Monthly Archives: July 2013

Awaiting A New Darwin

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Shared by Suhail Rizvi

The history of science is partly the history of an idea that is by now so familiar that it no longer astounds: the universe, including our own existence, can be explained by the interactions of little bits of matter. We scientists are in the business of discovering the laws that characterize this matter. We do so, to some extent at least, by a kind of reduction. The stuff of biology, for instance, can be reduced to chemistry and the stuff of chemistry can be reduced to physics.

Thomas Nagel has never been at ease with this view. Nagel, University Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University, is one of our most distinguished philosophers. He is perhaps best known for his 1974 paper, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?,” a modern classic in the philosophy of mind. In that paper, Nagel argued that reductionist, materialist accounts of the mind leave some things unexplained. And one of those things is what it would actually feel like to be, say, a bat, a creature that navigates its environment via the odd (to us) sense of echolocation. To Nagel, then, reductionist attempts to ground everything in matter fail partly for a reason that couldn’t be any nearer to us: subjective experience. While not denying that our conscious experiences have everything to do with brains, neurons, and matter, Nagel finds it hard to see how these experiences can be fully reduced with the conceptual tools of physical science.

In Mind and Cosmos, Nagel continues his attacks on reductionism. Though the book is brief its claims are big. Nagel insists that the mind-body problem “is not just a local problem” but “invades our understanding of the entire cosmos and its history.” If what he calls “materialist naturalism” or just “materialism” can’t explain consciousness, then it can’t fully account for life since consciousness is a feature of life. And if it can’t explain life, then it can’t fully account for the chemical and physical universe since life is a feature of that universe. Subjective experience is not, to Nagel, some detail that materialist science can hand-wave away. It’s a deal breaker. Nagel believes that any future science that grapples seriously with the mind-body problem will be one that is radically reconceived.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/feb/07/awaiting-new-darwin/?pagination=false

‘Great Games, Local Rules In Central Asia’ By S. Enders Wimbush

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Every great contest needs some great contestants. Yet the triangular contest for power in Central Asia among Russia, China, and the United States is very unequal, more scalene than equilateral. Of these, Russia strikes me as the least able to compete effectively for the long haul. Spiraling down across virtually all measures of power, authority, and influence, Russia is a dying state tempting debilitating crises at multiple levels. Cooley’s discussion of Russia’s seeming indifference to the fate of Central Asia after the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 is spot on, as is his assessment that “the main challenge in analyzing Russian policy toward Central Asia is that it lacks a single overriding strategic goal” (p. 51). This begs the question: how can a state compete effectively if its objectives are unclear and its competitive resources are being quickly depleted? Nearly all Russian initiatives to regain prestige and stature in the region have failed to impress the Central Asians, much less the Chinese. Writing in 2011, I concluded that “Russia is not one of Asia’s rising powers but the opposite.” [2] I see nothing today suggesting otherwise.

Can we say that the United States also lacks an overriding strategic goal in Central Asia? When Central Asia was suddenly released from Soviet control in 1991, Americans were even more indifferent to the region than the Russians because few of them knew anything about it. I am unaware of Central Asia ever figuring in U.S. strategy at more than a transactional level. Cooley’s account strengthens this conclusion.

President Obama underlined the transactional basis of U.S. involvement by fixing the date for the transaction to end in 2014. This decision was apparently made without regard for the longer-term strategic implications of the United States’ virtual disappearance from this contest—not just for China and Russia but for all of Eurasia’s key actors. Consider that Central Asia today is arguably the world’s most contested geography. Powerful regional states—Russia, China, India, Iran, and Turkey—all seek a competitive advantage in the Central Asian space. This list includes four nuclear powers, with a fifth (Iran) close at hand and possibly a sixth (Turkey) further over the horizon. Outside contestants—for example, the United States, Europe, Japan, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia—increase the density of this strategic soup. Is this an arena where the United States can afford strategic fatigue?

Meanwhile, China’s quiet incremental penetration of Central Asia gathers momentum. It is not without issue, and occasionally the Chinese encounter pushback on the ground, usually when they are insensitive to cultural norms, customs, or preferences. But Beijing’s use of economic incentives, a comparatively efficient labor force, and engaged regional organizations like the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, through which China can identify opportunities and leverage corporate diplomacy, far outstrips Russia’s ability to compete or counter. To the extent that Central Asia is a great-power contest, it is now China’s to lose. Click link for full article;

http://www.nbr.org/publications/element.aspx?id=660#.UeHYQI3OuuJ

Posted By F. Sheikh

Girl Shot in Head by Taliban, Speaks at UN: Malala Yousafzai United Nations Speech 2013

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Sabrina Elahi has shared a video with you on YouTube:

Girl Shot in Head by Taliban, Speaks at UN: Malala Yousafzai United Nations Speech 2013

Pakistani girl celebrates her 16th birthday on day she speaks to United Nations’ student delegates.

For more on this story, click here: http://liveblog.abcnews.go.com/Event/LIVE_UPDATES_Malala_Day_at_the_United_Nations_lbnid19644068

 

“To the Gradualist Brotherhood”

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Shared by Junaid Dar

I was just reading the following article I thought it would be good to share with our TF and get some comments/feedback on the situation.  Can you please share. Thanks Junaid.

*** To The Gradualist Brotherhood —
Will You Do Things a Better Way? ***
Soon, the Muslim Brotherhood will
come to the same realization as others Gradualists (in the revival of Islam)
like the FIS (Algeria) and the Rafah Party (Turkey). One does not simply use
the post-colonial political system in Muslim countries against itself. It is
backed up, and underwritten, by the very foreign powers who created it as a
cage over us.
This is like walking into a Casino,
and using your money to play the gambling games, hoping that you’ll win enough
to buy the casino, and close it down. In reality, you’ve just wasted your money
and made the casino richer, because ‘The House Always Wins’.

The U.S. government realizes that
‘Islamist’ parties are popular – representing the people’s desire for a Islamic
system. However, they realized that though they cannot prevent such parties
coming to power now, the situation is not outside some means of control.
Namely, the U.S. merely has to allow these parties to get into a very limited
role of power, then ‘shut all the doors’ on them to make them appear to fail in
the people’s eyes. Since Morsi wasn’t willing, or able, to really change the
system – he and his party will be publicly hanged by it (as a warning to others).
Now the Muslim Brotherhood cries
foul, and demands that people respect democracy (i.e. that Morsi is an
legitimate elected leader). But they don’t understand why Liberals use
Democracy. Liberalism doesn’t exist to serve Democracy. Democracy exists to serve
Liberalism. This is why the U.S. constitution was created, because the founding
fathers of America didn’t trust the rule of the majority. The Constitution
defines the essential laws and rights, and people only elect leaders to
implement that Liberal constitution, or make laws WITHIN its limits [btw the
American public was not given a choice on the US constitution]. Does Morsi not
see that if Democracy doesn’t produce the result the Liberals want, they have
no problem with becoming violent to protect Liberalism, and ignoring democracy.
This fact should have been apparent from anyone who studied history.
The Brotherhood should have changed
the system, not just played games within it, hoping the system would allow them
to overturn it. Morsi tried to appease the USA and ISRAEL by shutting off Gaza
ever more than Mubarak did. He begged for foreign interest loans – even though
he should of confiscated the ill-gotten property of the Egyptian Military
industrial complex, and re-distributed to the poor. He could have changed the
economy of cotton production (for export to Western countries) into food
production for his own people. He tried to appease the Secularists by making
Egypt fall well short of a Islamic State – content to apply a Islamic
flavoring. But now he’ll find out that the two billion dollars the USA pays to
the mercenary Egyptian Generals, is not without strings. And the Egyptian
Military are the real kingmakers of Egypt – and they were only waiting until
the people turned against the Muslim Brotherhood, to depose them, or at least
render their power negligible in a ‘unity government’ (composed of the
pro-secular but electoral losers).
So instead of pushing towards the
goal of the re-establishment of Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood were the
unwitting pawns of a game designed to make Islamic movements look incompetent –
pushing back the work for revival back by decades.
However, now is not the time for
people to say ‘I told you so’ to the Gradualists, but to say ‘now, will you do
things a better way?’
It’s time for us to liberate our
‘kingmakers’ – then we will be free to submit our nations to Al Maalik (SWT).
[By Abdullah Al Andalusi]