This has a week when it is hard to tell the direction the world is moving in.
Are we in the progressive universe where the arc of history points towards justice (as MLK once said), or is the universe that’s going to hell in a handbasket? this has been the week of contradictiosn.
We might have been could be talking about the Albanese government’s 43 per cent target for emissions reduction – with opinion divided between hailing the “end of the climate wars” and disappointment because a 1.5 degree temperature rise ceiling needs greater effort. But that is one event – a vote in federal parliament that can be interpreted two or more different ways.
But here’s some events that seem contradictory to this observer.
Is big capitalism’s cancel culture good or bad? The very conservative Christian website Caldron Pool announced it was banned from Instagram this week. Meta told the site on appeal that the ban was permanent. “We have already reviewed this decision and it can’t be reversed.” But oddly enough, the site is still on Facebook at least, owned by the same company. Meta. The editor, who was banned on Facebook as well as Instagram, appears to have a
new Facebook page. (This story originally reported Caldron Pool was banned from Facebook.)
Credit card giants, Visa and Mastercard have banded together to ban payments to pornhub’s advertising arm. Pornhub is reputedly the main disseminator of webporn. This new ban comes on top of the credit card companies banning subscriber payments in 2020 after the site was found to be running child porn.
Both Visa and Mastercard said this week that card payments for advertising on Pornhub and its parent company MindGeek would be suspended after a lawsuit stoked controversy over whether the payments giants could be facilitating child pornography.
Here at The other cheek we are not a fan of the anti-vax campaigning by the Caldron Pool site, the way they suggest all Christians should be politically (very) conservative or the way they talk about people they disagree with. But we believe that a blanket ban on all they say, violates the principle of free speech.
Starving the world’s largest pornographer of funding – one with a record of disseminating images of under age persons despite protests – is something cgristians will definitely support.
So progress – or hell in a handbasket?
Sri Lankan’s two way traffic:
is Australia making progress on how we treat asylum seekers? On the SAME DAY (Obadiah is forced to shout) the Nadesalingam family were granted permanent visas after a four-year immigration battle, 46 other Sri Lankans get delivered back to Sri Lanka by a Auistralian border force boat.
One family, now back in Biloela. A bigger group back in Sri Lanka by boat. Accepting that having children in Australia might be the difference, either Sri Lanka is safe to return to or not. Are these two outcomes good news or bad?