In the company of moral philosophers

I am not blogging much these days. I am reading a lot for my teaching, mostly moral philosophy.

We are always liable to error in making particular moral judgments, sometimes intellectual errors such as going beyond the evidence or relying upon some unsubstantiated generalization, sometimes moral errors such as being over-influenced by our liking and disliking of particular individuals or projecting on to a situation some unrecognized phantasy or exhibiting either insensitivity to or sentimentality about suffering. And our intellectual errors are often rooted in moral errors. We need therefore to have tested our capacity for moral deliberation or judgment in this or that type of situation by subjecting our arguments and judgments systematically to the critical scrutiny of reliable others, of co-workers, family, friends. Such others, of course, are not themselves always reliable and some may influence us in ways that strengthen the propensity to error. So to have confidence in our deliberations and judgments we need social relationships of a certain kind, forms of social association in and through which our deliberations and practical judgments are subjected to extended and systematic critical questioning.(p.191)

Alasdair MacIntyre, 2006. Ethics and Politics, Selected Essays, vol.2, Cambridge University Press.

Reading this passage from MacIntyre, it strikes me that our society has just achieved the contrary. We don't value any rational critique of our actions and thinking, we value exactly the contrary, and in doing so we are loosing moral ground...

Lebanon: between war and peace

On the second anniversary of the 2006 Israeli agression on Lebanon, Lebanon has a new cabinet. This may put an end to a deep political crisis and power vacancy that started right after the 2006 war and Hezbollah's 'divine victory' and rise on the internal and regional political scenes.

Read here the commentary of Angry Arab.

Lebanon's Politicians: A portrait by the students of the Kennedy school

From Col. Patrick Lang's website.

Via Angry Arab

Paradise Now or Apocalypse Now ? American Christian Zionism, Israel and the current state of the ME

To some people it may look as a fantasy but the commitment of what is now known as Christian Zionism to a total hegemony of Israel over large territories in the ME, extending from the river of Egypt to the river of Euphrates and including modern day Iraq and Lebanon (Palestinians having to find some another place to live), is real.

Money is being raised by Christian Zionists on the basis of this belief and channeled to Israel to support its present hegemony and criminal wars in the ME. This belief also entails that the realisation of this hegemony is achieved through an apocalypse, precondition for the return of the Christ and the believers' access to paradise.

Michelle Goldberg cites from one of her Salon articles:

"Put baldly, millions of evangelical Christians see forewarnings of Armageddon in the crisis in the Middle East. Followers of dispensationalism, a major strain within American evangelical Christianity, they believe that the return of Jews to Israel and the restoration of Jewish sovereignty over the Temple Mount is a precondition for the rapture, the apocalypse and the return of Christ... For them, there can be no negotiation over what they call 'Judea and Samaria' despite the fact that many Israelis, and Jews worldwide, hope Israel eventually pulls out of the territories. Randall Price, jet-setting founder of World of the Bible Ministries, says, 'In the book of Genesis, there are territorial dimensions for the land that is given to Abraham and his descendents. It's from the river of Egypt to the river of the Euphrates.' In his view, Israel's right to that land, which extends into modern-day Iraq, is absolute. As for the Palestinians, Price says, 'Ishmael has said that his descendants would live to the East of their brother. There's a much larger geographical territory alloted to them.''

This unholy alliance of the Christian right and Zionism may make Osama Bin Laden look a small player on the international terror scene. After all, didn't USrael achieve more destruction and more mayhem than OBL during the last six years ? And this is why Osama has been off the Bush administration agenda, even since the beginning, serving only as a symbol for Islamist terror, a powerful symbol nonetheless amplified by CNN and Fox news and the images of September 11th.
There is however one problem, the rising regional influence of nuclear Mullah's Iran and its allies, thanks to the ill conceived Iraq and Lebanon wars. A rational mind with no apocalyptic religious beliefs might think, at that point, that caution and diplomacy might replace the last six years political folly that has taken hold of the world and the ME. But if you were a Christian Zionist or a Zionist tout court you might think otherwise. This is a unique occasion to realise the prophecy: the hegemony of Israel in the ME, the Apocalypse and the return of the Christ ! Paradise Now !

Never before in our modern democracies the line was so blurred between politics and religion and the fate of many people's lives jeopardised by a bunch of extremist ideologists and religious fools, thanks to Bush, American christian Zionists, Israel and of course OBL.