Monday, June 25, 2007
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Since I've been so apathetic on the blogging side lately I debated whether I should post this or not, I decided to since I felt it was so true and well written:
According to a recent Gallup poll, approximately 66 percent of Americans think the UN is doing a poor job. This most recent assessment of the United Nations' shoddy job performance is the lowest ever since Gallop first began keeping track in 1953. This news is not surprising. What is astonishing is that, despite the United Nations' terrible track record, most Americans think the inept organization should still play a major role in international affairs.
What most people don't realize is that the United Nations has become a safe haven for thugs, war-mongers, and tyrannical dictators. The truth of the matter is that only 89 of the 192 UN member nations have truly free governments. In other words, the majority of the UN is made up of 103 nations that do not give their citizens the same political rights and civil liberties that you and I take for granted. That is according to Freedom House, which has published a report on what it calls "the world's most repressive societies." With the sole exception of North Korea, all of the 17 nations that made the list are current members of the United Nations. Perhaps most alarming is that some of the "worst of the worst" human rights violators have actually been appointed to the UN Human Rights Council.
The United Nations was created to maintain international peace and help solve the world's economic and humanitarian troubles, but the UN has failed time and time again to achieve its main objectives. The UN is plagued by scandal, widespread corruption, favoritism, and financial mismanagement. Furthermore, through its misconduct, negligence, and complacency the UN has aided terrorism worldwide.
In April of 2006 Iran was elected to a vice-chair position on the UN Disarmament Commission, which is tasked with preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. The following day Iran announced that it had successfully enriched uranium. Appointing Iran to a position where it can establish disarmament rules to protect its own clandestine nuclear program is either a colossal lapse in judgment or a deliberate attempt by the non-democratic majority to protect one of their own from scrutiny. It doesn't make any sense, unless of course you think like one of 103 nations that control the vote in the UN General Assembly.
One must only examine the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Sudan to understand why the UN has failed to fulfill the primary purpose for which it was created - to promote peace and protect humanity. Hundreds of thousands of people in Darfur have been slaughtered and millions have been forced to flee their homes. The Islamic government that controls Sudan is guilty of genocide, but the United Nations has yet to take decisive action to stop the bloodshed. For the past four years they have done nothing but deliberate, procrastinate, and make empty threats. Why? The UN has failed to act because the status quo serves its interests, because powerful nations like China benefit from Sudan's oil wealth, and because the very leaders who control the vote are profiting from the sale of bullets and bombs.
I have to laugh at those who still sing the praises of the UN and see them as the savior of the world through which peach will come. Look for further than the tragedies happening around the world for a good wake-up call my friends!
According to a recent Gallup poll, approximately 66 percent of Americans think the UN is doing a poor job. This most recent assessment of the United Nations' shoddy job performance is the lowest ever since Gallop first began keeping track in 1953. This news is not surprising. What is astonishing is that, despite the United Nations' terrible track record, most Americans think the inept organization should still play a major role in international affairs.
What most people don't realize is that the United Nations has become a safe haven for thugs, war-mongers, and tyrannical dictators. The truth of the matter is that only 89 of the 192 UN member nations have truly free governments. In other words, the majority of the UN is made up of 103 nations that do not give their citizens the same political rights and civil liberties that you and I take for granted. That is according to Freedom House, which has published a report on what it calls "the world's most repressive societies." With the sole exception of North Korea, all of the 17 nations that made the list are current members of the United Nations. Perhaps most alarming is that some of the "worst of the worst" human rights violators have actually been appointed to the UN Human Rights Council.
The United Nations was created to maintain international peace and help solve the world's economic and humanitarian troubles, but the UN has failed time and time again to achieve its main objectives. The UN is plagued by scandal, widespread corruption, favoritism, and financial mismanagement. Furthermore, through its misconduct, negligence, and complacency the UN has aided terrorism worldwide.
In April of 2006 Iran was elected to a vice-chair position on the UN Disarmament Commission, which is tasked with preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. The following day Iran announced that it had successfully enriched uranium. Appointing Iran to a position where it can establish disarmament rules to protect its own clandestine nuclear program is either a colossal lapse in judgment or a deliberate attempt by the non-democratic majority to protect one of their own from scrutiny. It doesn't make any sense, unless of course you think like one of 103 nations that control the vote in the UN General Assembly.
One must only examine the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Sudan to understand why the UN has failed to fulfill the primary purpose for which it was created - to promote peace and protect humanity. Hundreds of thousands of people in Darfur have been slaughtered and millions have been forced to flee their homes. The Islamic government that controls Sudan is guilty of genocide, but the United Nations has yet to take decisive action to stop the bloodshed. For the past four years they have done nothing but deliberate, procrastinate, and make empty threats. Why? The UN has failed to act because the status quo serves its interests, because powerful nations like China benefit from Sudan's oil wealth, and because the very leaders who control the vote are profiting from the sale of bullets and bombs.
I have to laugh at those who still sing the praises of the UN and see them as the savior of the world through which peach will come. Look for further than the tragedies happening around the world for a good wake-up call my friends!
Monday, June 04, 2007
Reason number 3, 459 why I do not believe in the good of humanity:
As reported in The Economist on the strife in the Central African Republic from 2002-2003:
The sexual violence was particularly brutal. For the first time the court is investigating a situation where the number of rape victims exceeds the number of murders (JN note: not necessarily something to boast about)...He has detailed accounts from at least 600 rape victims, including children, old women, and men. Many were gang-raped, often in public.
As reported in The Economist on the strife in the Central African Republic from 2002-2003:
The sexual violence was particularly brutal. For the first time the court is investigating a situation where the number of rape victims exceeds the number of murders (JN note: not necessarily something to boast about)...He has detailed accounts from at least 600 rape victims, including children, old women, and men. Many were gang-raped, often in public.
Saturday, June 02, 2007
I like this quote taken from the latest Peter Jones NewCWIPP on Esoteric Spirituality:
A classic text from the Christian scriptures said this with surprising clarity two thousand years ago. This is no secret! There are only two kinds of religious people, those who worship and serve creation and those who worship and serve the Creator (Romans 1:25). These two kinds of spirituality describe the only two religious worldviews. They both require faith and service. They are mutually exclusive, and everyone must choose between them—but you would not know that from reading The Secret.
The age-old esoteric option, presented with such brilliant marketing skill in The Secret offers power, money, human “divinity,” the elimination of all things distasteful and the promise of a humanly-realized earthly utopia. However, it fails to take seriously huge issues that we ignore at our peril—human evil, physical death and the reality of God as separate from us, demanding our allegiance.
The exoteric option, found in the Bible, faces squarely the present reality of evil and the ugliness of death while finding final hope only in the Creator as the loving Redeemer.
Key here for me is the failure of the esoteric option not to address the problem of evil. That seems to be one of the key questions I hear most often from searchers or skeptics of the faith, and one that is easily answerable with a proper biblical worldview.
A classic text from the Christian scriptures said this with surprising clarity two thousand years ago. This is no secret! There are only two kinds of religious people, those who worship and serve creation and those who worship and serve the Creator (Romans 1:25). These two kinds of spirituality describe the only two religious worldviews. They both require faith and service. They are mutually exclusive, and everyone must choose between them—but you would not know that from reading The Secret.
The age-old esoteric option, presented with such brilliant marketing skill in The Secret offers power, money, human “divinity,” the elimination of all things distasteful and the promise of a humanly-realized earthly utopia. However, it fails to take seriously huge issues that we ignore at our peril—human evil, physical death and the reality of God as separate from us, demanding our allegiance.
The exoteric option, found in the Bible, faces squarely the present reality of evil and the ugliness of death while finding final hope only in the Creator as the loving Redeemer.
Key here for me is the failure of the esoteric option not to address the problem of evil. That seems to be one of the key questions I hear most often from searchers or skeptics of the faith, and one that is easily answerable with a proper biblical worldview.
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