Bruce Waller has an interesting question about free will and moral responsibility. He asks, why not mix the two concepts instead of treating them as one and the same? Sounds pluralistic to me, and I’m all for the pluralism freedom gives us.
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From CNN, the picture of a building in Syria allegedly destroyed by the Israeli Air Force earlier this week. Syria accuses Israel; Israel has no comment. Syria claimed earlier this year that Israel attacked this same building, so either what was re-built by Syria had to be destroyed or the Israelis simply returned to finish the job.
Or, as a third possibility, Syria moved armaments destined for Hezbollah in Lebanon back into the previously destroyed building, thinking they would be ‘safe’ from a repeat attack. What does all this matter?
Iran has its presidential elections in a month, and the Guardian Council vets all candidates next week. Hezbollah is centered in Tehran. The shattered building is in Syria, but it is theofascist Iran which is the object of the Israeli lesson.
[Email comments welcome: duoism(at)sbcglobal.net]Even as President Putin of Russia signed legislation this week giving him sole power to appoint governors, the ailing and elderly Mikhail Gorbachev gave a speech decrying the reduction of freedom in Russia. But to Mr. Putin, Mr. Gorbachev’s freedom meant the loss of empire and the rise of “gangster capitalism” in Russia, so the two men have very different views on the benefits of freedom.
Both men are steeped in Marxism during their political careers, although Gorbachev is better described today as being ‘communist,’ not Marxist, and Mr. Putin is better described as a ‘religious nationalist,’ also no longer a Marxist. There is no freedom in Marx’s thought, as both Jaspers and Arendt pointed out, so the two men are disputing freedom in the traditional argument as being merely a theme or topic of political discourse.
Gorbachev won the Nobel Prize for Peace but neither man has freedom as a philosophy, and it shows.
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Germany’s Der Spiegel has an article today on Kirkuk, the city of 900,000 in northern Iraq rich in underground petroleum and coveted by contesting ethnic groups. The Prime Minister of the country, Maliki, has sent an entire army to the city to let the Kurds and Sunni and Turkmen in the city know that the nation’s rule is sovereign. Unfortunately for the Prime Minister’s argument, his army wears the black of the Shi’a of southern Iraq, not the colors of the nation of Iraq. Immediately as the Shi’a army marched to Kirkuk, the pershmerga of the Kurds dug into the hills overlooking the city and wait for the Shi’a to make any overt move. The Shi’a army, though much better armed, does not want to take on the fabled pershmerga, famous for their ferocity and refusal to give up.
Iraq is not a country that can live with internal pluralism. Iraq is a tripartite ethnic conglomeration imposed as a single nation-state by British imperialists after World War I. It makes no sense to continue to keep it as one country, as dug-in opposing armies makes clear. Iraq should be three states: Kurdistan in the north, Sunni Iraq in the west and middle, and Shi’istan in the south. The middle Sunnis will create an Amman to Baghdad corridor, and the Shi’a will eventually align with Iran. The Kurds? Give them eastern Syria and watch them build the most enlightened democracy in the Middle East, one to rival Israel’s development of a democratic state.
As for Kirkuk: no one wants to take on the pershmerga, so Kirkuk goes to the Kurds.
[Email comments welcome: duoism(at)sbcglobal.net]Nikolay Kozhanov has a piece from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy which argues that the Iranians are so absorbed with their pending presidential elections in June that all discussion of the nuclear issue is taking a back seat. Mr. Kozhanov mentions the impending political fight between the ‘principalists’ who support clerical supremacy and the ‘deviantionists’ who support deeply religious but technocratic rule. He offers the insight that this year’s election has no incumbent, and both previous presidential elections without an incumbent resulted in a shocking, unexpected winner.
What is missing in Mr. Kozhanov’s analysis is the appreciation that the differences between the religious clerics and the devout technocrats, while real, is like losing sight of the forest because so many trees stand in the way. It does not matter which camp wins the Iranian presidency this June.
No matter what, the winner will be a cleric. No matter what, the winning cleric will be totally devoted and loyal to the Supreme Guide, Ayatollah Khamenei. No matter what, the wishes of the Supreme Guide will dictate Iran’s nuclear policy. The result of the elections is already determined, regardless of who wins or loses, because the elections laws have been changed in such a manner since the corrupt ‘coup’ elections in 2009 that the winner has to be a clerical loyalist to the Islamic Revolution.
Instead of manipulating the elections on Election Day as they did in 2009, now the election laws carefully filter out any possible surprises well in advance. More than ever, the Supreme Guide will be in control of the Islamic Republic with an elected president utterly subservient to the Ayatollah. As it has steadily since the surprise elections in 1997, the theofascism in Iran will continue to consolidate after this June’s elections.
It doesn’t matter who wins or loses the presidential election in Iran. What matters is that the governing theofascism is still very much in charge, and still hardening.
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Put a match to frozen methane gas, and the ice burns. Think of it as ‘white coal.’ In today’s Wall Street Journal, Japanese off-shore drilling companies report they have produced usable gas from frozen deposits deep below the ocean some fifty miles off Japan’s coast. Naturally, the stock prices for Japanese drilling companies are soaring.
Japan has no indigenous source of carbon, so it imports oil and gas to fuel its industrial economy. If Japan can eventually produce methane gas at low cost and sufficient quantities, it will save many trillions of Yen in annual energy costs.
Although the extraction technology is still in its infancy, the off-shore reservoirs of frozen methane hydrate around the world are so enormous that they exceed all known oil, gas, and coal reserves combined. Commercial production is still many years away, but the ubiquity of off-shore frozen methane deposits surrounding all five continental shelves suggest that the hold by OPEC on the world’s energy supplies will weaken sooner rather than later.
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In today’s Japan Times, Brahma Chellaney warns from New Delhi of impending tribal and ethnic war in Afghanistan after the U.S. completes its 2014 withdrawal from the longest war in its history. The report focuses on two conflicting factors: the modern world wants the “stability” that it believes comes from fixed borders and established governments, while the competing view is that uniting different ethnicities in one nation-state is self-defeating, because the tribal identity is itself a separate nation.
The ‘stability’ view wraps itself in the pluralist mantle; inclusiveness reduces hatreds and engenders peace. The ‘identity’ view believes this is a foolish form of pluralism, certain to result in perpetuating centuries of tribal conflicts and killings. Instead, the ‘identity’ view sees pluralism as diverse peoples having diverse nation-states, as expressions of multiple autonomies.
From the map above the problem becomes obvious. Afghanistan is a amalgam of tribes; it is not a nation-state of one people. The northern border regions of Afghanistan consist of tribes which have a same-tribe nation-state immediately contiguous. Why not simply re-set Afghanistan’s northern boundaries to allow Turkmenistan and Tajikistan and Uzbekistan include its tribal peoples within their expanded nation-state boundaries? Give the majority Pashtuns of south and eastern Afghanistan their own Pashtunistan, and permit the Hazara and Almak in mid-Afghanistan to form the united autonomous region of Hazmakistan.
Pakistan will resist. It, too, is a tribal amalgam, not really a nation-state. The central government has no control over its Afghanistan border; the two Wazir border provinces long ago were declared to be the independent Islamic State of Waziristan by the Taliban and their tribal (Pashtun!) allies. An independent Pashtunistan creates huge problems for the “stability’ of Pakistan, which is half Pashtun.
So what? Pakistan is already the least stable nuclear-armed country in the world. It has long been a ‘bomb-a-month’ country, where tensions are unrelenting and murderous. Tensions are so enduringly bad in Pakistan that perhaps breaking it up into tribal identities would help reduce the sectarian violence. In both Afghanistan’s and Pakistan’s case, ‘stability’ might be achieved by their dismemberment into tribal-based nation-states.
This would undo Winston Churchill’s creation of modern states where none existed, but why not just admit that his creation of Afghanistan is a house of cards myth, and it is time to recognize that pluralism in tribalism means self-identified autonomy, not imposed unification. Let the philosophy of freedom guide pluralism.
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The Science Recorder reports today that the amounts of snow will likely decline because of increased carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere. They fail to mention–so conveniently–that the amount of rain will likely increase. Once again, the ideological true-believers filter facts in order to scare-monger policies that fuel their ideo/theological agenda.
So long as the amount of precipitation in a given area of the globe is the same, except for in the Arctic or Antarctic (which are actually deserts, where it doesn’t ever rain), it does not matter whether the precipitation falls in the form of frozen or liquid water. The report never claims that precipitation will decline; only that snowfall will be less.
Frankly, humans prefer falling rain to falling snow, so why the apocalyptic anxiety? Perhaps the anxiety is because the priests and priestesses of ideo/theological environmentalism are compelled to preach fear in order to assert dominance and control over their frightened congregations. If this is accurate, then the apocalyptic priest—whether on the socialist Left or religious Right—is a closet sadist.
[Email message welcome: duoism(at)sbcglobal.net]The Arman newspaper in Tehran reported yesterday that shops offering statues of Buddha for sale had all of their statues confiscated. Barbie dolls are already banned in Iran as Western polluters of Iranian culture, but banning the Buddha is the first instance of purifying Iran from Eastern influences.
Islam forbids the worship of idols, so the theofascist puritans in Iran see themselves as guardians of the faith by banning children’s dolls and human statues. However, Islam also decrees that all religions are to be respected and allowed to practise their faith in peace. Do Christian churches in Iran have statues inside? Why ban Buddha?
The puritan’s task is both hopeless and sociopathic. ‘Hopeless’ because human nature enjoys creating and playing with dolls; ‘sociopathic’ because there is a sadism in confiscation and control over others. The puritan is, by his nature, paranoid and phobic, frightened and repelled by the ‘danger’ from polluting influences. Well, all of life and living are polluting, so the puritan is actually life-extinguishing in his effort to be life-purifying.
What is entirely missing in theofascist Iran is the Philosophy of Freedom, where there is no such thing as heresy and purity is defined as one of the potentially lethal human ideals. Scratch a finger-pointing, whip-wielding puritan and you’ll not likely find a liberty-lover.
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Over at the BHL blog, the philosophers are caught up in the usual contention about what is ‘liberty,’ and the definitional short-comings of ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ freedom. The absolutist view simply thunders like Moses on high that ‘liberty is liberty,’ while the religious/socialist determinist is going to shake her head and sneer, ‘it’s all an illusion.’
I believe the “problem” is solved by recognizing that there is no word in the English language which correctly describes two thoughts: human freedom is moral, not an ideal, and that liberty without some tempering self-constraint is catabolic, not life-flourishing.
I propose in Duoism the term, ‘freedomist,’ and define it as ”a freedomphilic, prudent, pragmatic pluralist.” Plenty of self-constraint there, and by an association with philosophy the term, over time, will acquire its correlation with morality.
It’s a suggestion.
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Theofacism:
Relocate Israel?
Due: 3-31-13
Duoism: The Philosophy of Freedom
Due: 12-12-12
Qutb & Rawls:
Two Myths of
Social Justice
Due: 12-13-14
Duoist Diet: The Philosophy of Dieting
Due: 11-12-13
The Craving
(a crime novel)
Due: 1-6-16
Blue!
(sports/crime novel)
Due: 1-5-15
G2
(a stage play)
Due: 1-7-17
David's Lament
(a stage play)
Due: 1-8-18
The Second Texas Secession
(a political novel)
Due: 6-1-16
Sophrosyne:
The Philosophy
of Self-Mastery
Due: 1-9-19
Nietzsche's Herd: Voluntary Totalitarianism
Due: 1-12-21
Objectivity & Its Objections
Due: 2-20-20
Omnivore:
Consciousness &
Self-Destruction
Due: 2-22-22
Amoral
Morality
Due: 12-22-22
