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Tag Archives: public policy

FTAC: On the Secular Roof: No Compulsion

19 Sunday Sep 2021

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Philosophy, Religion

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Futurism, Global International Statndards, globalism, political management, public policy, QOLs

From the Awesome Conversation, A Note Placed with the Rationalist Society of Pakistan (Facebook)


Because there is no compulsion (is there?), the modern secular guaranty is a roof beneath which all faiths and religious practices may be engaged by choice peacefully and securely.

By the numbers, our planet supports fewer than 7,000 living language cultures and approximately 4,200 separable religions and related sects.

For the blood thirsty, religion may be regarded as a gift, for wars related to creed or dogma favored by one powerful house or another (x clan, family, or tribe or by caliphate, kingdom, or empire) tend to be the least resolvable drivers of wars: nothing has ever been proved or disproved by them. For the most part, the employment of religious rhetoric by the powerful traces most of all to the want of personal aggrandizement and the presence of messianic ambition, and limitless greed.

Today’s post-Reformation Europe supports a dozen historical monarchies, all but two of them constitutional monarchies tempered by empowered and popularly elected legislatures and courts independent of churches once regarded as all powerful (there are no compassionate, democratic, humanist, or liberal theocracies. All theocracies remain deeply medieval, primitive, and suffocating, and especially so where subscription (loyalty with payment extracted) has been compelled.


One Earth and Our Own Little Worlds

The Taliban, among other of the world’s absolutists, scolds, and scourges will learn, whether they like it or not, that modern complexity in financing and trade demands ever higher levels of human cooperation and integration across cultural, economic, and geopolitical boundaries. The lone ancient bureaucrat with his snicker and his hand out for the bribe that lifts the gate he guards has now the power befitting make-believe trolls. Really getting things done — big things: accession to favorable security organizations; extensive infrastructure creation, re-engineering, and repair (after war, especially, but obsolescence over time demands the same regenerative efforts everywhere), ports, transnational communications — require good relationships with a whole world. Otherwise — and examples are numerous (start with Zimbabwe and work backward through the world’s dictatorships) — one’s people may be reduced to eating dust and worms.

For those with the full spread on a table in a palace, where’s the worry?

Well, history has a way of devouring those who exploit as well as starve their own.

Today’s responsible government needs must become a partner in the achievement of modern standards contributing to its own prosperity and stability — or the same may choose to remain heavily guarded in its keep and otherwise a vulgar backwater demeaned and reviled worldwide.

Political leaders may have today the puzzle of perpetuating the strength of their own cultures and families and related self-concepts while participating in the development of complex global diplomatic and legal systems bearing on the practical business and technology systems intended to secure a global tomorrow in which the earth and all her cargo may thrive.

Qualities of Living — The State of the State

War is easy.

It is living — and managing for the living — that has become challenging.

I believe for avarice, greed, and vanity, failed and failing states — generally absolute power systems that grind against their own constituents as well as the grain of humanity as well as decaying societies either disinterested in or incapable of damping the rise of their own fascistic elements — fail across measurable dimensions. Absolute and corrupt or decadent powers have despoiled their own environments and societies mightily in the cause of their own glorification. The same have produced a barbarism wondrous to behold and often beyond the bounds of any collective natural or normal human tolerance.

As I’ve written about Qualities of Living (QOLs) before and may come to dwell on the same as a principle for global political, practical, and spiritual competition — who would live best x conditions x population x area-squared? — I’ll reprint here the outline from August 25 this year –>


QOL: Qualities of Living

Biological: Environmental and Human Health

Financial: Actualizing, Beyond Basic, Individual and Family Sufficiency

Psychological: Dignifying with High Degrees of Freedom, Positive Outlook, Potential for Fulfillment, Good Self-Concept, Reliable Community and Personal Security

Spatial: Bases and Boundaries x Person x Family x Clan x Tribe x Nation x Ethnic x Transnational Cultures / Defenses and Retreats

Spiritual: Broad Awareness, Consciousness, Conscience x Comprehension of Community and Personal Place in Time


We may each have our separable dreams — but why not with clean air and water and good soil while in pursuit of contentment, place, and security?

Universally: may we and will we do that much for one another without reference to cultural or political identification and location?

Why not while we dream our dreams do so within the bounds of secured community and personal spaces?

Why not for each person with futures dreamed that may be in part accomplished, comfortable,and enlivening set and sustain the stage for positive accomplishment?


Accentuate Good; Diminish Evil

How good may we be across our species’ one biological platform: Earth?

And how rotten?

The Taliban in pursuit of absolute obedience has made a great to-do of burqa and hijab . . . but are not the virtues desired actually modesty and piety?

As an American of Jewish descent, I would not (yet, though sorely tempted) think of myself as an atheist: I am neither that brave nor cocksure. I would however suggest as virtues worthy of individual consideration and contemplation of possession without religious reference, the following: compassion; courage, empathy; fairness; foresight; fortitude, integrity; patience; temperance.

Worthy of appreciation and occasional experience but better served by diminishment over time: avarice; dishonesty; gluttony; greed; hubris; hypocrisy.

Put another way (more parallel and less awkward): have we — or just our solitary selves — compassion, courage, empathy, fairness, foresight, fortitude, integrity, and patience in all we do with ourselves and with others?

And if and when less noble and we find ourselves avaricious, controlling, corrupt, criminal, dishonest, fanatical, gluttonous, greedy, full of hubris, and hypocritical, should we not wish to have been by character and ethical and moral quality better?

One may ask what may be the balance within as well as politically and socially, for it may be that balance — that mixture in personal and communal or tribal character — that becomes the atmosphere in which we choose to reside or may be doomed to wander.

Related Online

Gannon, Kathy. “Taliban replace ministry for women with ‘virtue’ authorities.” AP News, September 18, 2021.

Lawrenz, Jürgen. “Universal virtues?” Ask A Philosopher, September 1, 2019.

Oppenheim, James S. “FTAC: Global QOL (Qualities of Living).” BackChannels, August 25, 2021.

Oppenheim, James S. “Globalization: A Short List”. Conflict-BackChannels, June 4, 2020.

Stecklow, Steve, Babak Dehghanpisheh, and Yeganeh Torbati. “Khamenei controls massive financial empire built on property seizures.” Reuters Investigates, November 11, 2013.

Wikipedia. “Environmental issues in Iran”.

Wikipedia. “Environmental Issues in Russia”.

Wikipedia. “List of religions and spiritual traditions”.


Hamlet had in part the experience of the medieval world, a most treacherous political and social space in time. Well, here is our still early 21st Century, and we may ask whether life must be or should be as horrifying as it may have been then.


Whether in Moscow or in Washington (or Beijing) – the three almost Orwellian anchoring points in global security — Big Defense and related “protection” rackets gin up a lot money, the perception of threat driving economies and societies in part or whole, but here one may wonder what if the world’s more apprehending, forward-looking, and good natured souls simply moved to address greater global challenges, leaving the dictators, extremists, hotheads, and malignant narcissists (“MaligNarcs” here) to wallow around a while longer in their own fantasies while they themselves become further displaced by time.

–33–

InfoSnap: Mexico and Economic Migration

17 Sunday Jun 2018

Posted by commart in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Central America, International Development, Mexico

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America, immigration, Mexico, motivations, public policy

Note the dates on these two references, 2012 on transnational crime associated with Mexico, 2018 on corruption.  The juxtaposition is fortuitous — accidental, simply observed while gathering information — as one lie — the first to the law — leads to another – the law to the state (in greater proportion over time).  The image is chilling.

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/transnational_crime_mexico_centralamerica.pdf
– Nov. 2012

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/corruption-mexicos-original-sin
– 1/1/2018


Here BackChannels will leap out of journalism and . . . IMAGINE* the despair of ordinary Mexicans as this story broke for the world to witness:

“Mexico’s World Cup star is accused of helping a drug lord”
http://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-mexico-rafael-marquez-20180615-story.html
– 6/15/2018

A Mexican election and politics story follows:

“Weary of violence and corruption, Mexican voters gravitate to populist firebrand with shades of Chavez”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/andres-manuel-lopez-obrador-amlo-populist-firebrand-mexican-presidential-elections-morena-party-a8395866.html
– 6/16/2016

Who can solve the world’s problem?  It may be better to ask “Who might refrain from adding to them?”

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/09/nafta-mexico-trump-trade/540906/
– 9/23/2017

The simple telling: NAFTA has over time produced the ugly picture in Mexico of lowest wage workers so mixed on the land with criminals that Mexico has all but lost control of five of its states to “transnational crime”.

It’s not always “us”, however — The North, the world, the affluent — that accounts for misery in developing states.  The more complex telling may be signaled from just one paragraph conveyed within the pages of The Atlantic:

The reasons for the situation in Chiapas are various. Chief among them is what political scientist Sarelly Martínez, a native of Chiapas, described as an “auction pyramid” in which political parties selectively distribute aid to resolve local conflicts and social leaders protest violently to secure more funding. In rural parts of the state, the blocking of highways and hijacking of municipal buildings are commonplace. Politically motivated assassinations, often barely reported amid Mexico’s drug-related violence, are increasingly frequent. The murder in 2016 of the mayor of San Juan Chamula, an indigenous municipality popular with tourists, was one of the few cases to draw national headlines. Political changes have failed to break the cycle. In 2006, the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party won Chiapas for the first time; debt increased, as did poverty and social strife. The story has been repeated under current governor Manuel Velasco of the Green Party, who, in 2015, oversaw local elections condemned by opponents as among the most corrupt in Mexican history.

Mexican economic desperation x greed and leverage involving even affluent politicians and sports starts x lawlessness — or the states inability to police itself — drives southern migration into America, some smaller part criminal, most of it just the desperation of men and women, some with children, looking for honest work.

American Left v Right Politics and Immigration Policy

To stem the flow of migrants north, The North needs must consider conditions — corruption, crime, insecurity, poverty — in Mexico and figure out how best to ameliorate the worst, which may be the abyss of “transnational crime” that produces its own economy, grows the gangsters, and leverages the politicians.  Beyond that, dive in to any of the dimensions noted or suggested because people leave spaces made untenable by the “insecurity” associated with warfare waged by criminals anchored both in narcotics or related politics.

As economically powerful neighbors to the north offering that deadly combination of jobs and rule-of-law, the United States and Canada now face greater challenge in addressing and, one may  hope, producing policy toward the repair of dire conditions south of the border.

Related Online

https://www.cnn.com/2013/09/02/world/americas/mexico-drug-war-fast-facts/index.html
– 6/12/2018

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/mexico-travel-advisory.html
– Current

https://www.business-anti-corruption.com/country-profiles/mexico/
– Feb. 2016

https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/KIND%20-%20Betraying%20Family%20Values.pdf – “Betraying Family Values: How Immigration Policy at the United States Border is Separating Families.”  PDF.  January 10, 2017.


*Imagination proved wrong!  In the article noted, the subjective reporting tells that at least one — perhaps millions — may be more interested in Mexico’s team winning its games than in the integrity and nobility of its sports heroes.  Then too, philosophically, who is to say the criminal is not noble for bringing money to family and community?  There’s a tough question for the cocktail circuits.


Crossing The Breakwater, Venice Beach (Vicinity), California, 19

–33–

  • Compassion
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  • Justice
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____________

Caution: The possession of anti-Semitic / anti-Zionist thought may be the measure of the owner's own enslavement to criminal and medieval absolute power.
___________

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Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another. That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
“The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

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