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9. januar 2005
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The UN's role in modern mythology
David Frum in The Telegraph writes that the tsunami disaster exposes the myth of the UN's moral authority.
The UN's authority is instead one of those ineffable mystical mysteries. The authority's existence cannot be perceived by the senses and exerts no influence on the events of this world. Even the authority's most devout hierophants retain the right to disavow that authority at whim, as Ms Short herself disavowed its resolutions on Iraq. And yet at other times those same hierophants praise this same imperceptible, inconsequential, and intermittently binding authority as the best hope for a just and peaceful world. An early church father is supposed to have said of the story of the resurrection: "I believe it because it is absurd." The same could much more justly be said of the doctrine of the UN's moral authority.
Well, to be honest, if Rwanda, Srebrenica and Oil-for-Food didn't properly expose the UN, why should we expect the UN's token "coordinating" role in disaster relief to do so? Myths have a life of their own, and it takes more than a bit of reality to make them go away.
8:52:49 PM 
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Watchtower Dates
Many years ago, I wrote a compilation of the prophetic dates that were once preached by the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Watchtower Society. It is a list of years, from 1798 to 2000, along with the doctrines and speculation about what was supposed to happen in that year. This remains a quite comprehensive summary of the sect's stunning history of failed prophecy. I have now posted it to my articles section.
Current Jehovah's Witnesses are very unlikely to be aware of the extent of prophetic speculation in their sect's history, and there have been widespread revisionism in the movemenent's official accounts.
9:00:36 AM
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Microsoft Anti-Spyware
Microsoft has released a beta of Windows Anti-Spyware.
Hmm, I haven't worked up the courage to run it yet. Search & Destroy tends to crash after a while when I run it, which is probably a bad sign, so I trust the manual (aka RegEdit) approach to maintenance.
3:11:17 AM
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Is Michael Newdow a fundie agent provocateur?
I'm an atheist, and I think this is going too far:
The California lawyer who tried to have the phrase "under God" removed from the Pledge of Allegiance now wants to legally prevent President Bush from placing his hand on a Bible while being sworn in at his inauguration.
No, the question in the headline is not serious, but I think if Newdow didn't exist, Christians would have to invent him. He's really a gift, if not from heaven, for evangelicals who want to believe they are the persecuted majority in the US.
12:50:39 AM
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Disasters as an inspiration for foot-in-mouth
Chrenkoff brings another list of stupid tsunami statements from around the world.
In his previous installment, Chrenkoff included this comment and a quote from Ayn Rand Institute:
Let them eat sea-grass: David Holcberg, a research associate at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, California, demonstrates he's not for any sissy labels like "compassionate libertarian":
"The United States government... should not give any money to help the tsunami victims. Why? Because the money is not the government's to give. Every cent the government spends comes from taxation. Every dollar the government hands out as foreign aid has to be extorted from an American taxpayer first."
Of course Chrenkoff caught all ends of flak for calling this statement stupid.
The Libertarians can say whatever they want. When they put ideology ahead of humanitarianism, they demonstrate that theirs is just another of those armchair ideologies of the 20th century that looked so good on paper and proved so disastrous when implemented. The difference is that nobody has, thankfully, been crazy enough to actually try to implement True Libertarianism. They can thus argue there is no empirical evidence their ideology would be disastrous. Well, I'm perfectly satisifed in leaving it that way, if using government funds to save people from starving is such a horrible violation of their ideology.
12:39:57 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.02.2005; 02:16:46.
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