Technorati tagging not working

Technorati says there are no posts tagged prophetic witness, so I'm adding it to see how long it will take them to discover it.

Technorati tags: prophetic witness, Technorati

Blogspam, Internet vandalism and Technorati

A couple of days ago I posted an entry to my blog here and gave it a Technorati tag of "prophetic witness", but at the time of writing, at least, Technorati insists that there are no blog entries with that tag.

I tried to ping, but it said the blog was last updated days ago. I then entered something on my LiveJournal, and Technorati noted that that was updated in minutes. But it doesn't seem to be updating Blogspot.

I've also noticed that Google searches are become increasingly erratic. A few months ago, you could search Google and find pretty much exactly what you wanted on the first couple of pages. That's how it got to be the top search engine. Now the relevant results can be on page 10, and all the rest of the results are just junk. So I wonder -- is the Internet getting so clogged with blogspam that it's grinding to a halt?

Are the Internet vandals finally winning their battle to bring down the Internet and drive us back to snail mail?

Technorati tags: blog spam, metablog, Technorati, Internet vandalism

Eric Ehret: How the United States can live up to its own stated standards

And this also deals with the question posed in the previous post -- why are the carping critics always complaining, but never present solutions? And the answer is that they present solutions, but those who ask this don't like the solutions.

Eric Ehret: How the United States can live up to its own stated standards

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Technorati tags: Noam Chomsky, prophetic witness, politics, US foreign policy

Technorati says there are no posts tagged prophetic witness, so I'm adding it. prophetic witness, prophetic witness, prophetic witness

Noam Chomsky

verbum ipsum says:

Noam Chomsky is, to put it mildly, a polarizing figure. For a particular species of left-wing campus activist he's a kind of guru, someone who has penetrated the veil of illusion and seen reality as it really is. For certain conservatives and "serious" liberals he's an ayatollah of anti-Americanism, a kind of ritual hate figure.

While A conservative blog for peace says:

Noam Chomsky: Apparently his criticisms are spot-on but he doesn’t offer a good alternative

To which my response is that the same could be said of Amos, and most of the other Old Testament prophets.

When Christians in South Africa sent out a four-page document called A message to the people of South Africa, which pointed out that apartheid was both a heresy and a false gospel, the government responded that they were so negative -- criticising government policy and ideology without offering anything to put in its place.

So the South African Council of Churches and others set up the Study project for Christianity in Apartheid Society (Sprocas).

Sprocas produced six reports of about 200 pages each, cost an enormous amount in having commissions and preparing papers and writing proposals, and probably no one in the government read the reports, except perhaps the Security Police, to see who they could ban, detain, harass or persecute next.

The idea that you should not criticise evil until you can offer a practical alternative is a monstrous cop out.
------

Noam Chomsky is a linguist and political commentator who has been critical of US foreign policy in recent years.

Technorati tags: politics, apartheid, prophetic witness, Noam Chomsky, political theology, prophetic witness, prophetic witness

Technorati says there are no posts tagged prophetic witness so I'm adding it.

escapist entryway: Interesting facts by association

It's nice to see that someone else likes The Dharma bums, though I must say that the bobblehead doll looks more like Thunderbirds than Jack Kerouac.

escapist entryway: Interesting facts by association
But I found it interesting that I too read The Dharma bums through in one sitting, almost, in the Durban public library. Not quite one sitting -- I was about three-quarters of the way through when the library closed, and they kicked me out. I didn't live in Durban then, so I couldn't borrow the book. And soon after that it was banned, and so I couldn't buy my own copy, or get it in any library.

Technorati tags: literature, Beats, Beat Generation, Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac

Well, someone remembered Jack Kerouac's birthday.

I didn't, but it was nice to read about how he had influenced someone else.
Erik's Choice
One of the interesting things about Kerouac is that the attractions of his writing are not all that obvious. He writes about quite ordinary things: driving or hitchhiking from place to place, meeting people, conversations, hiking, reading, going to parties. All these things seem to be quite ordinary, banal even. Why write a book about them?

What makes Kerouac's books different is that he sees different things in the ordinary things of life, and so helps others to see their own lives differently. It is as if, as Allen Ginsberg said, one drives 72 hours across country to see if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out eternity.

I was introducted to Kerouac's books by Brother Roger, an Anglican monk of the Community of the Resurrection, and he had, in himself, that kind of character. He could talk about ordinary things and make them seem extraordinary. I think that if anyone else had introduced me to Kerouac's books, I would not have enjoyed them so much. Towards the end of his life Jack Kerouac seemed to become more lost and alcoholic and disillusioned. But for Brother Roger it remained fresh and exciting. "Everything that happens is adorable", as he quoted a character in another novel as saying, in his paper Pilgrims of the absolute, in which he first introduced me to Kerouac and other such characters.

Technorati tags: Beat Generation, Jack Kerouac, literature

Churches should incorporate folk culture in lectionary, says bishop

THE Church should celebrate “festivals of commerce” as well as holy days such as Easter if it wants to remain relevant to the concerns of contemporary Britain, according to a Church of England report.
There should be a new 12-month liturgical cycle “to connect commercial opportunities with spiritual ones”, a senior bishop says. Services to meet the needs of modern Britain could include Father’s Day celebrations, the marking of Bank Holidays and a “celebration of love” to mark Valentine’s Day.

According to an article in The Times celebrations linked to events such as St Valentine's Day might revive religion's appeal.

It's an interesting thought, but the Anglican Church in South Africa brought out Liturgy 1975 about 30 years ago, and it had an interesting new liturgical cycle, based on nine Sundays before Christmas and nine Sundays before Easter. It was dropped about 10 years later, but while it lasted it seemed to have more potential for developing a folk religious consciousness than its predecessors.

About the time that it was introduced there was a popular custom of having "flowers through the church". Church women's groups (in more affluent suburbs, at least) would show their skills at flower arranging, and invite others to come and see the results of their work in the church (and make a donation to the funds of the women's guild).

These flower shows usually had a theme, and in one church the theme chosen was the Nine Sundays before Christmas (it was held in September, which is spring time in South Africa, and, appropriately enough, the beginning of the church year). So the arrangements began with Creation, and went on to the Fall, the Covenant of Preservation (Noah), the Call of Abraham, and so on.

The results were very interesting. Those who did the flower arranging embarked on some serious Bible study, and some of the arrangements were very impressive, and expressive. The one illustrating the Fall had some dry grass and bare branches left over from winter, and some charred sticks, and an apple with a bite taken out of it. It had quite an impact on those who saw it.

Perhaps the abandonment of the "theme" lectionary was not such a good idea.


Technorati tags: Gospel and our culture, missiology, folk religion, lectionary & calendar, folk religion, Anglican Church

Elizaphanian: Notes on atonement

I'm still looking for material on peace and reconciliation from a theological point of view, but keep getting sidetracked into other things, like the theology of the atonement. I've blogged them for future reference.

I broadly agree with what is said in this post

Elizaphanian: Notes on atonement

and my view has been that one of the most significant obstacles to the healing of the East-Wast schism of the 11th century was the publication of Anselm of Canterbury's Cur Deus homo? shortly after the schism occurred. This spread rapidly through the West, but because of the schism, had little influence in the East. But because it was not one of the issues that led to the schism, it wasn't on the agenda for meetings to try to heal the breach, but it just meant that the basic assumptions of both sides drifted further apart as time went by.

But then I found this in another blog on Rereading Anselm on the atonement, which says, among other things:

While recent theologians such as John Milbank and Hans Boersma have defended aspects of Anselm's atonement theology, one of the most interesting recoveries of Anselm's thought is that of Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart in his essay "A Gift Exceeding Every Debt: An Eastern Orthodox Appreciation of Anselm's Cur Deus Homo," (in Pro Ecclesia, Vol. VII, No. 3, pp. 333-348).

Hart argues that there is a real continuity between the thought of the church Fathers, including the Eastern Fathers, and the thought of Anselm, so that his Cur Deus Homo does not fix any definitive breach between the theological outlooks of East and West. Rather, Hart suggests, the change marked by Anselm is merely one of "accent."

I'll definitely have to see if I can find that reference in the library!

Technorati tags: theology, atonement

theos (god) discussion (logos) = theology: Modern Humpty Dumpty and the Eastern Orthodox Way of Salvation

I've been asked by my bishop to prepare him some resource material for a conference he is to attend as a "resource person", on peace and reconciliation from a theological point of view. So I went searching blogs to see what has been written and this one came up. It looks interesting, but small grey letters on a black background makes it hard to read.

theos (god) discussion (logos) = theology: Modern Humpty Dumpty and the Eastern Orthodox Way of Salvation

But I'm not sure that it's really what I'm looking for.

Liberal Party of South Africa

Well, I've found a new host for the web pages on the Liberal Party of South Africa, and the banning of opponents of apartheid, which were removed by Yahoo! a couple of weeks ago. I hope the new host proves more reliable than Yahoo! did, But I think the story needs to be told and available somewhere.

You'll find most of our pages on the new site:

http://hayesfam.bravehost.com

and I hope the rest will be there in the next couple of days.

Technorati tags: politics, apartheid, Liberal Party, liberation struggle, South Africa

Passengers must please refrain from...

MetroRail, which runs the Thatcherised suburban commuter trains in South Africa, is having a problem with passengers who toss other passengers off the trains, and is thinking of calling in the army to keep order on trains.

Perhaps they need to look at a couple of remedies closer to home. For one thing, I think the MetroRail trains must be the only ones in the world that run with most of the doors open, and passengers leaning out of the doors, and even climbing on the roof to go surfing. Most commuter trains have a traction interlock switch to ensure that if the doors are open, the train stays put. If MetroRail checked the safety devices on their own trains, they might go a long way towards solving the problem.

But what started the rot was probably the amalgamation of the Railway Police with the South African Police that took place long ago, while the Nats were still in power. Ever since then, saftey on the trains has deteriorated, until we have now reached the stage where nearly every week we hear about kids being killed because they were "surfing" the trains -- riding on the roof, or passengers are being thrown off because they are foreigners, or scabs, or something.

MediaCitizen: Telcos Seek to Deceive Bloggers with Cartoon

My recent experience with Yahoo! suggests that big internet companies are seeking to restrict free speech.

This blog suggests that it's happening in more ways than one:

MediaCitizen: Telcos Seek to Deceive Bloggers with Cartoon

The Liberal Party of South Africa

The following article used to be on the web page
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/liberal1.htm
but was arbitrarily removed by Yahoo! for reasons best known to themselves. Since there is very little accurate information on the Liberal Party of South Africa on the Web, I'm putting it here as a temporary measure, until it can find a more reliable home.

The Liberal Party of South Africa

The Liberal Party of South Africa was formed in 1953, and fifteen years later was forced to close when the National Party governnment passed the Prohibition of Improper Interference Act, which made non-racial political parties illegal. Another 26 years were to pass before South Africa became, at least on paper, the kind of society the Liberal Party had struggled for, with non-racial free elections, a democratic constitution that entrenched the rule of law, and a bill of rights.

The definitive history of the role of the Liberal Party in the struggle against apartheid is probably Randolph Vigne's Liberals against apartheid (London, MacMillan, 1997, ISBN 0-333-71355-9), but there doesn't seem to be any web page dealing with this topic, so I hope this helps to fill the gap. What follows is something of a personal memoir. I was a member of the Liberal Party towards the end of its life, in Natal, and I write from that point of view. I hope that eventually others will contribute to this story.

Introduction

On 9 May 1953 the Liberal Party of South Africa was formed at a meeting in Cape Town. The meeting was of the South African Liberal Association, which had been formed earlier from diverse groups that had gathered in different centres in South Africa (Vigne 1997:20-21). The National Party had just won its second term of office with an increased majority, which it took as a mandate to press ahead with its policy of apartheid. It set about removing coloured voters from the comon roll, and abolishing the separate representation that the few African voters had had since they had been removed from the common voters' roll in 1936. The Communist Party of South Africa had been banned, and civil liberties had been eroded as the National Party sought to suppress opposition to its policies.

The main centres of the Liberal Party - Cape Town, Johannesburg, Pietermaritzburg and Durban - in many ways represented different philosophies, outlooks, views of what was wrong in South Africa, and what needed to be done about it. Vigne (1997) concentrates mainly on the Liberal Party at the national level, and in the old Cape Province. Natal liberalism, however, was somewhat different. The bulk of the party membership was among Zulu-speaking people in the rural areas.
The history of the Liberal Party is divided into two almost equal periods -- 1953-1960, and 1960-1968. Nineteen-sixty was a watershed year for South Africa. The Sharpeville massacre in March 1960 was followed by the banning of the African National Congress (ANC), the Pan-African Congress (PAC), and several other political organisations, a State of Emergency (during which several members of the Liberal Party, as well as those of other organisations, were detained), and a referendum among white voters on whether South Africa should become a republic. The formation of the Progressive Party of South Africa in 1959, with its policy of a qualified franchise, siphoned off the more right-wing white supporters of the Liberal Party, and thereafter the Liberal Party was unequivocal in its electoral policy of "one man, one vote."

What is liberalism? What are liberals?

"Liberal" was, and to some extent still is, something of a dirty word in South Africa. It most frequently appears with the epithet "white", and the stereotype of the "white liberal" is often propagated in the news media. See, for example:

• Article: Triumph of the unwilling liberals
• Article: Are liberals racists?

Such articles are misleading, however. Though most of those at the founding meeting were white, within a few years of its founding most of the members of the Liberal Party were black. For the first few years white members were the dominant influence in the party, mainly because the proceedings at national congresses were in English. But when simultaneous translation equipment began to be used, and conference delegates could speak their minds in whatever language they were most fluent in, this changed.

The main aim of the Liberal Party was to establish a free and democratic non-racial society in South Africa. A free society is one in which people are free from excessive government control. The Liberal Party was explicitly opposed to "all forms of totalitarianism, such as fascism and communism". It was therefore strongly opposed to the oppressive aspects of Nationalist rule, such as detention and banning without trial, and people being deprived of their property of ideological reasons, as when people were deprived of land and houses in the name of apartheid. Pass laws, influx control and similar laws were oppressive and unjust, and represented undesirable government interference in the lives of ordinary citizens.
In a peculiar twist of the meanings of words, many people nowadays, especially in the USA, seem to associate liberalism with "big government". This, however, is the reverse of the truth, and was certainly the opposite of the truth in South Africa. In South Africa the National Party arrogated more and more power to the government and its officials, and systematically removed the legal rights that protected ordinary citizens from the arbitrary abuse of power by officials. It has been rightly said that one of the principles of liberalism is that "the government governs best that governs least". But the Nationalist government in South Africa wanted to govern more and more. New laws kept appearing to remove from the courts the power to question the validity of laws, or to pronounce on the validity of actions that government officials took when using the growing powers that the laws granted them.

Peter Brown, one of the founders of the Liberal Party, and for many years its national chairman, died in June 2004 at the age of 79. The following obituaries have more information:

• Peter Brown - obituary from the Natal Witness
• Obituary from the Mail & Guardian

The archives of the Liberal Party are kept at the Alan Paton Centre at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Pietermaritzburg http://www.library.unp.ac.za/paton

Yahoo pulls the plug

About 10 years ago I started a personal Web page at Geocities. The site grew as I shared information with other people. Eventually Geocities was taken over by Yahoo, and today, suddenly and without warning, Yahoo blocked access to my web pages, and to my e-mail address (hayesstw@yahoo.com)and everything else linked to that Yahoo ID.

The implication is that I had somehow violated their terms of service. I'm not sure how I might have done that, but the only thing I can think of is that someone sent me one of those address update thingies, through a web site called Plaxo. I thought I would try out the Plaxo thing -- it's a sort of on-line address book, like the one Yahoo has, but with automatic updating. It had an option to import my Yahoo address book, so I did that, and the next thing I knew was that my Yahoo membership was terminated.

So the problem seems to be one of these turf wars between Internet companies. I can't think of what else it might be.

The biggest problem, however, is that a few months ago I moved some academic research discussion forums, and a couple of fun ones, from the FamilyNet BBS network to YahooGroups, in the mistaken belief that they would be more versatile and reliable. Boy, was I mistaken! My BBS computer died, and I thought it wasn't worth repairing it, and gatting the discussion forums between BBS echoes, E-mail lists and newsgroups. But perhaps BBSs are still better, even though the technology has not been updated for a long time. At least each BBS was under the control of its sysop, and the whole network was not at the mercy of a big company which could punish people arbitrarily if they were seen as somehow being unsupportive in their turf wars. Shades of Mr Vorster's bannings and detentions in the "old South Africa". Why were you banned? "The Minister in his wisdom sees fit."

The discussion forum on African Independent Churches was quite small, but it was a useful contact medium for researchers. But I can no longer maintain it, or even hand it over to anyone else to maintain. Gone! Same with the New Religious Movements forum, which started on a university server in Canada, was gated to FamilyNet, then moved to YahooGroups. Gone.

And so on with all the others.

A blog is a poor substitute.

Ballots, Balls and Bikes

Encouraging news of the Brit local elections

Ballots, Balls and Bikes

Hope the belligerent Mr Blair will soon be on his bicycle.