Paul Hoeffel wrote,
Paul Hoeffel said that the "By accepting association with the DPI, the organization agreed to meet criteria for association, including support and respect of the principles of the Charter of the United Nations,"
Hawk writes,
What can I say if he even refuses to believe what was officially written by Paul Hoeffel.
Of course I don't believe Hoeffel, and either do you. You know perfectly well that the Watchtower did NOT agree to support and respect the principles of the Charter of the United Nations. What you really mean to say is that the Watchtower—at worst--
allowed the United Nations to conclude on its own that the Watchtower's aims and goals were consistent with the United Nations goals.
Nobody--not one single person on this forum--believes that the Watchtower agreed to accept the aims and goals of the UN, so why do you keep insisting that we should take Hoeffel's words literally? One would suspect that you might have been a biblical literalist in your former life, and some of that credulity remains with you today.
Hoeffel was NOT in the NGO office in 1991, and he never said he saw any form which the Watchtower signed on which the Watchtower agreed to any such thing. All the Watchtower ever did was request affiliation, and in doing so it had to describe its business. The UN took the Watchtower's statements that it was interested in world peace and just assumed that the Watchtower accepted the aims and goals of the United Nations. What Hoeffel meant to say, but didn't have the wits to say, was that he assumed that the people who reviewed the 1991 application thought that the Watchtower's aims were the same as the United Nations. There was NEVER a form which anyone ever had to sign stating that they accepted the aims and goals of the United Nations.
Do you seriously still continue to believe that the lawyers for the Watchtower were so stupid as to not realize that having the Watchtower agree to support the principles of the United Nations would be tantamount to suicide—at least for those who supported the “agreement”? It could NOT have happened, unless it is only in the hopeful imaginations of those who want to make the Watchtower out to be as evil as possible in order to further their own agenda. Not that I disapprove of any efforts to destroy the Watchtower by peaceful means, mind you; I just don’t like to see it done in an intellectually dishonest way.
How many times have we heard it repeated by Hawkaw, and others who parroted him, that Gillies lied when he said that the “only way to gain access to the library was to register as an NGO with the United Nations”? Repeatedly, I think. Hawkaw and the others who repeated what Hawkaw said, were wrong, repeatedly. And Hawkaw realized that after I challenged him to show his evidence. All Gillies actually said, as everyone knows now, was that the “only reason” they registered was to gain access to the library, not that the “only way,” as Hawkaw had been insisting, to gain access was by affiliating with the DPI. Thus, we all been witness to too much carelessness in accusations against the Watchtower.
Why does Hawkaw keep insisting to be true something he knows cannot be true? The Watchtower CANNOT ever have agreed to accept the principles of the United Nations, everyone knows that. There is not--and never has been--any piece of paper which any organization had to sign which stated that they accepted the principles of the UN. Hoeffel didn't mean what his words imply, and Hawkaw must know that perfectly well, so why does he keep pretending to believe something everyone knows he doesn't really believe?
In summary, Hoeffel was wrong, or else was just careless with his words. The Watchtower did NOT agree to support the aims and goals of the UN; the Watchtower merely registered with the Department of Information and agreed to write about the United Nations, something it had already been doing, and wanted to continue to do. By registering with the DPI, the Watchtower was able to easily gain access to the Dag Hammerskold library, the main UN library; much has been made of the fact that with a little extra work, the Watchtower could gotten a grounds pass without becoming affiliated with the Department of Public Information, but this question really just casts doubt on their judgement; it would indeed have been better, in hindsight, to have gained access by a somewhat more involved process.
Joseph F. Alward
"Skeptical Views of Christianity and the Bible"
* http://members.aol.com/jalw/joseph_alward.html