Joel Schwartz

After a few posts addressing the absurdity of the way the UN handles human rights, I’m starting to think that I was wrong about the UN after hearing their most recent announcement.

A recent UN report has declared that internet access is a human right.*  While my immediate reaction was one of shock and dismay, I realized that I may be looking at it incorrectly.  If internet access is a human right, and human rights must be granted to every human, then everyone has the right to read this website and all of my ideas that are posted on this website.  So instead of the UN trying to undermine me, they’re actually trying to help my ideas get out to the rest of the world, although the cost of transmitting my ideas appears to be the correctness and defensibility of my dissertation.

So, dear readers, should I be thanking the UN for their help in the long term, or criticize them for their attempts to undermine my dissertation in the process?

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*I am capable of carefully reading the article and noticing that they were claiming that you have the right to not have your internet disconnected by the government rather than being given internet access.  However, that more careful reading would not have allowed the full force of my sarcasm.

In a previous post, I complained that the UN was trying to mess up my dissertation by considering giving the same rights to Mother Earth as human beings have.  This move would create serious theoretical problems for my dissertation.

However, this week, they have decided to create practical problems for my dissertation.  If the UN gets their way, not only do I have do defend human rights from Mother Earth, I additionally have to explain how people who obviously abuse human rights can serve on a council to make sure that people don’t abuse human rights.  That would be like having to explain why it is a good idea to have Carl’s Jr in charge of regulating healthy fast food, Hugh Hefner as the chair of a women’s dignity committee, or, most glaringly, Nickelback picking the winners of the Grammys.

I think I may be able to avoid this potential problem in my dissertation, but am not looking forward to having to defend Nickelback at my dissertation defense if someone asks.