Caught On The Net #2 December 25, 2008
Posted by Resident Egoist in : Caught On The Net , comments closed1. I’ll start this one off with what seems to be good news: Christmas is an official holiday in Iraq now:
BAGHDAD – Iraq’s Christians, a scant minority in this overwhelmingly Muslim country, quietly celebrated Christmas on Thursday with a present from the government, which declared it an official holiday for the first time.
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In his homily on Thursday, Chaldean Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly praised the establishment of Christmas as an official holiday as a step toward easing tensions.
“I thank the government for giving chances to all to serve each other for the general benefit, and I thank it too for making this day an official holiday where we pray to God to make us trust each other as brothers,” he said at the Christmas Mass before several dozen worshippers in the small chapel of a Baghdad monastery.
A senior Shiite cleric, Ammar al-Hakim, attended the Mass flanked by bodyguards in a gesture of cooperation with Christians.
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“We came here to bring a message of love, respect and gratitude to our Christian brothers and to share happiness with them as we have shared sadness with them during the cruel targeting they came under,” al-Hakim said in an interview with al-Furat TV. “We will do our best for equality between people and a good life for all, whatever their religious, sectarian and ethnic background.”
He is the son and heir-apparent of Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, Iraq’s biggest mainstream Shiite party.
In a country with strong leanings towards theocracy, I’ll take this as a step in the right direction – albeit with a gigantic grain of salt.
2. Whoever said that insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results was not the most exact when it comes to definitions, but he was certainly onto something. I don’t think being stubborn or dogmatic is necessarily a sign of insanity. Sometimes it’s as simple as having an agenda! As expected, the Pope once again today decried selfishness as the cause of the world’s current economic problems:
VATICAN CITY: Pope Benedict XVI warned in his Christmas message Thursday that the world was headed toward ruin if selfishness prevails over solidarity during tough economic times for rich and poor nations.
Speaking from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, Benedict said he was trying to inspire hope in the world.
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“…may the light of Christmas shine forth and encourage all people to do their part in a spirit of authentic solidarity,” Benedict said. “If people look only to their own interests, our world will certainly fall apart.”
I suppose simple solutions will always be accepted by simple minds. Just like they accept that all of existence was simply willed into being by an undefinable non-entity, so they will accept that their economic problems were caused by the greed and selfishness of a mythical puppy-devouring robber baron on Wall Street. It’s just too much effort to learn some basic laws of economics like supply and demand and the soundness of hard money. But, heeding the advice of Ayn Rand, I will stop further examining this folly.
3. For a people that have been victims of some of the worst racial stereotypes and atrocities in human history, you’d think that racist comments would be the last thing you’d hear out of the mouth of a Jewish rabbi. David Wolpe, a rabbi from Los Angeles, commenting on the recent Madoff Ponzi scheme said “[w]hen a Jew does this, Jews feel ashamed by proxy…”. So he just takes the anti-Semite’s premise and runs with it. If he really believes the fact of someone being Jewish predetermines him to act a certain way – any way, then he has no reason to complain about anti-Semitism. Regrettably, this rabbi is not alone in his thinking:
…in synagogues and community centers, on blogs and in countless conversations, many Jews are beating their chests — not out of contrition, as they do on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, but because they say Mr. Madoff has brought shame on their people in addition to financial ruin and shaken the bonds of trust that bind Jewish communities.
There’s more:
“The fact that he stole from Jewish charities puts him in a special circle of hell,” Rabbi Visotzky added. “He really undermined the fabric of the Jewish community, because it’s built on trust. There is a wonderful rabbinic saying — often misapplied — that all Jews are sureties for one another, which means, for instance, that if a Jew takes a loan out, in some ways the whole Jewish community guarantees it.”
So much for the Pope’s thinking that individualism and egoism are what’s ruining our world! Almost every breath you smell stinks of sacrifice and tribalism.
Caught On The Net August 1, 2008
Posted by Resident Egoist in : Caught On The Net , comments closedAs much as I’d like to post to this blog more regularly, as well as predictably, I just find myself out of time, most of the time. I stumble upon quite a few interesting stories and articles on the web that I’d like to share with the very few (and of course, very lucky) people who accidentally find themselves here, but writing a thorough post to my satisfaction on each and everyone of those “stumbles” is simply out of the question. So as a solution I’m simply going to aggregate them into one post with light commentary for your reading pleasure.
Gus Van Horn and Myrhaf do this already – calling it Around the Web and Around the World Wide Web respectively. I would’ve loved to follow their footsteps, but I find “Caught On The Net” to be much more … snappy. So, Welcome to Caught On The Net 000!
1. Presidential Elections and the Supreme Court
Thomas Sowell has a must-read article at Capitalism Magazine that should make you think twice about who to vote (or not vote) for this coming presidential election: what kind of judge do you want sitting on the Supreme Court for the next generation. Here’s an excerpt:
Recent momentous decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court have been decided by 5 to 4 votes, including the votes of justices appointed by presidents who are no longer living– Justice John Paul Stevens, appointed by President Ford, and Justice Anthony Kennedy, appointed by President Reagan.
Whoever is elected to the White House this November is expected to appoint two or three new members of the Supreme Court– justices who will be making major decisions affecting the future of American society, long after that president is gone.
Your children will be living during the lifetime tenure of those justices, and your grandchildren will be living in a world shaped by the precedents that those justices set.
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This is especially important to be kept in mind by voters who are thinking of venting their frustrations by voting for some third-party candidate that they know has no chance of being elected.
I don’t know whether that was supposed to make it easier to decide or whether it just adds another variable to an already complex problem. Good luck!
2. More on Wasted Votes
Diana Hsieh of NoodleFood recently received an invitation to join the ranks of a supposed “Objectivist Party” from a masquerading Objectivist. Unaware of his true nature as a Libertarian, she responded with a “No, Thanks” and a strong argument against the senseless voting for unelectable political parties that Thomas Sowell just mentioned above:
The problem with American politics today is not that Americans are looking for an Objectivist candidate but [that] the major parties will only run statists. The majority of voters are reasonably satisfied with their choice between left-wing and right-wing statists on Election Day. Objectivists must work to change the culture toward secularism, reason, egoism, and individual rights. Only then can we expect better politicians to mount a credible campaign, let alone win elections.
That cultural change will be felt within the major parties — so long as Objectivists don’t sequester themselves into political irrelevance in their own unelectable political party. If Objectivists (and sympathizers) demand that the major parties court their vote, then political change for the better is possible.
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Today, if the small but growing number of Objectivists and sympathizers gravitate to an Objectivist political party, the Republicans and Democrats could safely ignore us for decades to come, knowing that they’ve already lost our vote. That’s a license for more statism, not less.
George Santayana said that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. Make sure you read her whole response for the history lesson.
3. I Told You So?
Staying true to their nature, the Communists have decided to only allow limited access to the internet to foreign journalists during the Beijing Olympic Games. Via The New York Times:
BEIJING — The International Olympic Committee failed to press China to allow fully unfettered access to the Internet for the thousands of journalists arriving here to cover the Olympics, despite promising repeatedly that the foreign news media could “report freely” during the Games, Olympic officials acknowledged Wednesday.
Since the Olympic Village press center opened Friday, reporters have been unable to access scores of Web pages [...].
The restrictions, which closely resemble the blocks that China places on the Internet for its citizens, undermine sweeping claims by Jacques Rogge, the International Olympic Committee president, that China had agreed to provide full Web access for foreign news media during the Games. Mr. Rogge has long argued that one of the main benefits of awarding the Games to Beijing was that the event would make China more open.
Well, so much for that! Compromise between good and evil, anyone? As far as I’m concerned, the IOC deserves no less for giving moral sanction to what is, arguably, the most repressive country on Earth.
4. Strange Priorities
If you’re a “drowning-in-freedom” Westerner, that is. China really is outdoing itself in more ways than one lately in preparation for the Olympics. Via The Associated Press:
BEIJING – Polishing up Beijing for the Olympics has extended to telling residents what not wear, with the city government advising against too many colors, white socks with black shoes, and parading in pajamas.
The advice, on top of campaigns to cut out public spitting and promote orderly lining up, was handed out in booklets to 4 million households ahead of the Olympics, an official said Thursday.
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There should be no more than three color groups in your clothing, [the etiquette booklet] advises, and wearing pajamas and slippers to visit neighbors, as some elderly Beijing residents like to do, is also out. It recommends dark-colored socks, and says white socks should never be worn with black leather shoes.
This just gives a whole new meaning to the term “Nanny State”! It would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad. What does this say about Chinese culture, however? That is, as a society more concerned about presenting its citizens to the outside world as obedient but fashion conscious cogs than as free and individual men and women capable of making their own decisions.