned for “mansplaining.”

How about this: no feministsplaining and no mansplaining when it comes to sex? How about we instead focus on communication between men and women? How about sexual partners demand more from one another than physical release so they aren’t disappointed that they’re being treated as sex objects? A system prizing love and commitment doesn’t require nearly the amount of explanation as a system that dispenses with both.

SOURCE






Facebook admits social media can HARM democracy

Execs say the site was 'far too slow' in spotting 'abuse' since the US election as fake news and foreign interference 'corrode' the democratic process

Facebook has finally admitted that the social media platform may be detrimental to democracy.

In a series of blog posts today, Facebook execs said the site was ‘far too slow’ in identifying negative influences that rose with the 2016 US election, citing Russian interference, 'toxic discourse,' and the ‘dangerous consequences’ of fake news.

Now, Facebook says it is ‘making up for lost time’ in fighting forces that threaten to 'corrode' democracy. 

The firm is set to roll out major changes to the News Feed, with plans to prioritize content from friends and family, and make posts from business, brands, and media less prominent – and, ensure the 'news people see, while less overall, is high quality.'

In three blog posts, Facebook warned today that it could offer no assurance that social media was on balance good for democracy.

While social media previously ‘seemed like a positive,’ Facebook’s Global Politics and Government Outreach Director Katie Harbath says ‘the last US presidential campaign changed that.’ 

'Facebook should have been quicker to identify to the rise of “fake news” and echo chambers,' Harbath wrote, acknowledging the influence of foreign interference.

According to the company, Russian agents created 80,000 posts during the 2016 US election, which reached around 126 million people over two years.

The firm said it was trying what it could to stop alleged meddling in elections by Russia or anyone else.

But, according to Samidh Chakrabarti, Facebook Product Manager, Civic Engagement, 'we at Facebook were far too slow to recognize how bad actors were abusing our platform.'

The acknowledgement takes the company another step further from CEO Mark Zuckerberg's comments in 2016 that it was 'crazy' to say Facebook influenced the US election.

Up until now, Facebook has prioritized material that its algorithms think people will engage with through comments, 'likes' or other ways of showing interest.

But 33-year-old founder Mark Zuckerberg says he wants to change the focus to help users have 'more meaningful social interactions.'

The move follows his resolution in 2018 to 'fix' the site. It is also in response to criticism that Facebook and its social media competitors reinforce users' views on social and political issues. Critics also say sites like Facebook lead to addictive viewing habits.

Zuckerberg cited research that suggests reading 'passively' on social media was damaging for people's mental health, while interacting proactively with friends was positive.

According to Adam Mosseri, Facebook’s New Feed boss, in practice the change mean

    Posts from friends and family will get more prominence that video, news, and other content from formal Facebook pages, such as companies and celebrities

    The number of comments on a post will count more than the number of Likes 

    Posts where people have spend the time to write lengthy comments will be prioritized over those with only short comments

    While, news and video will still appear in News Feed, the number of friends sharing it will matter more than its overall popularity

The shift could mean that the time people spend on Facebook and some measures of engagement would go down in the short term.

However, Zuckerberg said it would be better for users and for the business over the long term.

The sharing of false or misleading headlines on social media has become a global issue, after accusations that Russia tried to influence votes in the United States, Britain and France. Moscow denies the allegations. 

But, Facebook's problem goes even beyond Russia, the execs say.

'Without transparency, it can be hard to hold politicians accountable for their own words,' Chakrabarti wrote.

'Micro-targeting can enable dishonest campaigns to spread toxic discourse without much consequence. Democracy then suffers because we don’t get the full picture of what our leaders are promising us.

'This is an even more pernicious problem than foreign interference. But we hope that by setting a new bar for transparency, we can tackle both of these challenges simultaneously.'

Facebook says ads that ran on the company's social media platform and have been linked to a Russian internet agency were seen by an estimated 10 million people before and after the 2016 US presidential election.

The company turned 3,000 ads over to three congressional committees in October 2017 as part of their investigations into Russian influence in the 2016 election.

In a company blog post, Facebook's Elliot Schrage said the ads appeared to focus on divisive social and political messages, including LGBT issues, immigration and gun rights.

In many cases, the ads encouraged people to follow pages on those issues.

Facebook said last month that the ads appear to have come from accounts associated with a Russian entity called the Internet Research Agency.

Fewer than half of the ads - which ran between 2015 and 2017 - were seen before the election, with 56 percent of them seen after the election.

Facebook, the largest social network with more than 2 billion users, addressed social media's role in democracy in blog posts from a Harvard University professor, Cass Sunstein, and from an employee working on the subject.  

'If there’s one fundamental truth about social media’s impact on democracy it’s that it amplifies human intent — both good and bad,' Chakrabarti wrote in his post.

'At its best, it allows us to express ourselves and take action. At its worst, it allows people to spread misinformation and corrode democracy.

'I wish I could guarantee that the positives are destined to outweigh the negatives, but I can’t.'

Facebook, he added, has a 'moral duty to understand how these technologies are being used and what can be done to make communities like Facebook as representative, civil and trustworthy as possible.'

Contrite Facebook executives were already fanning out across Europe this week to address the company's slow response to abuses on its platform, such as hate speech and foreign influence campaigns.

US lawmakers have held hearings on the role of social media in elections, and this month Facebook widened an investigation into the run-up to Britain's 2016 referendum on EU membership.

Chakrabarti expressed Facebook's regrets about the 2016 US elections, when according to the company Russian agents created 80,000 posts that reached around 126 million people over two years.

The company should have done better, he wrote, and he said Facebook was making up for lost time by disabling suspect accounts, making election ads visible beyond the targeted audience and requiring those running election ads to confirm their identities.

Twitter and Alphabet's Google and YouTube have announced similar attempts at self-regulation.

Chakrabarti said Facebook had helped democracy in ways, such as getting more Americans to register to vote.

Sunstein, a law professor and Facebook consultant who also worked in the administration of former US President Barack Obama, said in a blog post that social media was a work in progress and that companies would need to experiment with changes to improve.

Another test of social media's role in elections lies ahead in March, when Italy votes in a national election already marked by claims of fake news spreading on Facebook.

SOURCE





Australia’s inequality crisis: Oxfam paper

Who said it is a crisis?  The world's most favoured nations where living standards are at their highest all have substantial inequality.  You ALWAYS have inequality.  Even the old Soviet Union had its nomenklatura.  You lift people up by working to increase economic efficiency, not by red-eyed envy of others. 

What we read below is just one big paroxysm of hate for those who have done well.  In the usual Leftist way, it is totally one sided, with no mention of the vast amount of tax that rich people pay or their many philanthropic activities.  Mentioning that would undermine the hate. 

Nor is there any mention of how people got rich -- usually by providing a new service or an improvement to existing services.  The fact that very rich people keep emerging in Australia simply shows that Australia is a land of opportunity with few barriers to improved economic activity for those who have realistic business ideas and the energy to implement them

Oxfam seems to put out "reports" such as the one below annually.  There was a very similar one at the beginning of last year. Oxfam was founded to help the poor but it now seems to be obsessed with the rich




The head of Oxfam in Australia is Helen Szoke, whose surname seems to have been taken from her Czechoslovakian adoptive parents. She had a rather distressed childhood, which probably had some role in making her a lifelong far-Leftist. You will, for instance, not see her telling anybody that Life is getting much, much better for the world's poor, however you want to measure it – whether it's in terms of average incomes, life expectancy, child mortality, disease, poverty, or women's rights.  Leftists don't want to know about all that. They feed on grievance

She is a former head of the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission. Her determinations there always seemed perverse, although carefully put. 



A record number of Australian billionaires amassed an astonishing $38 billion increase in their wealth last financial year – enough money to pay for more than half of Federal public health spending, an Oxfam Australia briefing paper has revealed.

The briefing paper, Growing Gulf Between Work and Wealth, shows the number of Australian billionaires increased by eight to 33 last year – and has more than doubled over the past 10 years – while workers’ wages have stagnated.

Released as the world’s political and business leaders gather this week in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum, the Oxfam analysis shows inequality in Australia is higher than at any time over the past two decades. The share of wealth held by the richest one per cent continues to rise, while wage growth for ordinary workers has slowed to record lows – barely keeping up with the cost of living.

“Oxfam is committed to tackling poverty and inequality – but a broken economic system that is concentrating more wealth in the hands of the rich and powerful, while ordinary people struggle to scrape by, is fuelling an inequality crisis,” Dr Szoke said.

“Over the decade since the Global Financial Crisis, the wealth of Australian billionaires has increased by almost 140 per cent to a total of $115.4 billion last year. Yet over the same time, the average wages of ordinary Australians have increased by just 36 per cent and average household wealth grew by 12 per cent.

“The richest one per cent of Australians continue to own more wealth than the bottom 70 per cent of Australians combined. While everyday Australians are struggling more and more to get by, the wealthiest groups have grown richer and richer.”

The Oxfam paper also highlights that the system is broken for workers in Australian global supply chains – trapping people in poverty, no matter how hard they work.

“This economic injustice is nowhere more apparent than in the clothing industry, where the people – mainly women – making clothes for household Australian brands are often paid poverty wages,” Dr Szoke said.

“A handful of the highest paid chief executives in the Australian clothing retail sector earn, on average, about $6 million a year. At the same time, many women working in Bangladesh to make the clothes sold by these brands take home a minimum wage of AUD $974 a year.

“Garment workers earning this minimum wage in Bangladesh – which falls far short of a living wage to cover the basics – would have to work more than 10,000 years to make the same amount that one of the highest paid Australian fashion retail CEOs made in 2017.”

Dr Szoke said to tackle the top end of this inequality crisis, the Federal Government must end cuts to corporate taxes and introduce tougher tax transparency laws that require companies to publicly report on income, profits and taxes for every country in which they operate.

To address the other extreme of the economic divide, Dr Szoke said Australian companies should commit to ensuring at least a living wage to workers in their supply chains – and to publishing a step-by-step strategy outlining how this would be achieved.

“Hard work is no longer a guarantee for a better life – the system is clearly not working for a majority of people,” Dr Szoke said. “The Federal Government and Australian companies cannot ignore this inequality crisis and must act to curtail the widening gulf between the super-rich and ordinary workers.”

Media release received via email

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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