Why do some people struggle to make ‘healthy’ decisions, day after day?

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James Kesby, The University of Queensland and Shuichi Suetani, The University of Queensland

To navigate our way through the world, we constantly make choices. While we’ve all made our fair share of regrettable ones, most of us eventually learn from these – and we generally take this ability for granted.

For some people suffering from illnesses such as schizophrenia and substance use disorder – previously referred to as “substance abuse” – making the right choices can be extremely difficult.

In fact, many mental illnesses feature problems with cognition (thinking and comprehension), including depression and bipolar disorder. Decision-making ability varies in healthy people, too, sometimes as a consequence of differences in genetics.

What’s happening in the brains of these people that puts them on unequal footing to the rest of us?

Even simple decisions are complex

It’s important to note in day-to-day situations, there’s often no distinctly “right” or “wrong” choice to be made. However, some choices do result in healthier or more productive outcomes for us and those around us.

Our brains carry out a suite of complex processes when making decisions. And there are four important factors in each decision we make: value, motivation, action and strategy.

When choosing between two options, say A and B, we first need to understand which choice will be more rewarding, or provide more value. Our personal motivation to attain this reward then acts to bias which option we choose, or whether we make a choice at all.

Understanding what action is required to obtain A, or B, is also important. Combining all this information, we try to understand which strategy will maximise our rewards. And this lets us improve our decision-making ability over time.

There are multiple decision-making processes in the brain that help determine the choices we make.
James P. Kesby

Interrupted connections

We refer to our personal history and past experiences to guide our future choices. But mental disorders often cause problems in the decision-making process.

Research shows people with schizophrenia can have trouble understanding the relationship between their actions and the outcomes. This means they might keep selecting A, even if they know it’s no longer as valuable as B.

They’re also more willing to adopt strategies based on less information, in other words “jump to conclusions”, about outcomes.

Substance use disorder, particularly with stimulants such as methamphetamine or cocaine, often leads to people getting stuck when certain outcomes change.

For example, if we reversed all the street lights so red meant “go” and green meant “stop” without telling anyone, most people would get an initial shock but would eventually alter their behaviour.

People with stimulant dependence, however, would take longer to learn to stop on the green light – even if they kept getting into car accidents. This is because excessive stimulant use impacts regions in the brain that are crucial to adapting to changing environments.

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How the brain decodes each decision

The human brain contains multiple circuits (like pathways) and chemical messengers called “neurotransmitters”. These are responsible for guiding the processes discussed above.

The decision-making circuits commonly associated with schizophrenia and substance use disorder include areas of the “cortex” – the outer part of our brain important for complex thought (especially the frontal lobe) – that “talk” to hub areas such as the “striatum”. The striatum lets us select and then initiate an action to achieve a specific goal.

Different cortical areas are used to compute different processes in the brain. The prefrontal cortex helps us understand when a strategy needed for success changes. So, if we replaced all the traffic lights with sirens, the prefrontal cortex would help us realise this and adjust.

When the anticipated outcome of a choice changes (such as if A was better, but then suddenly B became better), the orbitofrontal cortex helps us identify this. Similarly, the striatum is key for anticipating what an outcome will be and when we will get the reward.

The cortex is the wrinkly layer that covers our brain. The striatum sits underneath the cortex, in the forebrain.
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Dopamine helps make your choices a reality

Extensive research efforts have found the brains of people experiencing schizophrenia function differently in multiple areas. It’s believed this could contribute to decision-making problems.

For the psychotic symptoms observed in schizophrenia (such as hallucinations and delusions), alterations in the neurotransmitter dopamine are important. Dopamine is a chemical in the brain that’s key for anticipating rewards, making decisions and controlling the physical actions necessary to act on our choices.

In our research, we’ve argued increases in dopamine in the striatum may cause problems with how the brain integrates information from the cortex, resulting in decision-making difficulties. However, this may only be the case in some individuals.

Stimulants also cause excessive dopamine release. They can alter the balance between goal-directed behaviours, which are flexible and respond to environmental changes – and habits, which are automatic and hard to break.

Usually, when we learn something new our brain keeps adapting and incorporating new information. But this is slow and cognitively demanding. Substance dependence can accelerate a person’s progression to habitual behaviour, wherein a set strategy or response become ingrained.

This then makes it hard to stop seeking drugs, even if the individual no longer finds them enjoyable.

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Read more:
Why that cigarette, chocolate bar, or new handbag feels so good: how pleasure affects our brain

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How we can we help people make better decisions

Unfortunately, problems with cognitive ability are hard to treat. There are no medications for schizophrenia or stimulant dependence shown to reliably improve cognition. This is a consequence of the human brain’s complexity.

That said, there are ways we can all improve our memory and decision-making, which may also help those with mental illnesses causing cognition problems.

For instance, cognitive remediation therapy is a behavioural approach that trains the brain to respond to certain situations better. For people with schizophrenia, it may improve visual memory and perhaps more complex decision-making.

Not being able to navigate decisions day-to-day is one of the most debilitating aspects of disorders that impact cognition. This leads to difficulties in maintaining work, keeping friends and leading a fulfilling life.

We need more research to understand how different brains make different decisions. Hopefully then we can improve the lives of those living with mental illness.

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Read more:
Five Things You Need To Know About Mental Health

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James Kesby, UQ Amplify Researcher, The University of Queensland and Shuichi Suetani, Psychiatrist, Queensland Brain Institute, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Do social media algorithms erode our ability to make decisions freely? The jury is out

Charles Deluvio/Unsplash, CC BY-SA

Lewis Mitchell and James Bagrow, University of Vermont

Social media algorithms, artificial intelligence, and our own genetics are among the factors influencing us beyond our awareness. This raises an ancient question: do we have control over our own lives? This article is part of The Conversation’s series on the science of free will.

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Have you ever watched a video or movie because YouTube or Netflix recommended it to you? Or added a friend on Facebook from the list of “people you may know”?

And how does Twitter decide which tweets to show you at the top of your feed?

These platforms are driven by algorithms, which rank and recommend content for us based on our data.

As Woodrow Hartzog, a professor of law and computer science at Northeastern University, Boston, explains:

If you want to know when social media companies are trying to manipulate you into disclosing information or engaging more, the answer is always.

So if we are making decisions based on what’s shown to us by these algorithms, what does that mean for our ability to make decisions freely?

What we see is tailored for us

An algorithm is a digital recipe: a list of rules for achieving an outcome, using a set of ingredients. Usually, for tech companies, that outcome is to make money by convincing us to buy something or keeping us scrolling in order to show us more advertisements.

The ingredients used are the data we provide through our actions online – knowingly or otherwise. Every time you like a post, watch a video, or buy something, you provide data that can be used to make predictions about your next move.

These algorithms can influence us, even if we’re not aware of it. As the New York Times’ Rabbit Hole podcast explores, YouTube’s recommendation algorithms can drive viewers to increasingly extreme content, potentially leading to online radicalisation.

Facebook’s News Feed algorithm ranks content to keep us engaged on the platform. It can produce a phenomenon called “emotional contagion”, in which seeing positive posts leads us to write positive posts ourselves, and seeing negative posts means we’re more likely to craft negative posts — though this study was controversial partially because the effect sizes were small.

Also, so-called “dark patterns” are designed to trick us into sharing more, or spending more on websites like Amazon. These are tricks of website design such as hiding the unsubscribe button, or showing how many people are buying the product you’re looking at right now. They subconsciously nudge you towards actions the site would like you to take.

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Read more:
Sludge: how corporations ‘nudge’ us into spending more

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You are being profiled

Cambridge Analytica, the company involved in the largest known Facebook data leak to date, claimed to be able to profile your psychology based on your “likes”. These profiles could then be used to target you with political advertising.

“Cookies” are small pieces of data which track us across websites. They are records of actions you’ve taken online (such as links clicked and pages visited) that are stored in the browser. When they are combined with data from multiple sources including from large-scale hacks, this is known as “data enrichment”. It can link our personal data like email addresses to other information such as our education level.

These data are regularly used by tech companies like Amazon, Facebook, and others to build profiles of us and predict our future behaviour.

You are being predicted

So, how much of your behaviour can be predicted by algorithms based on your data?

Our research, published in Nature Human Behaviour last year, explored this question by looking at how much information about you is contained in the posts your friends make on social media.

Using data from Twitter, we estimated how predictable peoples’ tweets were, using only the data from their friends. We found data from eight or nine friends was enough to be able to predict someone’s tweets just as well as if we had downloaded them directly (well over 50% accuracy, see graph below). Indeed, 95% of the potential predictive accuracy that a machine learning algorithm might achieve is obtainable just from friends’ data.

Average predictability from your circle of closest friends (blue line). A value of 50% means getting the next word right half of the time — no mean feat as most people have a vocabulary of around 5,000 words. The curve shows how much an AI algorithm can predict about you from your friends’ data. Roughly 8-9 friends are enough to predict your future posts as accurately as if the algorithm had access to your own data (dashed line).
Bagrow, Liu, & Mitchell (2019)

Our results mean that even if you #DeleteFacebook (which trended after the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018), you may still be able to be profiled, due to the social ties that remain. And that’s before we consider the things about Facebook that make it so difficult to delete anyway.

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Read more:
Why it’s so hard to #DeleteFacebook: Constant psychological boosts keep you hooked

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We also found it’s possible to build profiles of non-users — so-called “shadow profiles” — based on their contacts who are on the platform. Even if you have never used Facebook, if your friends do, there is the possibility a shadow profile could be built of you.

On social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, privacy is no longer tied to the individual, but to the network as a whole.

No more free will? Not quite

But all hope is not lost. If you do delete your account, the information contained in your social ties with friends grows stale over time. We found predictability gradually declines to a low level, so your privacy and anonymity will eventually return.

While it may seem like algorithms are eroding our ability to think for ourselves, it’s not necessarily the case. The evidence on the effectiveness of psychological profiling to influence voters is thin.

Most importantly, when it comes to the role of people versus algorithms in things like spreading (mis)information, people are just as important. On Facebook, the extent of your exposure to diverse points of view is more closely related to your social groupings than to the way News Feed presents you with content. And on Twitter, while “fake news” may spread faster than facts, it is primarily people who spread it, rather than bots.

Of course, content creators exploit social media platforms’ algorithms to promote content, on YouTube, Reddit and other platforms, not just the other way round.

At the end of the day, underneath all the algorithms are people. And we influence the algorithms just as much as they may influence us.

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Read more:
Don’t just blame YouTube’s algorithms for ‘radicalisation’. Humans also play a part

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Lewis Mitchell, Senior Lecturer in Applied Mathematics and James Bagrow, Associate Professor, Mathematics & Statistics, University of Vermont

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Three reasons why the decisions of Joyce and Nash may be difficult to challenge

Can decisions made by former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce while he was invalidly in parliament be challenged?
AAP/Mick Tsikas

Anne Twomey, University of Sydney

Now that Barnaby Joyce, Fiona Nash and three other senators have been declared invalidly elected, questions are being asked about whether close parliamentary votes still stand and decisions made by the disqualified ministers can be challenged.

As the issue has not arisen in Australia before, there is no direct judicial authority on the question. We can, however, draw some reasonable conclusions based on how the courts have dealt with analogous issues in the past.

Parliamentary votes

Over the years, quite a few MPs have been disqualified at both the Commonwealth and state levels, but no-one has ever challenged the validity of a law passed in reliance on the vote of a disqualified member.

The only Australian authority is the 1907 case of Vardon v O’Loghlin. In this case, Chief Justice Griffith and Justices Barton and Higgins stated that even though a senator was disqualified at the time of his election, “the proceedings of the Senate as a House of Parliament are not invalidated by the presence of a senator without title”.

Justice Isaacs added that while Vardon had not been validly elected, the “validity of his public acts as a senator prior to the declaration is, of course, unaffected”.

Although neither statement directly addressed the effectiveness of his vote in the house, the case has been taken as sufficient authority to suggest that past votes will stand, even though disqualified senators or MPs participated in them.

This view is supported by the general principle that a court will not interfere in the internal proceedings of parliament. Although courts will enforce “manner and form” requirements for a special majority to pass a particular type of bill, the courts will not look behind the parliamentary record of the votes, even when those records may be inaccurate.

If, therefore, anyone challenged the validity of a law on the basis that it was not passed by a majority of qualified MPs, it is most unlikely that a court would be prepared to hear the case and strike down the law.

Ministerial decisions

Section 64 of the Constitution provides that “no minister of state shall hold office for a longer period than three months unless he is or becomes a senator or a member of the House of Representatives”.

During the entirety of Joyce’s ministerial career – starting on September 18, 2013 – he was not validly a member of either house. Similarly, Nash was not validly a senator at any time during which she was assistant minister from 2013 and minister from 2015.

When each was first sworn in as a minister, and sworn in again after the July 2016 election, the three-month period would have run. But, after that, both Joyce and Nash would have been ministers invalidly.

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Further reading: If High Court decides against ministers with dual citizenship, could their decisions in office be challenged?

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Does this mean that the decisions they made during this period could be challenged? There are three important factors at play.

Standing

First, a person would have to have legal standing to bring a challenge. This means they would have to have a special interest in the decision, above that of the rest of the community, which goes beyond a mere intellectual or emotional interest in the matter.

For example, if the property or financial interests of a person are affected by a decision, then they may have standing.

There is uncertainty as to whether simply being an MP is enough to gain standing to challenge government decisions. This issue was raised in the case concerning the postal survey on same-sex marriage, but the High Court did not need to resolve it because the challenge failed anyway.

So, there is doubt as to whether opposition MPs would have the standing to challenge any decisions made by Nash or Joyce in their ministerial capacities.

The source of the decision-making power

Second, the decision would have to be one made by Joyce or Nash in accordance with a power conferred upon them as ministers by statute or another legal source.

The waters have been muddied by statements concerning the fact that ministerial decisions are often approved by cabinet.

The cabinet is a policymaking body. It does not have the power to give legal effect to its decisions. This is done through other bodies or persons. A decision to enact legislation is given effect by parliament. Many other decisions concerning appointments, the compulsory acquisition of property, and the making of regulations are given effect by the governor-general through the Federal Executive Council.

It is only those decisions made directly by Joyce or Nash on the basis that they were exercising a power conferred upon them in their capacity as a minister that could be challenged.

Timing and the de facto officer doctrine

The third issue concerns timing and the possible application of the “de facto officer” doctrine.

This is a common law doctrine that protects the validity of decisions made by a person who is clothed with the authority of an office, but is later found not to have been validly appointed to it.

If that person acts under the “colour” of the office, there is public acceptance of that authority and the government holds out that person as having the authority to exercise that power, then the doctrine is likely to give a measure of protection to exercises of that power, if they were otherwise validly made.

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Further reading: The High Court sticks to the letter of the law on the ‘citizenship seven’

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The doctrine is directed at protecting those who rely on the decisions in good faith, rather than protecting the decision-maker. The policy behind it is to avoid the chaos that might ensue if decisions are invalidated due to a defect in the appointment of the decision-maker.

For example, when the governor-general of the Solomon Islands was held to have been invalidly appointed as he did not meet the required qualifications, the High Court of the Solomon Islands relied on the de facto officer doctrine to uphold his actions, including the dissolution of parliament and the appointment of ministers.

In 1938, Owen Dixon wrote that there “are questions outstanding as to the limits of this principle or the conditions controlling its operation”. That remains true today. One of those questions is whether the doctrine operates when the disqualification of the office-holder is a result of a breach of the Constitution.

In 2000, the High Court unanimously held in Bond v The Queen that a question arising under the Constitution as to the powers exercisable by an officer of the Commonwealth “cannot be resolved by ignoring the alleged want of power on some basis of colourable or ostensible authority”.

The doctrine also ceases to apply when the mantle of authority is removed by the public expression of doubt as to the validity of the office of the decision-maker.

Accordingly, the decisions made by Joyce and Nash that would be most vulnerable to challenge are those made after they were referred to the Court of Disputed Returns, due to doubts as to the validity of their election to parliament. One would expect, however, that they were sufficiently prudent not to make contentious decisions during that period.

Where does this leave us?

It is most unlikely that any challenge to a law on the basis of votes in parliament by disqualified members would succeed in the courts.

There is a greater risk that a challenge to a ministerial decision, made by a disqualified MP when he or she did not validly hold a ministerial office, could be successfully challenged. But this would depend upon the action being brought by individuals or corporations that have a sufficient interest to attract standing and whether the decision was actually made by the disqualified minister (as opposed to another body, such as the Federal Executive Council).

It would also depend on the extent to which the de facto officers doctrine applied.

It may be the case that no decisions fall into this category, despite the feverish speculation. We can only wait and see.

Anne Twomey, Professor of Constitutional Law, University of Sydney

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

George Brandis suggests Joyce and Nash didn’t really make their ministerial decisions

Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra

Labor says decisions made by Barnaby Joyce and Fiona Nash are open to legal challenge but Attorney-General George Brandis suggests the two former ministers were not the ones who actually made them.

Joyce and Nash were disqualified from parliament by the High Court on Friday for having been dual citizens when elected.

The opposition says at least 20 executive decisions and 47 ministerial announcements made by Joyce could be open to challenge.

These include the controversial decision to relocate the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority to Armidale in his New England electorate, various grants and appointments, and any decisions under the Water Act, where he had power to determine claims for payment to water access entitlement holders.

The list comes from a paper Labor sought from the Parliamentary Library on the ministerial decision-making powers exercised by Joyce and Nash, and specific important decisions they made.

Joyce had ministerial responsibility for agriculture and water resources. Nash was minister for regional development and regional communications.

The opposition says at least eight executive decisions and 43 ministerial announcements made by Nash could be subject to challenge. These included elements of each of the regional NBN rollout, the mobile blackspots program and the rural decentralisation program, as well as grants under the Building Better Regions Fund.

Labor has as well released updated advice from senior silks Matt Albert QC and Matt Collins QC about the legal status of decisions made by the former ministers.

The Constitution allows a minister to hold office for three months while not being a member of parliament.

The legal advice says that any decision made by Joyce or Nash after three months had lapsed from their appointment as ministers was open to challenge.

“Any decisions made by Joyce and Nash, purportedly in their capacity as a minister, on and after October 20, 2016, are open to challenge.

“The likelihood of proceedings being brought to challenge such decisions is high, having regard to the significance and seniority of their relevant portfolios,” the advice says.

Brandis said the government was looking very carefully at the question of the validity of the former ministers’ decisions. But “I doubt that there are many if any decisions that would be relevant in any event”, he said on Sky.

“Most decisions that ministers make are in fact made by the cabinet on the recommendation of ministers. Appointments are made by the governor-general or the federal executive council on the recommendation of ministers. So I think you will find that there is no legal consequences here at all.”

Tony Burke, manager of opposition business, told the ABC there would be “vested interests” with an interest in challenging decisions of Joyce.

“When you’re in charge of Australia’s quarantine service, there’s importers and exporters who make or lose money depending on decisions you make.

“There’ll be a series of decisions there with vested interests now combing through, and there being a whole lot of legal doubt over those decisions on the simple basis that Barnaby Joyce didn’t do what Matt Canavan did,” Burke said.

“Matt Canavan turned out to have been legally in parliament. But at least he took the precaution to step aside so that there was no risk to there being illegitimacy to his decisions.

“Barnaby Joyce and Malcolm Turnbull decided, oh no, nothing to see here, let’s just ignore the last 25 years of how the High Court ruled on this and pretend that it’s all going to be different this time.”

Burke said there was a reason why the government had not revealed the solicitor-general’s advice. “I don’t believe for a minute it was as strong as they were claiming,” he said.

https://www.podbean.com/media/player/g8gar-796795?from=site&skin=1&share=1&fonts=Helvetica&auto=0&download=0

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

If High Court decides against ministers with dual citizenship, could their decisions in office be challenged?

It’d be better for ministers like Barnaby Joyce to have any potentially contentious decisions made by an acting minister until their citizenship issues are resolved.
AAP/Mick Tsikas

Anne Twomey, University of Sydney

What would happen if the High Court found that ministers Barnaby Joyce, Fiona Nash and Matthew Canavan had not been validly elected at the last federal election in July 2016?

In the case of the senators (Nash and Canavan), the High Court, sitting as the Court of Disputed Returns, would most likely order a special recount of the votes, as it did in relation to senators Bob Day and Rod Culleton, with the seat then most likely going to the next person on the Coalition ticket.

This may disrupt the balance between the National Party and the Liberal Party in the Senate, as those most likely to replace the two National Party senators would be from the Liberal Party.

Joyce’s seat, being in the lower house, would most likely go to a byelection, as previously occurred in the cases of Jackie Kelly and Phil Cleary. Like Kelly and Cleary, Joyce could stand for his seat at the byelection, as he has now renounced his New Zealand citizenship.

A bigger question arises, however, as to the validity of decisions that they made as ministers since the last election. If they were not validly elected in July 2016, then Section 64 of the Constitution becomes relevant. It says:

… no minister of state shall hold office for a longer period than three months unless he is or becomes a senator or a member of the House of Representatives.

That three months ran out a long time ago. So, for a considerable time they would have been exercising powers conferred upon ministers by statute, without actually being ministers. Were those decisions valid? Could they be challenged?

This brings into play the “de-facto officer” doctrine. This is a common law doctrine that protects people who rely on acts done in the apparent execution of their office by an officer who appears to be “clothed with official authority”, even though they may not validly hold that office.

It is not aimed at protecting those who invalidly exercise power, but rather those who rely in good faith on the apparent authority of those who publicly exercise power. The doctrine is also relied on to give certainty concerning the validity of acts of persons whose appointment or election may later be challenged.

The public policy behind the doctrine is to avoid the chaos that would ensue if decisions of public officials were automatically rendered invalid because of a later discovered defect in their election or appointment. For example, the decisions of a Western Australian magistrate were upheld, even though they were taken after she had reached the compulsory age for retirement.

The application of the doctrine, however, is uncertain. It does not necessarily apply to all decisions of an invalidly appointed officer, and therefore is likely to lead to litigation if decisions are contentious.

Its application has also been doubted in relation to matters that concern a breach of the Constitution. For example, High Court Justice Michael Kirby observed in a 2006 case about the constitutional validity of acting judges that:

It is difficult to reconcile the [de facto officer] doctrine with the fundamental role of the federal Constitution as the ultimate source of other laws. Constitutional rulings can occasionally be unsettling, at least for a period. However, this is inherent in the arrangements of a nation that lives by the rule of law and accords a special status to the federal Constitution as its fundamental law.

Moreover, the doctrine ceases to protect the actions of the purported official at the point when they lose the cloak of authority, such as when the validity of their appointment is contested, or their lack of qualification to hold office is “notorious”.

It is quite possible that point arises when, in the case of a Commonwealth minister, they admit to being a dual national and refer to the High Court the question of their qualification to sit in the parliament, especially if the invalidity to hold parliamentary office exceeds three months.

For this reason, it would be prudent for those ministers who are currently under a cloud concerning their lawful occupation of office to cease to make decisions which are contentious or might give rise to legal challenges with significant consequences.

Instead, such actions, if they need to be taken before the question of the status of these ministers is resolved by the High Court, could be taken by acting ministers to ensure their validity and avoid the financial and social costs of further litigation and uncertainty.

Anne Twomey, Professor of Constitutional Law, University of Sydney

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Judges Rule Church in Bekasi, Indonesia Can Worship

Court revokes decree prohibiting Christian activities of HKBP Filadelfia.

JAKARTA, Indonesia, September 15 (CDN) — A court in West Java Province has revoked a local decree that forbade Christian activities of a church in Bekasi and has ordered officials to allow the Christians to establish a place of worship.

After months of conflict and legal battles, the State Administrative Court in Bandung on Sept. 3 revoked the Dec. 31, 2009 decree prohibiting Christian activities of Batak Christian Protestant Filadelfia Church (Huria Kristen Batak Protestant, or HKBP Filadelfia) in Jejalan village, Bekasi. The church had argued that the decree, along with the closure of their worship building on Jan. 12, resulted from pressure by Islamist groups that did not represent the wishes of the area residents.  

The Rev. Palti Panjaitan of HKBP Filadelfia said he was happy that the church at last had found fair authorities who based their decisions on the rule of law, “unlike the regent of Bekasi, who often has been unjust in making a decision by tending to side with a small group of people.”

Since 2008 HKBP Filadelfia has sought permission for a place of worship from Bekasi Regent H. Sa’duddin, who declined to grant it under pressure from a small group of Islamists called the Forum Islamic Ummah Jejalen Raya Bekasi, according to church leaders. The group succeeded in pressuring the Bekasi district to seal the church’s temporary worship place on Jan. 12.

As a result, the church had been holding services on a strip of roadside land in front of the temporary site, using umbrellas to protect them from the intense heat of the sun and from sudden rainstorms.

The judges, identified only as Setiobudi, Irna, and Susilowati, ruled that the regent of Bekasi should issue a permit for the church to establish a place of worship.

“This point is important because if the regent of Bekasi does what the judge said, then we will build our church and no longer serve in the hot sun and the rains that sometimes come unexpectedly,” Pastor Panjaitan said.

He said the church will give notice to the area residents, government officials and security forces to accept the decision of the administrative court.

The regent was given 14 days to appeal, and a member of the church legal team, Parasian Hutasoit, said that the regent has no legal grounds to reject the judges’ decision.

“The decree of the regent of Bekasi is contrary to the constitution of 1945, which is the constitutional foundation of the Republic of Indonesia,” Hutasoit said. “The decree had violated Article 28 of the constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion. Also, it was contrary to Article 29, which guarantees freedom of worship and Law No. 39, 1999, concerning human rights.”

HKBP Filadelfia is now able to worship in the building that was sealed by the regent in January, he said.

Regent Sa’duddin had ruled that the church needed to find a new place to construct its prospective permanent church building because local residents had rejected it – even though the church had secured approval from local residents when it submitted its application for a permit in 2008.

The local government never acted on the application, and Islamist organizations organized protests to pressure government officials to deny approval. The church on March 30 filed suit against Sa’duddin for unilaterally closing their building under construction.

Hutasoit said church leaders would try to approach the regent to discuss the matter further.

“We need not hurry to do that, because all that happens is God’s plan,” he said.

If efforts prove unsuccessful, then the church leaders will proceed to enforce the judges’ ruling through legal means, he said.

Report from Compass Direct News

New Life church in Belarus has its account arrested

On August 31 it became known that the settlement account of New Life church had been arrested by the Oktyabrskiy department of Belarusbank Ltd, reports New Life church Information Center.

As bank officials informed the accountant Nadezhda Kovshik, the account ‘has been arrested due to the corresponding requirement from the Economic court of Minsk regarding the indisputable penalties of 9 million and 250 million rubles’.

At that instance there was a sum of 935 000 BLR in the account which was made available to the Economic court. From now onwards any money transferred to the church account will be confiscated.

Sergey Likanin, the church lawyer, thus commented on the issue: “So, law enforcement officers have proceeded to the execution of the court decisions according to which the church had been convicted of the environment pollution by oil. It is such a pity that the believers’ offerings should be arrested based on such an unlawful judicial act. Bank account arrest may make charity work difficult as the church co-operates with the Belarusian Red Cross and other charity organizations but the community
itself will not be endangered. According to judicial procedures there might be attempts to arrest the property in the church building but we believe that the Lord will not let authorities act aggressively towards the Christians, who are not to blame.”

Report from the Christian Telegraph

Sterilize the unfit says British professor David Marsland

The mentally and morally “unfit” should be sterilized, Professor David Marsland, a sociologist and health expert, said this weekend. The professor made the remarks on the BBC radio program Iconoclasts, which advertises itself as the place to “think the unthinkable,” reports Hilary White, LifeSiteNews.com.

Pro-life advocates and disability rights campaigners have responded by saying that Marsland’s proposed system is a straightforward throwback to the coercive eugenics practices of the past.

Marsland, Emeritus Scholar of Sociology and Health Sciences at Brunel University, London and Professorial Research Fellow in Sociology at the University of Buckingham, told the BBC that “permanent sterilization” is the solution to child neglect and abuse.

“Children are abused or grossly neglected by a very small minority of inadequate parents.” Such parents, he said, are not distinguished by “disadvantage, poverty or exploitation,” he said, but by “a number or moral and mental inadequacies” caused by “serious mental defect,” “chronic mental illness” and drug addiction and alcoholism.

“Short of lifetime incarceration,” he said, the solution is “permanent sterilization.”

The debate, chaired by the BBC’s Edward Stourton, was held in response to a request by a local council in the West Midlands that wanted to force contraception on a 29-year-old woman who members of the council judged was mentally incapable of making decisions about childrearing. The judge in the case refused to permit it, saying such a decision would “raise profound questions about state intervention in private and family life.”

Children whose parents are alcoholics or drug addicts can be rescued from abusive situations, but, Marlsand said, “Why should we allow further predictable victims to be harmed by the same perpetrators? Here too, sterilization provides a dependable answer.”

He dismissed possible objections based on human rights, saying that “Rights is a grossly overused and fundamentally incoherent concept … Neither philosophers nor political activists can agree on the nature of human rights or on their extent.”

Complaints that court-ordered sterilization could be abused “should be ignored,” he added. “This argument would inhibit any and every action of social defense.”

Brian Clowes, director of research for Human Life International (HLI), told LifeSiteNews (LSN) that in his view Professor Marsland is just one more in a long line of eugenicists who want to solve human problems by erasing the humans who have them. Clowes compared Marsland to Lothrop Stoddard and Margaret Sanger, prominent early 20th century eugenicists who promoted contraception and sterilization for blacks, Catholics, the poor and the mentally ill and disabled whom they classified as “human weeds.”

He told LSN, “It does not seem to occur to Marsland that most severe child abuse is committed by people he might consider ‘perfectly normal,’ people like his elitist friends and neighbors.”

“Most frightening of all,” he said, “is Marsland’s dismissal of human rights. In essence, he is saying people have no rights whatsoever, because there is no universal agreement on what those rights actually are.”

The program, which aired on Saturday, August 28, also featured a professor of ethics and philosophy at Oxford, who expressed concern about Marland’s proposal, saying, “There are serious problems about who makes the decisions, and abuses.” Janet Radcliffe Richards, a Professor of Practical Philosophy at Oxford, continued, “I would dispute the argument that this is for the sake of the children.

“It’s curious case that if the child doesn’t exist, it can’t be harmed. And to say that it would be better for the child not to exist, you need to be able to say that its life is worse than nothing. Now I think that’s a difficult thing to do because most people are glad they exist.”

But Radcliffe Richards refused to reject categorically the notion of forced sterilization as a solution to social problems. She said there “is a really serious argument” about the “cost to the rest of society of allowing people to have children when you can pretty strongly predict that those children are going to be a nuisance.”

Marsland’s remarks also drew a response from Alison Davis, head of the campaign group No Less Human, who rejected his entire argument, saying that compulsory sterilization would itself be “an abuse of some of the most vulnerable people in society.”

Marsland’s closing comments, Davis said, were indicative of his anti-human perspective. In those remarks he said that nothing in the discussion had changed his mind, and that the reduction of births would be desirable since “there are too many people anyway.”

Davis commented, “As a disabled person myself I find his comments offensive, degrading and eugenic in content.

“The BBC is supposed to stand against prejudicial comments against any minority group. As such it is against it’s own code of conduct, as well as a breach of basic human decency, to broadcast such inflammatory and ableist views.”

Report from the Christian Telegraph

Despite Democracy, Christians in Bhutan Remain Underground

Open practice of faith could lead to more persecution, they fear.

THIMPHU, Bhutan, January 25 (CDN) — In this distant and isolated nation in the eastern Himalayas, known as the “Land of the Thunder Dragon,” almost everything looks uniformly Buddhist.

Most men and women in the landlocked country between India and China wear their national dress, and all the buildings – with their sloping walls, trefoil-shaped windows and pitched roofs – look alike, as if they were Buddhist monasteries.

There are no visible signs of Christians’ tiny presence, but they do exist. Christians, whose only official identity falls in the “others” category in the census, are estimated to range in number between 3,000 and 6,000. And they live out their Christian lives underground – no church buildings, Christian cemeteries or Christian bookstores are yet allowed.

Of Bhutan’s more than 670,000 people, 75 percent of them practice Buddhism, according to the 2005 census. Around 22 percent are Hindu, mostly of Nepali origin.

An absolute monarchy for over 100 years, Bhutan became a democratic, constitutional monarchy in March 2008, as per the wish of the former King of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, who served from 1972 to 2006. It has been nearly two years since democracy arrived in Druk Yul, as the country is known in its national language, Dzongkha. But little has changed for Christians.

If there is anything open about Christianity, it is the acknowledgement of Christians’ presence in the national press, which was born after the advent of democracy.

“A journalist telephoned and asked me if I was converting local people,” said a middle-aged pastor clad in Gho, the men’s national uniform, a knee-length gown woven with colorful wool. “I wondered how she got my phone number. Maybe a Christian friend of mine passed it on.”

The pastor requested anonymity – the same request that high government officials made, no matter how trivial the matters they divulged.

The pastor said he told the journalist he did not pay people to convert. “People choose to become Christians out of their own free will,” he said. “I am working within the constitution of the country.”

Still a Monarchy

Asked why the church remained underground in spite of a provision for religious freedom in the new constitution, the pastor replied, “Virtually, Bhutan is still a monarchy. The time is yet to come when we have the assurance of protection.”

His wife, wearing the ankle-length woollen skirt or Kira that is the national dress for women, smiled at what was perhaps a naïve question – the power of the monarchy is beyond question. By law all Bhutanese citizens wear the national dress in schools and certain public, government and religious places. Non-compliance can result in fines or imprisonment.

Asked what would happen if authorities found out about their underground church, the pastor said that before 2008 they would have been arrested because Christianity was banned.

“Even now, there will be serious repercussions,” he said. “What exactly will happen, I do not know. But no Christian worker will take the risk to find it out the hard way.”

To construct any building, Bhutanese citizens require a licence from the government.

“As far as the governance is concerned, the Royal Government of Bhutan is very caring,” he said. “We get free education and free medicine and hospitalization, and there is a sense of security because the crime rate is very low. But asking for a licence for a church is beyond our imagination as of now.”

The present king, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck (selected in 2006 but not crowned until 2008) rules absolutely, said local Buddhists, though not with any regret.

“It’s democracy, but still not a democracy,” said a civil government employee requesting anonymity. “It’s the king who makes all important decisions.”

Asked about the Christian presence, he said Christianity grew even at a time when it was banned. “There are many secret Christians. They meet in secret locations for prayer.”

The clean-shaven, medium-built 31-year-old king, an avid soccer fan who studied at Phillips Academy and Wheaton College in Massachusetts in the United States and the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, is seen as a progressive person but conservative in matters of religion and culture.

According to the new constitution, the king is the head of state, though the parliament has the power to impeach him by a two-thirds majority vote – a provision not likely to be used anytime in the future, according to popular sentiment.

Banned

Suggesting that Christian fears are warranted, a pastor from Pheuntsholing town near the India border explained that memories of a period of severe crackdown on underground churches were still fresh in the minds of local Christians.

“I was picked up from a house where I was conducting Sunday worship in Tsirang district in September 1995 and put in a prison,” said the pastor. “I was asked to leave the district with immediate effect, and I had to move to another location.”

His voice trembling as he spoke by telephone, he said, “Once the government discovers that you are a Christian, nothing will be free for you.”

The pastor said that although there are no violent attacks on Christians, they do face discrimination by the government and society.

According to the government-run weekly Kuensel of Nov. 4, 1992, the National Assembly banned Christianity in 1969 and in 1979. The edicts against Christians were said to have passed due to reports of conversions to Christianity in south Bhutan, inhabited mostly by people of Nepali origin.

In the early 1990s the government of Bhutan began a massive crackdown on Christians, mainly in southern parts, and intensified it towards the end of the decade.

The authorities identified Christians in government or business and took their signatures on a form pledging compliance with rules and regulations governing practice of religion. There were several reports, though unconfirmed, of violence against Christians by police and village heads during the period.

In April 2001, international media reported on persecution of Christians in Bhutan when police stormed churches on Palm Sunday to register Christians, many of who were detained and threatened.

Almost a decade later, the legal standing of the Christian minority under the new constitution remains unclear.

Ambiguous Laws

In May 2009, the national daily Bhutan Times quoted Interior Minister Lyonpo Minjur Dorji as saying, “It was absolutely okay if people were born Christian … The constitution supports them. But it is unlawful to convert. If we get proof of proselytization in the country, we shall definitely take action.”

The newspaper noted that there are no official churches in Bhutan. “And most of the Sunday masses and gatherings are held in the homes of pastors and converts,” noted the daily, which occasionally criticizes government policies, though mildly and without taking aim at any particular official.

The new Constitution of the Kingdom of Bhutan, drafted in 2005 and officially adopted in 2008, gives religious freedom to all the citizens of the country but also contains a virtual “anti-conversion law” as found in neighboring India.

The exotic, official website of the constitution – which displays the national emblem of two dragons and a lotus surmounted by a jewel symbolizing harmony between secular and religious powers and sovereignty of the nation – states that all Bhutanese citizens “shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion” in Article 7.

But Article 7 adds: “No person shall be compelled to belong to another faith by means of coercion or inducement.”

What the terms “coercion” and “inducement” mean is not clear. Whether “proselytization,” which the home minister recently suggested was illegal, means propagation of Christianity or conversion by “coercion or inducement,” is also left unclear.

The Supreme Court of Bhutan, whose judge appointments have yet to be completed and are not yet functional, is likely to have the prerogative to interpret the constitution.

What is unambiguous, however, is that the government of Bhutan will continue to preserve the uniform culture of the country, which, it maintains, is based on Buddhist values. Article 3 of the constitution says that “Buddhism is the spiritual heritage of Bhutan, which promotes among others the principles and values of peace, non-violence, compassion and tolerance,” and “it is the responsibility of religious institutions and personalities to promote the spiritual heritage of the country while also ensuring that religion remains separate from politics in Bhutan.”

Article 4 mandates the government to “endeavour to preserve, protect and promote the cultural heritage of the country,” adding that “parliament may enact such legislation as may be necessary to advance the cause of the cultural enrichment of Bhutanese society.”

According to Article 8, it is a fundamental duty of all citizens to “preserve, protect and respect the culture and heritage of the nation.”

“Apart from religious restrictions, we are happy to be in Bhutan,” said a pastor from Thimphu. “Look at the unrest India, China and Nepal have from time to time. We are happy and thankful to God for this nation.”

Report from Compass Direct News 

Decline of traditional media

Should the threat to traditional media from the internet really be a cause for concern?

The new social media — blogging, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and YouTube are current faves — revolutionising the publishing world, for better and worse. Let’s look at both the better and the worse in perspective.

The current tsunami of personal choices in communication is slowly draining the profit from mainstream media. These media traditionally depend on huge audiences who all live in one region and mostly want the same things (the football scores, the crossword, the TV Guide, etc.). But that is all available now on the Internet, all around the world, all the time.

One outcome is a death watch on many newspapers, including famous ones like the Boston Globe. As journalist Paul Gillin noted recently: “The newspaper model scales up very well, but it scales down very badly. It costs a newspaper nearly as much to deliver 25,000 copies as it does to deliver 50,000 copies. Readership has been in decline for 30 years and the decline shows no signs of abating. Meanwhile, new competition has sprung up online with a vastly superior cost structure and an interactive format that appeals to the new generation of readers.”

Traditional electronic media are not doing any better. As James Lewin observes in “Television audience plummeting as viewers move online” (May 19, 2008), mainstream broadcasters “will have to come to terms with YouTube, video podcasts and other Internet media or they’ll face the same fate as newspapers.”

Radio audiences have likewise tanked. Overall, the recent decline of traditional media is remarkable.

Some conservative writers insist that mainstream media’s failure is due to its liberal bias. But conservatives have charged that for decades — to no effect. Another charge is that TV is declining because it is increasingly gross or trivial. True enough, but TV’s popularity was unaffected for decades by its experiments with edgy taste.

Let’s look more closely at the structure of the system to better understand current steep declines. Due to the low cost of modern media technology, no clear distinction now exists between a mainstream medium and a non-mainstream one, based on either number of viewers or production cost. Today, anyone can put up a video at YouTube at virtually no cost. Popular videos get hundreds of thousands of views. Podcasting and videocasting are also cheap. A blog can be started for free, within minutes, at Blogger. It may get 10 viewers or 10,000, depending on the level of popular interest. But the viewers control that, not the providers.

The key change is that the traditional media professional is no longer a gatekeeper who can systematically admit or deny information. Consumers program their own print, TV, or radio, and download what they want to their personal devices. They are their own editors, their own filmmakers, their own disc jockeys.

Does that mean more bias or less? It’s hard to say, given that consumers now manage their own level of bias. So they can hear much more biased news — or much less. And, as Podcasting News observes, “Social media is a global phenomenon happening in all markets regardless of wider economic, social and cultural development.”

Understandably, traditional media professionals, alarmed by these developments, have constructed a doctrine of “localism” and, in some cases, called for government to bail them out. That probably won’t help, just as it wouldn’t have helped if the media professionals had called for a government “bailed out” of newspapers when they were threatened by radio, or of radio when it was threatened by TV. Video really did (sort of) kill the radio star, but the radio star certainly won’t be revived by government grants.

Still, the news is not all bad. Yes, new media do sometimes kill old media. For example, no one seriously uses pigeon post to send messages today. But few ever thought birdmail was a great system, just the only one available at the time. However, radio did not kill print, and TV did not kill radio. Nor will the Internet kill older media; it will simply change news delivery. Sometimes in a minor way, but sometimes radically.

Media that work, whether radio, TV, newspapers, books, blogs, or any other, thrive when there is a true need. Today’s challenge is to persuade the consumer to look at alternatives to their own programming decisions.

Denyse O’Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

The original news article can be viewed at:
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/decline_of_traditional_media/

Article from MercatorNet.com