MadFan
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Posts posted by MadFan
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That article was fabulous and dead-on - it's not about silencing journalists anymore; it's about assaulting people with so much information that they question what's true, become exhausted finding it, and give up.
"Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth."
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Coronavirus kills Chinese whistleblower doctor
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-51403795
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Suuure it did.
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Buttigieg's a moderate Republican. He's being financed by corporate interests and his policies have been changing accordingly. Wants to keep medicare firmly market-based, supports charter schools, supports continued military invention in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, wants to increase the defense budget (which is already more than $700 billion).
No thanks, not interested. Sanders all the way.
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I feel as though we're on this trajectory toward peril that we just can't stop, until the breaking point. There's too much momentum and too much to undo.
It's sad, and scary.
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Wishing for a second Scotland referendum.
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Can't get over all this - so many people and animals displaced.
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In some smaller communities here, parents leave their children outside the supermarket in their pushchairs.
Americans would be mortified.
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You can't pass a TV screen here without seeing it - it's really awful and sadly will continue to happen (and worse) if climate change keeps being ignored.
I hope your citizens are less docile than Canadians are...
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Church officials can now share information with secular law enforcement authorities. Critics said the confidentiality rule led to the concealment of abuse.
ROME — The Vatican on Tuesday said it would abolish the high level of secrecy it has applied to sexual-abuse accusations against clerics, ending a policy that critics said had often shielded priests from criminal punishment by the secular authorities.
Removing that cloak of confidentiality, the Roman Catholic Church is changing its stance to make it acceptable — but not required — to turn information about abuse claims over to the police, prosecutors and judges.
In recent years, church officials in the United States and some other countries have shared with civil authorities information about some sexual abuse allegations. But that cooperation, in theory, defied a decree adopted in 2001 that made the information a “pontifical secret” — the church’s most classified knowledge.
Victims and their advocates said the restrictions hampered civil authorities and helped conceal crimes, and they greeted Francis’ new instructions as a step forward.
“Things are decidedly changing,” said Francesco Zanardi, an Italian survivor of clerical abuse and the president of Rete l’Abuso, an Italian anti-abuse group.
Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, a group that tracks abuse in the church, said the pope had taken “an overdue and desperately needed step.”
“For decades, pontifical secrecy has been an obstruction to civil justice, spurring bishops worldwide to thwart prosecutions of abusive priests,” Ms. Barrett Doyle said in a statement. She called changing the policy “a first step toward decreasing the anti-victim bias of canon law.”
On Tuesday, the pope also made the canon law against child pornography more stringent, a change that victims’ groups had pushed for. Previously, possession or dissemination of pornographic images of children under 14 was considered a “most grave crime.” That category that will now apply to images of children under 18.
The secrecy change is the latest step in the church’s attempts to tackle the sexual abuse crisis that has dogged it for decades. Growing global pressure for greater accountability forced the issue to the front of Pope Francis’ agenda.
In response to the demands for change, Francis convened a summit meeting of church leaders in February to address the crisis. It ended with a call “for an all-out battle against the abuse of minors” and insistence that the church needed to protect children “from ravenous wolves.”
Weeks after that meeting, the pope issued a new canon law, requiring for the first time that church officials report abuse charges to Vatican prosecutors. Francis then issued a rule requiring that all church officials report to their superiors either abuse allegations or attempts to cover them up.
The rule announced on Tuesday was also a product of the February meeting, the Vatican said.
“This is a sign of openness, transparency and the willingness to collaborate with the civil authorities,” Andrea Tornielli, the editorial director of the Vatican’s communications office, wrote in a commentary.
Under the new norms, “any reporting, testimony and documents” related to sexual abuse “can now be handed over when requested to lawful authorities in their respective countries,” Mr. Tornielli wrote.
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I think karbatal means would you be willing to bend, and see "both sides". Whenever I hear that kind of rhetoric I think that that's what they said about us "regular gays" 25 years ago, and still do in many parts of the world today. Is there a "both sides" to passing anti-discrimination laws for gay people in employment, housing, education, public accommodations? How about black people using the same water fountains, movie theatres, schools, bus seats? What's up for discussion?
I'm glad that human biology was brought up - imagine the discussion was segregating black athletes from certain sports because on average they have greater lean body mass than non-black athletes. Or Dutch women because they tend to be taller. That would be absurd, right?
And yes, when gay men flirt with transphobia (and it happens often) it's particularly egregious. Just because we have it better than we ever have does not mean we should turn our backs on the group that is by far the most marginalized, and who has gone to bat for us many, many times.
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(NEW YORK) — J.K. Rowling is facing widespread criticism from the transgender community and other activists after tweeting support for a researcher who lost her job for stating that people cannot change their biological sex.
The researcher, Maya Forstater, had been a visiting fellow at the Centre for Global Development, which in March declined to renew her contract. A London judge this week upheld her dismissal, finding that her views of sexual identity were “absolutist,” even if they violate someone’s “dignity and/or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment.”
On Thursday morning, Rowling tweeted a response that said:
The Harry Potter author is otherwise known for her liberal political views and many on Twitter labeled her a TERF (Trans Exclusive Radical Feminist). Among those criticizing her was the Human Rights Campaign, which tweeted:
A spokeswoman for Rowling said that the author would not have any further comment.
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46 minutes ago, horn said:
First class had the most carbon footprint
She didn't buy a first class seat. She sat on the floor and then one became available, and she took it. I really don't get what your point is here...
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4 hours ago, karbatal said:
I don't like her because she's absurdly simplistic and a fake product.
Karby honey, who isn't simplistic at 16?
Her role is as public figurehead to inspire people and raise awareness across the world, hence the 'spectacles' like boating across the ocean etc. It makes people take pause and notice. A video conference would be like every other video conference about climate change: ignored.
The planning and policy should come from our governments, but they're doing fuck all.
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33 minutes ago, Raider of the lost Ark said:
I don't think this is mutually exclusive. There are lots of ideas that impose restrictions on big companies and certain industries that I fully support. Interestingly those ideas affect younger generations the most. Prohibit cheap flights immediately. There should be no flights within Europe less than 150 EUR one way. Have people pay for their returns when they bought stuff (especially clothes) online. These things can be easily implemented and will help to reduce carbon emmissions big time. Have railroads reactivated or invest in new ones for transporting goods, get the goods of the road. Everything that is delivered from further away than 50 or 100 kilometres must be transported by trains, not by trucks. There are other things, not limited to carbon emmissions. Only have glass bottles, no plastic, no cans.Those glass bottles must be returned to supermarkets and from there on recycled. Works already perfectly fine with water bottles, beer bottles in Germany. Why not extend this system to all beverages. And while we are at it. Why do we need to have dairy products in plastic? Put it in glass. Prohibit all those paper/plastic mugs you get at Starbucks etc. People can easily bring their porcelain or stainless steel mugs to be filled up. All of the aformentioned things can be easily implemented (except reactivating and building new reailroads) and from my perspective it something people will absolutely support (well, of course not the people who are used to fly 10 times a year to Mallorca for EUR 19.00 just to get drunk and of course the people who are used to buy the same pair of trousers in 5 different sizes just to send 4 or all of them back for free). I think all those things are common sense and in result resistance from the general population will be minimal. Let's start with those things, not with the most controversial thing like prohibiting cars.
I agree with all of those things. My point was that it's funny that we tend to want to find the flaw in those who do mostly good, rather than in those who blatantly do bad. Greta rode a train first class - shock horror - I mean really...does this supersede the massive urgency she's brought to climate change in the past year? No. It's a part of human psychology though, but I'd leave it someone more knowledgeable than me to explain why.
It's the same reason people picked apart Hillary when Donald was much worse. The same reason people who make $50K a year cry about refugees and strong social welfare systems but not Jeff Bezos, the Panama Papers revealing how the incredibly wealthy are part of an enormous criminal conspiracy to dodge taxes and hoard their wealth in offshore accounts, or Budweiser spending $5 million on a commercial to brag about how they donated $100K worth of water.
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Why are you more concerned with her than the conglomerates who are actively anti-environment?
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The same department as roads and rail?
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On 12/1/2019 at 1:41 PM, Kelmadfan said:
Yes. It’s distract, divide, & dumbed-down. . That’s how “they” roll. They want us poor, stupid and sick. That’s how the corporate profits roll. And the politicians are with those who have the cash. They only care about their constituents during an election. Then it’s back to serving the corporate machine.
Wonderfully said.
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On 11/30/2019 at 12:05 PM, Kelmadfan said:
I’ll bet! Carry on.
It's just another non issue they engender to distract everyone from the real problems at hand. They do it every time; for the last election it was undocumented Mexican immigrants. Who honestly cares?
The way I see it, the two elephants in the room are climate change, and the obscenely wealthy continuing to fuck over the middle and lower classes through healthcare, education, and jobs. If I could waive a magic wand every American would vote with this top of mind.
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It's been legal in Canada since October 2018 and we're all doing just fine.
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Good. You never want innocent bystanders to get hurt, like that guy in the Hong Kong airport, but I love when people protest their governments en masse. They are there to serve the people, not the other way around. We should never forget that. Sadly we're mostly utterly docile and accept whatever bullshit we get, but there's always a straw that breaks the camel's back and this is one of those instances.
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4 minutes ago, I Don’t Search I Find said:
Next!
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2 hours ago, I Don’t Search I Find said:
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Some days it really feels like we're utterly doomed. This news has kept me up for nights.
2020 U.S. Election
in Politics and World Events
Posted
Democratic socialism is a tough sell in the US because there's almost no sense of community there. It's all about ME ME ME and at most your 'nuclear family.' So how do you turn such an individualistic society into one who cares about, well, society?