Why Dont You Blog?

Well, time for a departure from American politics and a look closer to home.

At the moment the Conservative party are spewing out vast tracts of nonsense, under the guise of a party conference. It does, however, give an insight into how willing to manipulate the voters they are, and how easily manipulated we actually are.

This is a headline news item which has been in papers and on radio bulletins quite a bit under the headline “Tories ‘to help have-a-go heroes’“:

Measures to help the public and police tackle criminals and end the “walk on by society” have been outlined by shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve.
He told the Conservative Party conference that too many people making “genuine attempts to prevent crime” had been arrested or prosecuted.

Erm, no. Not really true. It is, however, the poster child of the tabloid news papers. For decades we have been hearing urban myths about how a “have a go hero” stepped in to save someone and then got prosecuted. Most of the time, these are just that - urban myths. If you investigate the cited examples, the truth is often very different.

The law of the land is not biased against “have a go heroes” but, quite rightly, punishes vigilante gangs and disproportionate use of force.

Sadly, British journalists are shamefully bad at investigating. The BBC even have an example in their article:

Mr Grieve’s comments came after banker Frank McGarahan died following an attack in Norwich. The 45-year-old intervened when he saw two other people being assaulted in the early hours of Sunday morning, but was himself set upon, suffering fatal head injuries. Police have launched a murder inquiry.

Now, is that relevant? No. Mr McGarahan was not prosecuted by the police. The government did not kill him. Unless this is an example of the BBC showing why it is a bad idea to encourage untrained, unskilled people to pile in, there was no reason to bring it up.

If, however, the BBC are similar to the tabloids, the conflation of statements like this is often done to generate misdirection - the public hear the two, and decide that the government shouldn’t have prosecuted people like Mr McGarahan….

Madness. I am saying this a lot lately. We are a society of lunatics. Worryingly, when you think everyone else in the world is insane it normally means……..

Anyway, pushing that to one side. We get more ludicrous waffle from the tories:

Mr Grieve pledged to “take on the health and safety culture” and the legislation which “is holding officers back and making them more risk averse”.

This defies belief.

Health and safety measures are there to protect people. They are there to stop your employer forcing you to risk your life and limb for your job. They are there to make sure that you can function as a working member of society for as long as possible. It has nothing to do with stopping people from being “risk averse” (and here I suspect the Tories demonstrate a lack of understanding as to what “risk” means).

The Conservatives point to examples like the case of 10-year-old Jordan Lyon, who drowned in May 2007 saving his younger sister.
Two community support officers were at the scene but did not get into the water because they had not received the appropriate training.

What should they have done? Should they have died trying to save the 10-year old? (In which case the 10-year old would have died anyway). Do the tories plan to force everyone to risk their lives on a daily basis?

Note, the 10 year old was not risk averse. He took a risk and died. Should two other lives have been added to the tally? If you are family of Jordan Lyon, the likely answer is yes, but if you were a loved one of the community support officer would you have wanted them dead? Whose life is more important?

It gets funnier though:

The Conservatives want to amend Section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 to ensure that protecting the public from risk is given priority over the risk to officers.

Interesting. Police officers will no longer be able to risk the life of the public to protect themselves… There go the tasers, armed police, batons, riot shields etc. When someone tries to jump off a balcony, will police have to throw themselves underneath to break the fall?

Still it is a sad day that the lives of our Police officers is now deemed to be less important the lives of our public. This is doubly sad in the case of the Police Community Support Officers(*) who have no powers, are paid appallingly bad wages but still have to sacrifice their lives.

Going back to the tragic Jordan Lyon case, the officers were untrained in how to save someone. If they had been compelled to dive in without knowing what to do, what are the chances they would have saved him? Why is lifesaving a taught skill that comes with a qualification if everyone can do it automatically?

The sad fact is, the manipulative tories have jumped on this bandwagon to stir up an apathetic public. They have made meaningless gestures but grabbed headlines. The tabloids love them and to uncritical thought it sounds great.

Dont you just hate politicians?

It isnt just the tories who are prone to such underhand statements:

But the government said its was already working on the issues the Conservatives had raised, including changes to the law, so people using “reasonable force” to protect themselves could have “greater confidence” they would not be prosecuted.

Political vapourware at its best. This basically says: they are not currently going to be prosecuted but the tabloids and tories make them think they are so we will change a meaningless part of the law so everyone feels better. Argh.

Given the lies of the tories, the emptiness of the Labour party and the pointlessness of the Liberal Democrats is it any wonder voters are apathetic?

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(*) I detest the very concept of PCSOs. It strikes me as a nasty way of getting policing on the cheap, while allowing under-trained, under-educated thugs out on to the street with a false idea of their own authority. Spend more money on getting real police out. That would save 99% of the problems with PCSOs. IMHO of course….

Popularity: 5% [?]

Popularity: 5% [?]

The Church of England’s Darwin site, as predicted in my last post is there now. Do I have uncanny psychic powers or what?

In this context, the BBC discussed the rise of creationism in the UK, reminding me of something I’d taken for granted for so long that I’d even forgotten it. Darwin’s portrait is on our £10 notes.

But in Britain, where a portrait of Darwin appears on the back of the £10 note, his theory of life evolving from primitive to complex structures by means of natural selection appears to be unchallenged orthodoxy.
Not so, say those on both sides of the creationist divide - a point amply proved by the existence of the Genesis Expo museum, to date Britain’s only creationist museum.

This laughingly-titled “museum” claims

The old National Provincial Bank on Portsmouth Hard is now home to CSM’s Genesis Exhibition, the first of its kind in the UK on this scale.

“On this scale”? The site of a former bank? That’s not a very large scale. It’s bigger than the average living room but nowhere near as big as the average open-plan office. And I suspect that the words “the only UK creation museum on any scale” might have the virtue of being a bit more accurate. (What am I thinking? Accuracy, creation museum? In the same sentence?)

There’s a giant 20 foot model of a dinosaur, called Boris, in a faux-affectionate way that might be taken as an ironic comment on London’s Tory mayor if it had originated from a more progressive source.

Plus there is the Genesis Expo.

This consists of 12 dioramas and a clutch of real fossilised dinosaur eggs.

What? This museum’s exhibits could be outclassed by the average primary school’s Parents’ Evening display. It’s not going to be much competition for the Natural History Museum in the scope of its exhibits. Nor, it seems in the quality of its content:

The topics covered include -
* The impossibility of life forming from chemicals.
* Chinese calligraphy refers back to Genesis.
* The present day forms remain unchanged from their fossil counterparts.
* Geological sediments are laid down rapidly.
* A study of genetics shows that all humanity came from one man and one woman.
* and many other subjects.

I don’t know about the”many other subjects”, but I think that list makes it 100% “made-up stuff.”

And, what a treat, it seems that the Expo is online, saving the tedious trek to Portsmouth Hard to see it. As you might expect, the Expo turns out to be unutterably dull as well as stupid. But there is still an evil joy to be found in the fact that it’s provided by a site called www.genesisexpo.co.uk which sounds a mite seedy.

There are also many books and videos on display for sale. Each has been selected to be of good quality and approved in that the creation information it contains is generally conforming to the views held by the CSM Council

Phew, that’s a relief. I was a bit worried that some of these books and videos might put forward other non-CSM-accredited creationist views. Then what would I have to believe? My brain hurts………

Popularity: 7% [?]

Popularity: 7% [?]

A policemen got removed from his job because he dressed in a carnival costume. This seems pretty incomprehensible on the face of it. His offence was that he wore an “Osama bin Laden” costume to a village (population: very few) carnival in Cornwall.

Before I go any further with this, it’s clear that the job that he was removed from would count as most people’s definition of “no loss”. In fact most people would sell their homes and families NOT to take the job. He was on secondment to the Foreign Office in Afghanistan. So I shouldn’t think he’s that distressed by this.

The bizarre things about this story are:

• A costume worn in a village carnival might just about make the local press - if there was a local newspaper, and there isn’t for anything on a lesser scale than half a county, as far as I can googlit. How the fuck did this story end up on the BBC news site and in every UK newspaper?
• After dedicated googling, it seems that the “disrespect” that Colin Terry has been accused of showing was not disrepect towards Osama bin Laden - which was a pretty baffling concept - but to the victims of 9/11, according tothe Times.
• Taking that to mean the surviving victims and the families of the dead, do they routinely follow Cornish village news? How do they find it? I can’t even find a local newspaper for that area, online.
• Has their grief been expressed in such bizarre activities as searching the web for any fancy-dress items that might mock Al Qaeda? In that case, I think I can find a few costume shops within a couple of miles of my house that they may need to know about.
• What about the supposed impact on the man’s job in Afghanistan? Given that Danish language cartoons seem to be the must-have media in the most undeveloped Islamic countries, could it be that the ungooglable Cornish village newspapers are being read avidly in Al Qaeda mountain strongholds? Might Osama bin Laden have taken offence at an ungraceful bit of carnival capering by someone dressed as a comic-book version of him and told the mujahideen to step up their attacks on British troops? (Don’t answer that. It was a rhetorical question.)

In other words, how did this become a news item?

For the policeman, the loss of the secondment to Afghanistan must surely be a blessing in carnival disguise. (If he’d had any sense, he would have phoned a complaint in himself. But then, who could have predicted this as a major national news item?) But why is he facing investigation by the Police Complaints Commission? Don’t they have enough real police misbehaviour to deal with?

Popularity: 8% [?]

Popularity: 8% [?]

The world’s heaviest man has lost body weight equivalent to a couple of adult males. Guess who’s responsible? Well, God, of course.

Alongside his copy of the Guinness World Records lies another text, The Bible.
“I have Claudia, my mother and God to thank,” said Manuel. “I am happy.”

You’d think a conceptual ruler of the universe would have better things to do than supervise an individual’s diet, but he must be working in his usual mysterious ways.

However, I’m afraid that the notionally all-powerful one might have been falling down badly in his new cosmic personal training role, to let Manuel Arribe get to weigh half a tonne in the first place.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Popularity: 10% [?]

New Scientist presents what it calls a debate about reason. Fond as I am of New Scientist, this debate is just silly.

It’s not a “debate” in any usual sense of the word. i.e. There isn’t a premise that is discussed by contributors. NS just seems to have assembled a set of articles that randomly touch on the topic of “reason” at any point. And define the word as meaning whatever suits their argument.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” (Wikipedia: quote from Alice through the Looking Glass)

How do you define reason? With great difficulty. And the articles in this special project issue don’t really start by overtly defining reason at all. This makes it very difficult to agree or disagree with the criticisms as you can’t really be sure at any given point what form of reason they are objecting to.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has a good stab at proving wrong all those of his critics who think he’ s too intellectual to be a church leader. (Toutatis forbid that we even try to imagine how unintellectual his critics must be, if they think that he’s too much of a deep thinker.) His article is entitled “Reason stands against morals and values” but he doesn’t actually put forward that viewpoint, it being too patently silly even for the NS special issue. He meanders through history, cherry-picking definitions as he goes, presents an unsourced redefinition of classical ideas of rationality then blames the nastier aspects of the French revolution on the role of reason, following an argument that boils down to “shaping a moral and humane world requires more than reason” (NS’s summary.)

Well, duh. Unarguable conclusion, but bearing only a passing relationship to the arguments that he presented. A bit like saying that water is not enough to sustain life. It’s not that it’s not true but it can’t be considered a valid attack on drinking water.

In similar, “No shit Sherlock” vein, a neuroscientist (Chris Firth) also points out that there are lots of mental processes that don’t involve the use of reason. “If we had to think logically about everything we did, we’d never do anything at all” Well, yes. And your point is?

His article is entitled “No one actually uses reason” which is, yet again, not borne out by the content and is blatantly falsified by the fact that he is employed as a bloody neuroscientist. If he himself isn’t using reason to earn his wages, then who else could possibly be using it?

What about

I hear “reason”, I see lies
Science is routinely co-opted by governments and corporations to subvert people’s ability to make their own decisions, say sociologist David Miller and linguist Noam Chomsky.

Chomsky’s couple of paragraphs seem to have been co-opted onto the page from a completely different context and say pretty well nothing nothing about alleged flaws in “reason” - indeed he seems to be challenging the triumph of unreason.

Miller is basically talking tosh here. To recognise that science can be distorted and misused is surely not the same as arguing that scientific rationality is inherently easier to misuse than any other area of thinking. If so, the products of reason would be uniquely more dangerous than the products of bigotry or fantasy.

This seems like a chap in dire need of a crash course in Social Theory 101. Power includes the power to define the parameters of our understanding. This has nothing to do with any inherent defect in reason or scientific thought. If Miller is indeed a sociologist, he should be aware that the use/misuse of science is a social and political issue and should be looking for social explanations, in relations of production, the operation of power structures and so on.

(More charitably, this article has the scent of an article written on another altogether different topic, drafted in and slightly reworded to fit into an non-existent debate.)

The next few pieces are just longer-winded ways of saying reason isn’t everything. Or, at least, of appearing to say that truism while actually saying nothing.

The pointlessness crown goes to Mary Midgely, though. She starts with a 1950 quote from Nehru, who said that science would be the key to India’s survival. “The future belongs to science.”

She ignores or skates over the obvious points that: this was a pretty universal idea in the 1950s; that it was a political speech, so can be assumed to have been mainly rhetorical; that it was spoken by the leader of a post-colonial country desperate to modernise; and the words were, in any case, uttered more than half a century ago. She notably ignores the fact that - as it turns out - Nehru was right. The intervening 58 years have indeed been dominated by science.

Instead, she follows this obscure speech (well, previously unknown to me, so I’m treating that as being obscure) with a load of nonsense about reason being the new religion. What? The woman is famous and respected philosopher. I.e, yet another one who gets paid to use reason. But is so poor at it that she can’t put together a remotely coherent argument.

Maybe that is too harsh. At least Midgely is consistent in her use of “reason” to refer to one thing only - scientific rationality - which puts her several steps ahead of some of the other contributors (hang your head in shame, Archbishop.) But, at that point, I have to stop giving her props. Because, the whole worship of reason thing is a complete invention.

Nobody worships reason. If you can find me a church of reason or a pope of rational thought or even a prayer for intercession by the spirit of rationality, then fair enough. Midgeley speaks disparagingly of “scientism.”

It is this exclusiveness that is the trademark of scientism: the belief in the unconditional supremacy of physical science - or of Science with a capital “S” - over all other forms of knowledge

OK then, let’s pretend there is some recognisable science-worship system. What do you call a believer in Scientism? The obvious answer is a Scientist. But, Midgely must have a dictionary, which will tell her that “scientist” means something quite different. There isn’t a word for a believer in scientism, is there? I think you could take that as prima facie evidence that there aren’t any such believers. I can’t say there are none. People will believe anything, after all. Some people believe they will be bodily ascended to heaven while non-believers get cast into hell, ffs. It’s not impossible that there are people who pray to rational thought. Just very, very unlikely.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Popularity: 14% [?]

Oh how times have changed since the halcyon days of the first and second world wars (as well as the wonderful Cold War period). Following on from a line of thinking in my previous post, it seems there are some other generalisations you can make about societies that have experienced the horrors of war, and those that haven’t¹.

It seems to me that in our current, peace-addled, societies if a month goes by without a government body declaring war on something the world will stop rotating. This week, New Scientist reports² “Plans drawn up for a war on drink.” Wow. A real war on drink. Amazing. Will people get medals? When will the US invade the ocean? Comically, the online version tempers its headline somewhat, choosing to use the less comical “WHO considers global war on alcohol abuse.” I find the print version more honest though. (I will attack this at a later date)

Even ignoring the sheer comedy of a “war on drink” there are some telling aspects of modern, western, culture here. It seems every time there is a societal “problem” that a government (or international) organisation want to diminish, the only way it can get public attention is by declaring a war against it. In recent years we have mounted a war on poverty, obesity, hunger, want, crime, drugs and the ever comical war on terror. Are any of these real wars? Of course not. They are just victims of the increasing need to over-dramatise everything to get public attention.

Are they “winnable” wars? Again, no. Can they ever end? Still no.

And herein lies the problem I have with all this word-nonsense.

Westerners (at least English speakers) have a strange association with the term “war.” While it has become the norm for a war to be declared on everything and anything, we still have a lingering memory of what war really entails. This creates a strange situation where people will sacrifice their rights and liberties because “we are at war” without realising the term has simply been misused. Giving up an essential liberty for the “duration” of one of these insane wars is foolhardy - the war will never end so the liberty will never return. Even the War on Terror, which at least involves military action, is not a war the traditional sense of the word.

Compare our peace-loving present with the past of a mere 30 years ago. In the mid-1970s most people in the West could remember the War, lots had served in smaller wars (Korea, Vietnam, Borneo, Aden etc) and there was the ever present threat of a REAL BIG WAR with the USSR. Scary times. Genuinely scary.

Into this mix, we throw in a wide set of terrorist organisations who are bombing, shooting and kidnapping all over the place. Planes were regularly hijacked, visitors to the middle east had a 50:50 chance of being kidnapped each day and the IRA were doing their level best to turn the UK into one big fireball. Even Africa was in at least as much chaos as it is today - only instead of the locals killing each other it was mostly lunatics trying to be mercenary kings.

Throughout this crazy time did we have a war on Smoking? Drink? Obesity? Crime? Violence? Drugs? Nope. We didn’t even have a war on terror; western governments understood that declaring “war” on the terrorists gave them a status they didn’t deserve and changed how the state had to interact with them. One of the things the IRA/INLA hunger strikers were campaigning for was recognition of their struggle as being a war. Instead of starving to death, all they had to do was convert to Islam apparently.

What has changed over the world? So far, the Islamic terrorist threat has killed less British people than the IRA did in 1970 but we are a thousand times more frightened. Does this explain why we declare war on anything and everything?

It strikes me, that in the same manner people who have never experienced war sometimes long for it, a culture which has forgotten the horrors of war may start to long for it.

Worryingly, does this imply western society will, out of fear of the bogeyman, keep going to “war” on things until a real big war reminds everyone what they were trying to avoid? Crucially, when can we declare war on declaring war?
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1: I am fully aware that these are generalisations. I am seeking to do no more, and no less, than discuss a trend. There will always be examples which flow counter to this and I wont lose any sleep over them.

2: Unfortunately you need to be a NS subscriber to get full access to this. Buy the magazine or trust me…

Popularity: 44% [?]

Popularity: 44% [?]

Over on the wonderful Grumpy Lion blog there is a predictably excellent post which examines how most of the Hawks in the US government are, in fact, war dodging cowards while most of the doves have actually served in combat. This is something of a truism, as generally speaking, old men who have seen combat are a lot more reluctant to send others into battle.

However this is only a generalisation and it is important to be aware that, no matter how much a person may wish otherwise, it will not hold true in all circumstances. There are people who have never seen war who are solidly opposed to it and there are people who have seen death and destruction first hand but have not been turned pacifist by the experience.

With this in mind, the comments from Steph and Roy are especially entertaining. These have largely descended into a string of ad hominems against me surrounded by a huge helping of equivocation, so I am no longer going to take up space on Grumpy Lion with my responses, but there are some issues from the (erm) debate which I think are worthy of further mention.

Both Steph and Roy, in the finest internet traditions, demand copious examples of “evidence” to disprove their anecdotes. In fact the only information provided by either of them for their argument is a comment by Steph’s “grandfather” and a some vague references to the writings of Roy Jenkins. The most they can produce is “all of Churchills biographers” which is an immediately falsifiable claim (as I know of three biographers who claim different things). When contrary writing is cited, they dismiss the source as not being a “historian of note” (neatly ignoring their own single source’s status in the process).

Interestingly it seems the concept that Churchill dipped in and out of military service is impossible. Here we see another example of how the drive to shout and insult has blinded Roy and Steph to what I wrote in that I agreed with them that all the sources had Churchill working as a Journalist in the run up to Ladysmith and then Roy writes this with apparent glee: (this is a bit about Churchill covering the Spanish-American war of 1898)

It proves Steph is right and you are wrong and runs a horse and carts through your argument that Churchill wasn’t a correspondent before Ladysmith and saw active service. He avoided active service by going to Cuba.

Madness. Real, painful madness. It was around this point I finally realised there was no room for actual debate with either Steph or Roy and both were so obsessed with their idea that every hawk has to be a shivering coward nothing I wrote - even when I agreed with them - would actually be read.

Another example of what I have come to see as standard internet arguments (where the person doesn’t really have anything to say but hates the topic so much they have to argue) is the constant rattling about trivial facts.

I wrote that the Regimental History of the Royal Scots Fusiliers (now a battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland) had references to Churchill being Commanding Officer of one of their Battalions and having led his men on 36 forays across no-mans-land. This really drew some irate hand waving. Now it is certainly very possible that he did not lead his battalion on exactly 36 missions, but is the balance of probabilities going to lean towards none or at least 1 being the most likely?

One of the odd arguments centred on Military records being useless for historians. I found this pretty odd, given that these are the records used by most historians - especially for Ancient and Medieval researchers. Still, I began to work out what the issues here were when I mentioned that a good starting point for WWI research were the MOD’s records. Steph responded with:

This is a bare faced lie, the MoD didn’t even exist then.

Well blow me down with a feather. It seems that Steph (and to an extent, Rob) are obsessed with stating the obvious as if it is an argument. Everyone knows the Ministry of Defence did not exist in WWI, it was called the Ministry of War. However, since the MOW became the MOD, guess where all the MOW’s records are stored…?

Throughout the debate (for want of a better word) is along these lines. For good measure Steph points to her having a Doctorate in Law as if it carries any weight in an argument about WWI. Amazing.

Please, anyone, take a look at the thread and its debate and let me know what you think. Was I being unclear? Are there issues I have missed out on? Did Steph and Rob provide solid evidence for their claims? Did they bother to pay the money to visit the Regimental Museums and see what was there?

Popularity: 63% [?]

Popularity: 63% [?]

That was such fun that I have to look at more GoogleAds appearing on the blogs of members of Mojoey’s Atheist Blogroll

No God blog has

the atheist’s riddle. so simple, any child can understand so complex, no atheist can solve

from cosmicfingerprints.com. I’m not sure what this is offering except 5 days of spam e-mails, You don’t even get to find out what the riddle is until day 4. (If it’s like any other riddle I’ve ever read, the answer is always “the moon” or “a man”.)

No God blog also has adlinks to an organisation that wants a referendum on the EU Constitution, the familiar “end-times” site and atheist.net. (Look, don’t spoil this now by having relevant links, please….)

And Jesus2020.com. It has a few lines at the bottom of the index page, a prayer you are supposed to say and a big gold YES button you are supposed to click if you said the prayer. Bugrit, I’ll click anyway. Momentarily disappointed that choirs of angels haven’t appeared, I find it’s just a mailing list.

No explanation of the 2020 bit. I guess they were looking for a domain name and everything up to jesus2019 was already taken by Spanish-speaking men.

Just about to leave Nogodblog, when I see its links are going to eat up this whole post, all by itself. It’s got another tier of GoogleAds. More pantheism, Christianity in the UK, Catholic religion after Vatican II. Plus ChristianityToday.com/marriage/

My Son is Gay? One woman’s struggle with her son’s homosexuality and God’s answer.

(After he turns down her offer of a Christian un-gaying solution, she decides to hate the sin and love the sinner.)
Plus, from anointed-one.net

Atheism against the law? Scientific proof that atheism requires a belief in miracles.

Do these Christian sites really have to demonstrate that “form follows function” so slavishly, by having such unattractive blogs? This is yet another site with an eye-burning colour combination. This combo might be OK in a different context. Such as, if it didn’t involve text. Turquoise on black with primary red links isn’t normally associated with readability.

After listing teh universal laws that atheism is supposed to break, the site concludes:

Atheism requires not only a tremendous amount of faith but also a belief in miracles. And not only miracles but natural miracles, an oxymoron. Both naturalism and supernaturalism require faith and which one you place your faith in is one of the two most important choices you will ever make.

Imagining for one moment that this stuff is actually meaningful, I still can’t see any logical connection between the arguments that (a) science doesn’t provide answers to everything and (b) therefore there is an all-powerful “god”.

Click link to “find out how life began.” Guess what, a magic man did it.

Popularity: 39% [?]

Popularity: 39% [?]

Phillipino health officials have warned that there are health risks from crucifixion, according to the BBC.

Who’d have thought it?

Popularity: 19% [?]

Popularity: 19% [?]

Hell’s handmaidenhad an excellent post showing the Kjos Ministries’ take on a (possibly imaginary) UN peace-keeping initiative (which had me wondering “And this is supposed to be bad thing?”)

It seemed worth finding out exactly what the The New World Order was supposed to represent. Obviously, my first thoughts are “Wasn’t that what Joy Division became? No, fool. The word “World” didn’t fit in the Manchester band’s name.

It’s a bit of a shock to discover that there are people so far to the right of George W Bush (Bush I) that they can present him as part of a global conspiracy to undermine America. (I can appreciate that point of view. Engagement in stupid wars that created whole new categories of enemy may indeed have undermined the US. I don’t think they mean that though.)

It’s hard to make sense of what I will henceforth, ironically, refer to as “arguments”. The difficulty comes partly because words that you thought you understood are used in new and surprising contexts. It’s as if you thought you knew what a table was, then found yourself talking to people who use the word to describe what you call a toothbrush. Globalisation for instance. I followed a dozen links and I still can’t see what they are referring to.

In fact, at the end of the New World order page, I still don’t understand their argument. They have managed to distort the views of people as diverse as John Dewey and Pastor Rick Warren. These people treat the European Union as a successfully achieved Nazi project. So, no prizes to them for succeeding in characterising even UNESCO as vaguely sinister. Well, what could be more sinisterly anti-American than international co-operation to stop kids dying?

Keep in mind, this mind-changing system has no tolerance for God’s divisive Truth. Unless Christianity blends with other religions through diversity, dialogue and deconstruction (compromising or tearing down old beliefs) our globalist leaders will continue to face resistance. That’s why Federico Mayor, former head of UNESCO used yet another crisis to fuel revolutionary fervor:
“The mission of UNESCO… is that of advancing… international peace and the common welfare…. We have witnessed… the resurgence of nationalism, the growth of fundamentalism and of religious and ethnic intolerance. The roots of exclusion and hatred have shown themselves even deeper and more tenacious than we had feared…

You might naturally assume that Mayor’s words represent a wise and concise analysis of the current (”old?”/”new?”) world order.

However, they were cited by the (unpronouncable) Berit Kjos because she assumed readers would find them self-evdently threatening, as if any Christian who read them would see the inherent danger of creeping new-world-order-ism

No, I do get it. There is a parallel universe. In this universe, the Bush dynasty is a socialist plot. Franklin D Roosevelt was a socialist visionary. The EU sucked the US dry for the funds to set it up and is now laughing behind America’s back as it builds up regional power blocs to challenge the US. UNESCO threatens the right to practise religion. The silly Oprah-publicised The Secret actually provides secret esoteric wisdom and is a cunning wile of the devil . Role-playing games lead you sites where you can meet real occultists. And so on.

This is not obviously the same universe that I live in. Or at least, it wasn’t the universe that I lived in until the wall between worlds started to give way. Now, Kaos is leaking into our universe, probably though the mini-black-holes they are creating in CERN. Where is Chakotay when you need him?

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Aside
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There are pages and pages railing against immigration. It’s all the work of the new world order, of course. (I assume that’s why the US was populated entirely by Native Americans until recently) E.g. Berit Kjos:

Why won’t our leaders enforce a simple, straight-forward immigration policy?

But Berit Kjos:

Both Andy and Berit were raised Lutheran — Andy in North Dakota, I in Norway.

Popularity: 31% [?]

Popularity: 31% [?]