Category Archives: Rationalism

2017-05-01

Time magazine has lost most of the influence it once had, but not its flair for striking covers. A spring one asked, in bold red lettering on a black background, Is Truth Dead?. They used the same cover format as they had once in 1966, then asking Is God Dead?. But that had been a late popular reflection on Nietzsches philosophical assertion that this was the case. The cover and content this time were current and narrow, and better replaced by Has Trump Killed Truth?.

Either choice recalls G. K. Chestertons wise priest, Father Brown, explaining we should worry less about wrong answers, more whether we are asking the right question. Perhaps Nietzsche was doing so, as was the cooler but epistemologically similar David Hume, but maybe should not have published their obituaries. Both of them were revolutionary philosopher-theologians and historians of ideas, ever afterwards misunderstood and misapplied as destructive gravediggers. All searches for Truth with a capital T can be defined as searches for God with a capital G, including those made by atheists, despite some insisting otherwise. It has been, and likely will continue to be, an eternal and worldwide search. For Western European civilization, it can be traced back to ancient Greek philosophers, Jewish prophets, Roman statesmen, and Christian synthesizers; then only partially recast by Enlightenment philosophers. Later philosophers, in the English-speaking world, after Bertrand Russell, have largely scaled down Truth-seeking to analyses of the language we use when turning to ultimate questions.

For most people most of the time, decisions about what to think and what to do are not made with conscious use of, say, epistemology, ethics, or logic.

University courses in philosophy, if well-taught, may give practical benefits. They can aid thinking to purpose in anything from particle physics research to grocery shopping, as well as helping to refine each individuals search. But for most people most of the time, decisions about what to think and what to do are not made with conscious use of, say, epistemology, ethics, or logic. In personal relationships, in occupations, in politics and public affairs, even scholars, when not using their specialized expertise, are more likely to employ personal general knowledge, as does everyone else. Rival philosophical theories of truth, even pragmatism,are assumed to require more close inspection of single propositions than time allows. Before even considering Truth, the way we accept or reject important claims about the world depends on Trust with a capital T, even to how far we decide to trust Hume, Nietzsche, or Russell, or all quasi-philosophers, disguised theologians, or ideology sales clerks. The alarming Big Question for this century Time might have chosen would be Is TRUST Dead?

Academic philosophers might dislike this choice, as Trust is an even harder term to capture in precise definition than God or Truth. It is more variable, multiply-layered in experience, mixes empiricism and rationalism, and worse, is ultimately intuitive. It embraces stances from dog-like blind faith to assurance strengthened over many years of close attention. Yet even that, once modified by the persuasive but counter-intuitive character of natural science since Galileo and Newton, came to be recognized as permanently divorcing Trust from certainty. Since Hume, for careful thinkers, that noun must be confined to the tautologies of pure mathematics and logic.

Our lives can still be greatly informed and enriched by close attention to history, as truthful as we are able to find it and make it, including empirical and analytical reasoning, aware of fallibility and acceptance of some claims of myth, so long as they are recognized as such. That latter talent is sometimes found, not in academic historians, but among gifted romantic poets. Take Wordsworth:

The world is too much with us, late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon, The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers, For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not Great God! Id rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn, So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn, Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

In youth, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and many of their young contemporaries, celebrated the French Revolution. In age, they, and others less famous, mostly became conservative, appalled when they came to see that a mistaken trust in the future could produce worse consequences than a partially justified absence of trust in the institutions of Bourbon France. Americans, on the other hand, learned or not, from their less utopian Revolution to the late 20th century, mostly took a different direction. They combined a constitutional and social order both liberal and conservative, radical only in near-uninhibited capitalism and quick adoption of advancing technology. If the world was too much with them, and far more completely than the one that so depressed Wordsworth, it also brought broader and more equally-distributed satisfactions.

Donald Trump is Canadas useful idiot on supply management by Tom Kott

Canada is giving up on free speech by Katerina Gang

Yesterdays Heroes by Neil Cameron

That complacent success, however, also encouraged another general enthusiasm, one always existing, but given exponentially growing intensity, a neophilia that is now Americanizing the whole world. Fashion and pressure on ever-malleable public opinion has made Trend with a capital T another order of the day. For many of the most powerful and influential people, The Trend has been trusted, often worshipped, as much or more than God or Truth.

Distrust has rolled on through history as well, but Americans used to see it as foreign, or as the lot of unhappy individuals, or at the most, of some minorities. But that confidence started collapsing in the last decades of the 20th century with astonishing speed. With hindsight, the most likely causes are so often cited, now by both political left and right, as to scarcely require detailed recapitulation spiralling debt at all levels, the 2008 Crash, years of anaemic growth, increasing inequality, quickening automation, scarcity of well-compensated employment, and increasingly-unwelcome immigration. A related derivative force piles on as well, the triumph of nihilist entertainment over substantial content in TV and social media.

Donald Trump incarnates the public reaction to all of these, more effect than the causal agent he pretends to be, his constant theme being that Trust is Dead!. All serious conservatives should engage in the hard work of reducing the sway of this proposition, which will take years. In the universities, his most politically dangerous accomplices are not his supporters, but, displaying the paradoxical nature of politics, those of his faculty and student opponents who combine TV entertainment hysteria with thuggish censorship. They are trying to become The Trend, and they and spineless administrators should be resisted with firmness, intelligence, decency, and law. Otherwise, Trump may be the prophet of a coming new God, live and terrible.

The Prince Arthur Herald Photo credit: TIME

Continued here:

Truth, trust, trend, and Trump - The Prince Arthur Herald

A veteran journalistruns awaywith the circus. Minutes after quitting my job last year, as the Protestant ethic trembled, an imaginary chandelier clattered. This imaginary racket set me to thinking I was crazy and to wondering what I might do next. But hallelujah! A zephyr blew my way and gently suggested that the best thing would be to give in to an honorable impulse by running away and joining the circus.

Then clear light shined on my running-away-from-home plan. Genuine long-term, even lifelong disappearance came into sharp focus as impossible, if not immoral. I realized that the circus world, when one is starting out, anyway, is a young fellows endeavor. But hang on. Impossible? Circus Florathe only circus I know anything about and an institution I deeply lovewas pitched nine blocks from my apartment, in Grand Center. So an on-again, off-again running away was clearly possible, in walking distance, familiar. If the new administration would say yes, I was ready to go.

I rode up to meet with the new artistic director, Jack Marsh, and his mother, Cecil MacKinnon, theater director and featured performer. Finding them, I jammed on my brakes and fell into a bloody heap at their feet.

Lets do it, said Marsh, who is boyish but tough, able to execute a head-over-heels flip from standing still and smart and canny enough at only 32 years old to be artistic director, which means not only thinking up stories and acts but also spotting talent and taking care of the wrenching job of firing.

Marsh grew up in New York City and its suburbs. Wherever the circus was, so was I, he recalls. His mother is a circus institution and veteran of the Flora company, appearing in the center ring wearing a commedia dellarte costume and moving the show along with her narrative. As a boy, Marsh would come around and perform, juggling and tumbling. He went on to attend Harvard, then law school at the University of Wisconsin. He worked as a lawyer for a while, including a stint as a district attorney in St. Croix County, Wisconsin. In 2014, he helped his mother produce the amazing Circus Flora performances of A Winter Fable with the St. Louis Symphony at Powell Hall. After that run, it was back to the law. It was so boring by comparison, he said. Now hes back to art and the circus, perhaps for good.

His predecessor, the beloved Ivor David Baldingwho founded the circus and rescued its namesake from poachers when she was a calfdied in 2014, at age 75. Circus Flora folks and, indeed, the entire circus world were staggered. Laura Carpenter Baldinghis wife, soulmate, and creative associateis an accomplished horsewoman and has spent her life with animals at her family farm, Three Creek Farm in Weldon Spring. The family jumped in to help and, as shows must, Circus Flora went on.

I had been in and out of Circus Floras tents for years. Years ago, I showed up to learn to juggle alongside Balding. Later, at Three Creek Farm, I tried and tried to stand up on a galloping circus horses back as it careered around the arena. Most terrifyingly, I tried to walk a high wire stretched over concrete at Union Station (with Tino Wallenda of The Flying Wallendas holding my shoulders).

Dave Barry once wrote of the sea, Staying on the surface all the time is like going to the circus and staring at the tent. Similarly, after stepping into the middle of Circus Floras single ring, I began to understand something that critic Heinz Politzer wrote about the circus: It was a world between.

The magnetism of the circus is far more than entertainment. Though it is amusing or goosebumpy on one levelwith cavorting clowns and up-in-the-air derring-doon another plane it is a stage for the unconscious. Circus life is replete with joy and pain, pleasure and danger.

The appearance of abandon, suggesting unfettered fun and athletic virtuosity, is real up to a point. But then the curtain is rung down, disguising harsh aspects of real life but revealing that it wears a mantle of fantasy and a cloak of security.

As these reflections popped up one after another like popcorn and swirled like cotton candy in production, a simultaneous awareness crackled like lightning in my mind, a pervasive off and on light, illuminating home and all that goes into it, persons and animals and possessions and obligations, a place filled full with staggering anguishes and sweet memories of its own, a life in fact I cherish.

There are all sorts of attendant pleasures: applause under the tent and praise outside on the lot. There are pictures in magazines and the joys of friendship. Although there are no check stubs on which are marked benefits, there is value: maps to freedom, to lessons for life outside the margins, to understanding what swims beneath the surface.

Fun and games of innocence spring up during free time at Circus Flora. A game called soccer-tennis is a favorite. It is played in a miniature tennis court, with the layout drawn in chalk on the circus lots asphalt surface. There are parties to acknowledge holidays, birthdays, and other special days. Many of the circus folks travel in Airstream trailers, and they often gather in the staging areas for cocktails as the sun goes over the yardarm. Dorothy Carpenter, Laura Bladings sister, is the Perle Mesta of Circus Flora, and keeps the parties rolling.

With life lived amongst trained dogs, fiery-eyed Arabians, goats, blue-eyed camels, water-squirting clowns, jugglers, and musicians, life at Flora is a combination of infectious play and serious philosophical complexities that perplex and thrill those who peel the institutional onion.

Hovey Burgess peels the onion without ceasing. Hes the heart and soul of Circus Flora and the curator of knowledge and tradition. Famous in his own right as a historian, teacher, professor, mentor, performer, and author of a multivolume circus encyclopedia, he occupies a special position in the circus universe, reigning as a sort of philosopher-shaman.

Years ago, I asked David Balding for the name and phone number of a juggling expert, and he introduced me to Burgess. Now in his mid-seventies, Burgess is still going strong, living in a Collyer Brothers version of an Airstream trailer parked on the circus lot. Hes told me plenty about juggling, about circuses, about trapeze flying and sawdust. His face radiates the pink-cheeked good cheer of a Coca-Cola ad from 1920, way before the slogan Bring Home the Coke had a different meaning. The cheeks and gentle demeanor mask a formidable intelligence and indefatigable loyalty to the art of the circus.

At 16, Burgess wanted to run away and join the circus. A buddy had warned him that he probably would never come backand he never has used the return ticket. He had good grades in high school but no particular desire to go to a regular college, so he earned his B.A. at Pasadena Playhouse.

For four decades, he was a fixture at New York Universitys celebrated Tisch School of the Arts. His circus course was a requisite. Even if a young artist had no interest in the circus, the skills of what Burgess named equilibristicsconcentration (learned by juggling and plate spinning) and balance (learned on a tightrope) and strength (acquired on the flying trapeze)helped prepare student actors holistically for acting careers.

Im not the first to speculate on this, but it seems Burgess navigates a philosophical tightrope clutched at one end by the Enlightenment trailblazer Benedict de Spinoza, whose understanding of rationalism holds fast today and explains the how of things. At the ropes other end, holding forth on the why and whither, is Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose advocacy of metaphysics and his understanding of the power of goodness are of special importance to those such as Burgess. Wittgenstein and his apostles and other like-minded men and women look at the circus and see beyond the margins of existence and under its surface. They cringe as the world continues to produce increasing horrors, as our leaders concoct lies about them.

With optimism rising above the worlds lethal messes is Burgess, still daring, younga venerable man on an existential trapeze. His advice to those who would run away: Follow your bliss.

At the end of each show, in the grand finale, a hopeful happy ending and a special rumbustious form of rejoicing and redemption spins around, acted out by the blissful ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls of Circus Flora.

As this diverse and radiant rainbow company parades round and round the ring and then out into open air, it is good to remember the suggestion of the 14th-century mystic Mother Julian of Norwich, whose way of saying that the human show must go on is this: All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.

For centuries, the circus has been synonymous with impermanence: rail cars, trailers, canvas tents, sawdust-covered floors. Though Circus Flora has always felt its historical roots (The Flying Wallendas are old trapeze royalty, dating back to Europe), its never felt bound to tradition when it could do something better (like being animal-friendly). Take this Februarys big announcement: Thanks to a partnership with the Kranzberg Arts Foundation, Circus Flora has decided to permanently settle in Grand Center. There arent renderings yetor even an address. We can say that we will be in Grand Center, says executive director Larry Mabrey, and that dedicated space wont be in the parking lot of Powell Hall. Though he cant share concrete details yet, he promises that exciting things are in store. Considering the kind of magic Floras able to conjure in Grand Center just during the month of June, that seems like a sure bet.

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A veteran journalist runs away with the circus. - St. Louis Magazine

There are several editors in chief, several journalists and several column writers. Rare are those however who had a vision and who were able to properly read the future and be confronted with attacks at the beginning of their career and yet after so much hardship be able to pave the way to others.

Saudi Arabia has not witnessed a journalist, editor-in-chief or writer such as the late great Turki Al-Sudairi. This is not due to his professionalism alone or his leadership of the major al-Riyadh newspaper or even for heading the journalism syndicate in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf for several decades, but because he was among the first to confront extremism through his pen and journalistic work. He dedicated his newspaper to the nation first and foremost at a time when simply hinting at and criticizing hardliners could lead you into an endless dark tunnel and expose you to battles that are not easily won.

Even after beginning his voyage of criticizing forms of extremism and naming things as they are, he did that out of a national conviction that baffled his adversaries. He never overstepped his boundaries, insulted anyone or provoked the readers. Rationalism was his way and reason was his style. This is the path he chose for several years before paving the way for the rest of the media and opinion influencers to continue on enlightening the society.

Turki Al-Sudairi turned al-Riyadh newspaper into a journalistic pillar that is unique in thought and practice. He managed during his long career, which spanned 41 years, in transforming al-Riyadh into his countrys official newspaper without anyone asking that of him. Under Turki Al-Sudairi, al-Riyadh, reached heights that no one could easily reach. Arab and international media even began to consider it as the official mouthpiece of the state. Turki did that out of his high patriotism that enabled him to overcome all delicate issues that could have complicated his journalistic career. He was able to overcome all of those hardships, cementing al-Riyadhs name as a solid media outlet that leads the media scene in Saudi Arabia. The vision that he set in place for over four decades led to this resounding success. I do not think that anyone can repeat his feats.

In December 2011, two months after my appointment as editor-in-chief of el-Eqtisadiah newspaper, I paid a visit to Turki Al-Sudairi at his al-Riyadh office seeing as he is the senior journalist in the country. Despite the age and height difference between us, he insisted on escorting me out at the end of my visit. All my attempts to dissuade him from doing so failed. During our walk from his second-floor office to the exit, I asked him for advice. He replied: If you face any difficulties or problems within the newspaper or outside of it or with the official powers, do not hesitate to contact me. I smiled and thanked him. He then added: I am not humoring you, Salman, but I am asking you. We departed with him telling me: My son, I am by your side. Whenever you need me, you will find me. This was a statement that he never failed to tell me whenever we met again in the future.

Indeed, whenever I contacted him, he never disappointed me, offering advice and guidance at times and correcting me at others. He would then make the same request, which was never an attempt at humoring me as much as it was a statement that he actually meant.

In March 2013, he wrote an article in his famous column, Liqaa, entitled: Ignoring and Ignorance. He cited me in the article in words that have made me happy. I hope that I am up to the task he cited and I am proud to have been mentioned by a man of such high stature. I telephoned him at the time to thank him and express my gratitude. He again reiterated his will to me, asking: Did you forget my request, my son? I am by your side. Whenever you need me, you will find me.

Your son has not forgotten the father, teacher and educator. You are now departing and leaving us at a time when we need you the most and when men like you are so rare.

Continue reading here:

Turki Al-Sudairi's Will - Asharq Al-awsat English

"News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read. And it's only news until he's read it. After that, it's dead."

--Evelyn Waugh, Scoop

It's Karen's turn to host her book club; I have to clear out of the house for a few hours tonight.

I wish I didn't have to; this month's book is Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, and while it's been 20 years or so since I read it, I wouldn't mind listening to the discussion. I know the book in a way I know only a few novels--like something I lived through. Back when there were literary touchstones for journalists, it was one of them.

And in this age of fake news, this 1938 novel is strangely salient. It's inspired by events Waugh witnessed in 1935 and 1936 when he was a foreign correspondent for London newspaper The Daily Mail stationed in what we now know as Ethiopia and what was then called Abyssinia.

Back then, Italy was ruled by the fascist strongman Benito Mussolini, who had it in for the Abyssinians because 40 years before the Italian army lost the Battle of Adwa, which led to the Treaty of Addis Ababa, which secured independence for the Abyssinians, whom the Italians had intended to colonize.

(Long story, criminally synopsized: By the end of the 19th century, most of Africa had been divided up among European nations. Italy felt left out because the only African territories it controlled were the impoverished states of Eritrea and Italian Somalia, to the north and east of Abyssinia. Italy tried to make relatively rich Abyssinia a client state, first by treaty and later by invasion. It didn't work.)

In 1935 Mussolini was determined to make Italy great again by avenging the Battle of Adwa. Everybody knew Italy was going to invade and depose Emperor Haile Selassie; Mussolini had massed his colonial forces on the border and declared Italy's King Victor Emmanuel III the rightful ruler of Abyssinia. But somehow Waugh got the news of the actual invasion before any of the more than 120 journalists who'd gathered in Addis Ababa waiting for the war to begin. So he wrote a report and telegraphed it to his editors.

But Waugh took the precaution of writing his report in Latin, so as not to tip off his competition. Back in London, the foreign desk, lacking Waugh's upper class education, failed to recognize Waugh's scoop as such.

Outside of this ill-fated report, Waugh proved to be a pretty ineffectual war correspondent. It wasn't all his fault--the reporters were confined to Addis Ababa and had to rely on what the Italians told them. It wasn't too long before the Daily Mail recalled him to London. And all Waugh got out of what he had assumed would be a great adventure was a idea for a slim comic novel, the little miracle that is Scoop.

Before I go any further, it has to be said that Scoop is one of those books that uses racist language because its author was a man unable to transcend the racist temper of his times. It treats Africans with disdain. It uses words that decent people do not. (And it is fair to consider the attitudes expressed in the book Waugh's own; his non-fiction book based on these same experiences, Waugh in Abyssinia, uses the same language and displays the same bias.)

A lot of people dismiss Scoop as a bitter satire in which Waugh takes shots at journalists by exaggerating their foibles and pretensions. Waugh's main character, a timid nature columnist named William Boot who finds himself dragooned into service as a war correspondent because Lord Copper, the Trumpian proprietor of the Daily Beast (where Tina Brown got the name for her website), mistakes him for his cousin, a dashing young novelist named John Courteney Boot. William is sent to the East African nation of Ishmaelia where Lord Copper believes "a very promising little war" is about to break out.

Though William is completely unsuited to the task (he's a terrible writer, responsible for the legendarily purple sentence "Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole") and temperamentally unsuited to asking questions. Yet his journalistic ineptitude saves him from from charging after the news and leaves him well positioned to receive the extraordinary scoop that falls into his lap.

Even better, the scoop is credited to his cousin, the other Boot, another relative takes the glory, and William is left to go happily back to writing his nature column.

It's assumed most of the characters in Scoop are based on real people, and apparently the caricatures are accurate enough that journalists recognized themselves and others in the book. Through the years, journalists have recognized themselves--as a class--in the characters. And they are exquisitely rendered.

There's impatient Shumble who makes up a story about a Russian spy, and Corker, the solid professional who advises against explaining to his editors that Shumble is mistaken because newspapers don't like printing retractions and that the thing to do is to keep looking for a Russian spy. (Before you draw any parallels to current events, understand that it turns out there really is a Russian spy.)

Then there's Pappenhacker, an upper-class communist who writes a column for the Twopence (modeled on the Times of London) and who bullies waiters on the theory that "every time you are polite to a proletarian you are helping to bolster up the capitalist system." There's obsequious Salter, the Daily Beast foreign editor who can only respond to Lord Cooper's most outrageous falsehoods by agreeing with him "up to a point, sir."

But Waugh's purpose is not to point out that reporters can be craven, opportunistic and careerist, though all that is certainly true. The real point of Scoop is that it's difficult if not impossible to determine the real truth about anything. Waugh was deeply Catholic, distrustful of rationalism. Scoop isn't an assault on the laziness of journalists, it's a book about how arrogant human beings are when they pretend to know anything.

------------v------------

Philip Martin is a columnist and critic for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at pmartin@arkansasonline.com and read his blog at blooddirtandangels.com.

Editorial on 05/16/2017

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PHILIP MARTIN: Up to a point, sir - Arkansas Online

When food was used as a weapon of social revolution The Hindu A painting exhibition and release of books on rationalism will be the highlights of the day. Free thinkers C. Ravichandran and C. Viswanathan will present papers on May 28. Muktha Dabholkar, daughter of slain rationalist Narendra Dabholkar, will ... and more »

Originally posted here:

When food was used as a weapon of social revolution - The Hindu

On January 8, a pigtail macaque monkey died of dehydration at the UW primate research lab after going an estimated three days with no water. The tube that connected the water supply to the monkeys cage had become disconnected, cutting off its source of drinking water. A technician was responsible for monitoring the cages and equipment, including the water line, twice a day. They had neglected to check the water supply for several days, until they noticed that the monkey was lethargic and weak, by which point it was too late to revive the animal.

Was this merely a freak case of neglect and irresponsibility?

The disheartening truth is that this is merely the latest manifestation of something that runs much deeper. The number of primate skeletons in the labs closet have been piling up for decades.

Before delving into the case further, some background information is appropriate.

Research conducted on animals has been going on since before Socrates and Aristotle fathers of the study of ethics walked the earth. While unsavory to think about, it is beyond argument that animal testing has contributed to uncovering the secrets of mammalian anatomy, as well as the discovery of numerous treatments and procedures like artificial hearts, pacemakers, and anesthetics, to name a few.

Even today, the medical world is making steady strides to treat malaria, breast cancer, multiple sclerosis, and schizophrenia, which were all dependent, at one stage or another, on animal testing. The UW primate lab has historically focused much of its research to advance research for an AIDS vaccine. These are the facts.

But all these beneficial contributions, ostensibly made possible in part via animal testing, must be weighed against another fact: 26 million animals are used every year in the United States for animal testing. Of that figure, about 85,000, or seven percent, were used in studies that caused pain or suffering which could not be relieved.

Such a statistic cannot be swept under the rug. Do all of these animals even the ones that are spared intensely painful, traumatic experiments play unequivocally vital functions in the direct advancement of human well-being by eradicating insidious diseases or in developing life-saving vaccinations? If not, then we are confronted with some rather thorny questions. Have we allowed the notion of scientific progress to embolden us to treat animal testing with a skewed ethical code, and to perpetuate senseless cruelty?

Even into the 1980s, the notion that animals couldnt experience pain the way humans can was widespread. The roots of this notion can be followed back to the philosophy of Rene Descartes.

Brilliant though he was, Descartes was operating on a strictly philosophical plane, not a biological or medical one. Further, his pioneering idea of rationalism has long been superseded by empiricism within the scientific community. Most biologists today would argue that many animals possess at least some basic level of consciousness. Clearly then, something is massively off-kilter with our outlook on animal welfare.

The case of the macaque monkey death in the UW primate research lab is yet another disturbing manifestation of this outlook. If this was an isolated, one-off incident, it would be deeply disheartening and saddening. However, its not an isolated, freak incident.

Not even close.

For literally decades, various UW animal research programs have come under investigation, been the target of a slew of lawsuits made by animal rights organizations, and been cited on numerous occasions for failing to comply with animal welfare standards.

In 1995, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) found the UWs previous primate research center guilty of the deaths of five baboons that had been neglected. The facility had been a former mental institution and had been shown in multiple cases to be unsuitably equipped to house monkeys.

In 1996, a macaque died of dehydration in an incident nearly identical to the one that occurred this past January, also prompting an investigation by the USDA, which ended in a $20,000 settlement.

In 2001, an animal rights group filed a complaint against the UW, stating that the primate lab had failed to uphold a law requiring any instances of prolonged pain and suffering to be reported to the USDA. The group claimed that the lab confined macaques to a chair for hours, chained by a collar.

The obscene list of the labs dirty laundry goes on and on.

In 2008, researchers were cited by the USDA for performing unauthorized experiments on monkeys. In 2011, the USDA fined the university over $10,000 for allowing another macaque to starve to death. In 2014, the lab was cited when workers placed three juvenile monkeys in a cage with older, aggressive males, who tore the younger monkeys to pieces.

Despite all of this, another three monkeys were killed in 2015 while undergoing a previously unattempted experiment. According to the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), under all-too-familiar circumstances, a macaque also died in 2016 of dehydration after being neglected for several days.

The investigation that was prompted by the death of the macaque this year also found that 17 of the primate cages hadnt been cleaned in at least two weeks.

Morgan Rawson, a student and leader in Campus Animal Rights Educators (CARE), smoothly ties together the significance of these accusations.

From my own personal research, I have noticed very consistent patterns of negligence on behalf of the primate lab, along with a strong tendency toward justification through accreditation, where they take advantage of their prestige as a highly regarded research university to justify severe mistreatment of animals, Rawson said.

From CAREs perspective as an intersectional club, the treatment of the monkeys is without a doubt unacceptable, she continued. Further, the very fact that the university still heavily relies on outdated research methods involving model organisms, when so many universities have moved to alternative methods, is perplexing.

What is the takeaway from all of this? The UW is one of the most heavily federally funded universities in the United States. For proof of this, look no further than the brand-new, $124 million dollar underground primate facility being constructed on campus right now. The primate lab can afford to take better care of its research organisms if it chooses to.

And it has no reason not to.

Animals that are starving, dehydrated, or with otherwise generally compromised immune systems, are of far less use in experiments. The side effects from a novel drug being tested are likely to be more pronounced on a weak individual. And besides, primates are among the most expensive model organisms. Flippantly wasting money on primates to replace neglected ones is a serious slap in the face to those that could actually benefit from the labs medical advancements.

If this wasnt enough, animal rights organizations are never far behind and are willing to expose the misdeeds of the lab. This should be a glaring indicator that the primate research lab needs to find a new paradigm for its treatment of animals, especially if it hopes to contribute with breakthroughs in medicine.

Reach writer Tony Sciglianoat opinion@dailyuw.com.Twitter: @earthtotones

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Animal testing is a complex issue, taking good care of test organisms is not - Dailyuw

Catholic World News

May 11, 2017

In a message to the Catholic hierarchy of Latin America, Pope Francis has underlined the importance of listening to the laity, and being willing to join them in their struggle to live the Gospel in a troubled world.

The full text of the Popes message to the Latin American Episcopal Council (CELAM) was made public by the Vatican on May 11. In it the Pope remarks that this weeks meeting of CELAM leaders, taking place in El Salvador, occurs against the background music of the celebration of the 300th anniversary of the Brazilian shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida. He remarks: Our Lady of Aparecida makes us grown, and places us on the path of the disciple. Aparecida is above all a school of discipleship.

Recalling that the image of Our Lady of Aparecida was discovered by fishermen, the Pope says that fishermen have to contend with the uncertainty of the catch and the occasional inclemency of the weather. This is the plight of most working people, he said: working with the insecurity of not knowing what the result will be. The Holy Father went on to denounce the corruption that is prevalent in many Latin American countries:

And what hurts the most is seeing that, almost regularly, they go out to face the inclemency generated by one of the gravest sins that currently afflicts our Continent: corruption, that corruption that sweeps through lives, submerging them in the most extreme poverty. Corruption that destroys entire populations, subjecting them to precariousness.

Pope Francis urged the bishops of the region to appreciate the faith and the work of the laity. Learning to listen to the People of God, he said, means to rid ourselves of our prejudices and rationalism, our functionalist mindsets, so as to understand how the Spirit acts in the hearts of so many men and women who with great zeal do not cease to throw nets and to fight to make the Gospel credible. He told the prelates that they should not be afraid to get dirty for our people.

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Pope's message to Latin American hierarchy: listen to the laity - Catholic Culture

Forbes

The Forgotten Hayek: An Antidote For The New Populism? Forbes At the first MPS meeting, 70 years ago, Hayek warned about an intolerant and fierce rationalism which in particular is responsible for the gulf which particularly on the [European] Continent has for several generations driven most religious people ...

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The Forgotten Hayek: An Antidote For The New Populism? - Forbes

9 May 2017, 8 p.m.

The system of higher education in Australia is anything but efficient.

LASTweek the pre-budget announcements were coming in thick and fast, to soften us up for todays bad news, and saw Messrs Turnbull & Co clear the decks of two thorny education issues, school and university funding.

Both were exercises in spin designed to fool the gullible, with the prize going to schools funding, though the propaganda that universities could afford the proposed cuts made it a close second.

The government will cut university funding by 2.5 per cent, a decision they have based on the findings of a Deloitte report, which showed that between 2010-15 the cost of course delivery increased by 9.5 per cent, while revenue grew by 15 per cent.

So many, but by no means all, universities are running healthy surpluses and, according to Simon Birmingham, Minister for Education, they can take a haircut.

This has been called an "efficiency dividend" but the system of higher education in Australia is anything but efficient.

Even thougheconomic rationalism suggests that competition generates efficiency what passes for efficiency usually compromises the quality of education.

It can mean giving students fewer curriculum choices, increasing class sizes, reducing face-to-face hours, teaching them with casual staff and substituting classroom teaching with "digital delivery".

All of these have happened and continue to do so at our own local Charles Sturt University.

If staff and undergraduates are being short-changed, where is the money going?

Im indebted to George Morgan, Associate Professor at the School of Humanities and Communication Arts and the Institute for Culture and Societyat Western Sydney University for suggesting three main avenues.

In the first instance many universities cross subsidise research with the public money they receive for undergraduate teaching largely because the federal government underfunds research.

Secondly, some universities have undertaken ambitious capital works programs, erecting what are in effect "signature" buildings such as Frank Gehry designed building at UTS, no doubt to communicate the new university's cultural and intellectual importance.

Thirdly, administrative costs continue to grow inexorably. Most universities employ more administrators than academics

Given all this, what the university system requires is political and economic change, not short term and crude fiscal shocks.

The university community (including both students and staff) needs to be given more power over institutional affairs to provide more democratic checks and balances over the excesses, caprice and follies of managerialism.

As to Turnbulls declaration last week that he will "bring the school funding wars to an end" in a stunning turnaround that will see the government pump an extra $19 billion into schools over the next decade, Im tempted to agree with Greens Education spokesperson Sarah Hanson-Young.

"We'll look at the detail of this announcement, but what we know is that Australia's school funding system is broken. It's time our children's education was prioritised in Australia. It's a sad reality that many of our kids are being left behind, Hanson-Young said

This will certainly be the case as the governments proposal means that less than half of additional federal funding over the next 10 years will go to public schools, compared to 80 per cent under the Gonski agreements.

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Ray Goodlass' Ray's Reasoning | OPINION, May 9, 2017 - Daily Advertiser

The intellectual, religious and educational movements of the 18th and 19th centuries in Muslim societies shaped what we today call the Muslim world. Colonialism and the rise of the West triggered processes of internal transformation in Muslim societies, that had multiple expressions ranging from the revival of political systems, selective Westernisation and inner purification through Sufism to socio-cultural reformations.

These processes of reformation and moderation were not only constructing new Muslim societies, but also intellectual discourses. In different Muslims societies, thinking processes were producing almost similar intellectual trends that were difficult for Western and even Muslim scholars to accurately describe. However, in the Indian subcontinent, the transformation discourse was largely educational in nature and did not create much trouble for the colonial rulers. Various educational movements associated with the names of cities, places and institutions, such as Deoband, Aligarh and Bareilly, etc, emerged. Western scholars, particularly, were interested in the interpretations of Islam emerging from North Africa and Ottoman Asia. The terms Salafi and Salafiyya referred to these interpretations of mainly neo-Hanbali theology.

French Orientalist Louis Massignon, who was studying reformist movements, thought the terms Salafi or Salafiyya referred to a coherent reform movement. Massignons notion swiftly became popular among Western and Muslims scholars. Still, many ambiguities surrounded the less-explored term of Salafism. Henri Lauzire, an assistant professor of history at Northwestern University, has resolved the issue in his well-researched book, The Making of Salafism: Islamic Reform in the 20th Century.

Tracing and understanding the making of Salafism was not an easy task. For that Lauzire followed the intellectual journey of the Moroccan Salafi and globetrotter Muhammad Taqi al-Din al-Hilali, a former Sufi of the Tijani order. According to Lauzire, Al-Hilali embraced what he later called Salafism in 1921 and embarked on a lifelong mission to study, teach and defend the primary textual sources of Islam on three different continents.

It is particularly interesting to learn how an academic Islamic journal, Al-Majalla al-Salafiyya, from Cairo, edited by Abd al-Fattah Qatlan, played a significant role in spreading the word Salafiyya overseas. Al-Majalla al-Salafiyya contoured the concept of Salafiyya mostly in a theological context.Lauzire discovered the fact when the first issue of the journal reached the office of the Revue du Monde Musulman in Paris, to which the French scholar of Islam, Massignon, was a major contributor. Massignon wrongly conceived of Salafiyya as an intellectual movement. Later, Arab social intellectuals and journalists created conditions conducive to the misinterpretation. Though Massignon played a leading role in labellingIslamic modernists Salafi, the definition provided useful context to Western scholars who were looking for a conceptual box in which they could place Muslim figures such as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Muhammad Abduh, and their epigones, who all seemed inclined toward a scripturalist understanding of Islam, but proved open to rationalism and Western modernity.

Lauzires contribution is important because, as cited earlier, there was confusion around the term Salafism and Muslim scholars referred to it in two contrary perspectives. Some considered Salafism an innovative and rationalist movement and others conceived of it as anti-rationalist; the view of Salafism as purist evolution is a result of decolonisation.

Lauzire notes that from the medieval period until the beginning of the 20th century, Muslim scholars and activists referred to themselves and to others as Salafis only to signal their adherence to the Hanbali theology espoused by Ibn Taymiyyah and other theologians of his tradition. The 20th century Islamic modernist reform movements were labelled Salafism because of their reformists Salafi credentials. Lauzire has also probed the roots of different Salafi traditions, including the one focusing on doctrinal purity and characterised by adherence to neo-Hanbali theology. The 20th century reform movements later triggered an ecumenical approach towards other Muslims among neo-Hanbalis and made Salafism compatible with emerging Muslim nationalism concepts. Both tendencies nurtured another stream of purification. This trend emerged in Morocco and was hallmarked by such figures as Muhammad Allal al-Fasi.

Lauzires critical appraisal of the term Salafism is a commendable effort; it not only removes confusions surrounding it, but also helps in understanding the construct of Islamic thought in contemporary times. He explains that prior to the 20th century, Salafism was not part of the typological lexicon of traditional Islamic science. The growth of colonialism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries entailed greater interaction between native and non-native people. So, too, did it favour cross-pollination between indigenous and non-indigenous ways of thinking about Islam. He argues that the concept of purist Salafism did not initially entail a complete rejection of religious compromise.

The process of purification took place between the 1920s and the 1950s, mainly to accommodate political considerations and to increase the likelihood of achieving political independence from colonial powers.Lauzire explains how this process expanded the meaning of Salafi and Salafism beyond the confines of theology and constructed a rigorist notion of Salafism in the hopes of strengthening and uniting Muslims of different regions and cultural backgrounds under a common standard of Islamic purity.

Lauzire also discusses the new challenges facing the adherents of Salafism. Apart from the violent expressions, the most important question for purist and modernist Salafis regards their participation in the political process. Lauzire lists some questions that he believes dominate contemporary Salafi discourse: should they establish political parties at the risk of creating divisions? Should they run for [public] offices at the risk of legitimising democracy? Should they take to the streets at the risk of encouraging social and political instability? He argues: For the most part, these questions fall under the purview of the Salafi method because they pertain to neither orthodoxy nor orthopraxy in a strict sense. Under specific circumstances, different Salafis have, therefore, been providing different answers depending on their understanding of the Manhaj [Method].

One important chapter of the book discusses Rashid Ridas engagement with the Wahhabis and its consequences. Rida, a Syrian-born Islamic scholar who formulated an intellectual response to the pressures of the modern Western world, had offered his unconditional support to Abd al-Aziz al-Saud. The fall of the Ottoman Empire, the failure of Faisal ibn Hussein ibn Alis Arab kingdom in 1920, the loss of Iraq and Greater Syria to the mandatory powers, the triumph of secular Kemalism in Turkey and the abolition of the caliphate in 1924 had created enormous challenges for Muslim political, religious and intellectual leaderships. Ridas initial response was not to support one group or one doctrine in particular for he believed that factionalism and sectarianism could only weaken the already fragile Islamic community. Later, the circumstances that finally caused Rida to lend his full support to the Saudis resulted from Sharif Husayns self-proclamation as caliph two days after Mustafa Kemal Ataturk abolished the institution in March, 1924. This event confirmed Husayns arrogance in the eyes of Rida, for whom the offence had particular significance. Ridas challenge was two-fold: first, to transform the new state according to his concept of the caliphate. Second, to rationalise Wahhabi thought. Rida explained that even though Wahhabis were Salafi in creed, they often ignored the significance of modern science and opposed modernist ideas. However, he failed to transform the Saudi clergy that was critical towards his new ideas of theological rationalism and tolerance of religious error.

Lauzires scholarship on Salafism is commendable and an example for young Muslim scholars on how to pursue intellectual queries. His journey to exploring the dynamics of Islamic reform movements still continues. He considers Salafism a useful category as long as scholars refrain from using it imprudently.

The reviewer is a security analyst and director of the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, Islamabad

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NON-FICTION: MISGUIDED INTERPRETATIONS - DAWN.com