The burning of a Library in Egypt and the Philosophy behind it

The damnation of this earth as a realm where nothing is possible to man but pain, disaster and defeat, a realm inferior to another, “higher,” reality; the damnation of all values, enjoyment, achievement and success on earth as a proof of depravity; the damnation of man’s mind as a source of pride, and the damnation of reason as a “limited,” deceptive, unreliable, impotent faculty, incapable of perceiving the “real” reality and the “true” truth; the split of man in two, setting his consciousness (his soul) against his body, and his moral values against his own interest; the damnation of man’s nature, body and self as evil; the commandment of self-sacrifice, renunciation, suffering, obedience, humility and faith, as the good; the damnation of life and the worship of death, with the promise of rewards beyond the grave—these are the necessary tenets of the [mystic’s] view of existence, as they have been in every variant of [mystical] philosophy throughout the course of mankind’s history. Ayn Rand

Yesterday December 17, 2011 during conflicts between some Egyptian protests, the Egyptian Scientific Institute which established in 1798 by Napolean Bonaparte was burned. The Egyptian Scientific Institute was the oldest scientific institute in Egypt and Middle East at all. It has the most rich and rare library in Egypt.

Eyewitnesses were reported to have seen protestors throwing a Molotov cocktail at stone-throwing soldiers at the Shura Council building, but the projectile missed the intended target and instead landed in the Egyptian Scientific Institute.

The library contains about 40.000 items of rare books and manuscripts, however it has unvaluable items, like:

The original copy of the french book “Description de l’Egypte”
Atlas of Old Indian arts.
German atlas about Egypt and Ethiopia, 1842.
“Egypt: the mother of the world”, 1753.

Professor Mahmoud al-Shernoby, the general secretary of the institute, told state TV in a phone interview that the damage is a “great loss” to Egypt and that those “who caused this disaster showed be punished.”

Photos about burning the Egyptian Scientific Institute:

Againts Greed and Crony Capitalism

“This economic system that they call Capitalism has no moral or ethical core to it.” Michael Moore

This time, the American Sensationalist Director Michael Moore was right. He explained in one sentence what thousands of men are right now protesting against in the streets and we support them. Why?

Capitalism is a social system that is based upon the foundations of individual freedom, respect for individual rights and property rights, and reason as man’s only mean to achieve their goals. However, the current economic, political and economic system in which large parts of the world are now living is not really a Capitalist economy.

The correct name for this system is “crony capitalism” and its foundations are privileges, irrational greed, expropriation, and violation of human rights (individual rights and the rights to property). It is this system that we need to fight against and fight a moral revolution against to. In the following video, you’ll hear a wonderful explanation of what that Irrational Greed is all about. The second video, is very interesting and portrays an interesting image of how TNCs (Transnational Corporations) have established Billion Worth Business all over the world without caring for what should matter most to them: Their Consumers.

I hope you enjoy them and understand that we are together in this fight,

Video: Milton Friedman On what is commonly understood as greed and on what is the result of ethical profit (via: Casey Hendrickson)

Stossel On Crony Capitalism Part 1/6

Making a Moral Revolution. From 1773 to 2011.

The protests of the groups named 99% seem to continue igniting fury all over the world since they occupied Wall Street at Liberty Square in Manhattan’s financial district. By now, they claim at OccupywallSt.org that the protests are being held in more than 1500 cities around the world (virtual map). In all those cities the protests have taken different shapes and discourses. They seem to cry for different things. Their leaders emphasize their own agendas and it has been hard for me to identify a common single demand.

Curiously, most of these protesters most surely do not recall that on a day like today more than 200 years ago a public meeting similar to theirs was first organized. It was in October 16, 1773 that the First public meeting of protest against the Tea Act took place in Philadelphia. These protesters demanded from their rulers (The British Parliament) a respect of their rights to property and individual rights. They asked for the Parliament to respect their right to elect their own Representatives and to be taxed by those representatives only.

Three years later, after their demands were not listened by the British government the United States Declaration of Independence was signed by the representatives of thirteen American colonies then at war with Great Britain. It was the first Declaration ever written in history that considered as its core that all men had unalienable Rights and that among these rights are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Since then, these rights were slowly forgotten and captured by government. Slowly, the sons and daughters of these revolutionary protesters forgot the reasons that created such a wonderful Declaration. Now, the protests of the Occupy movements face a similar contradiction. As The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights argued in their article What the Tea Party Movement Must Stand For, it is necessary for them to organize against one single claim: They should demand for a Moral Revolution in which their government returns to them their rights to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

It is until now Ayn Rand the only philosopher who has provided a moral defense for these revolutionaries. As she wrote in Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal,

“The world crisis of today is a moral crisis–and nothing less than a moral revolution can resolve it: a moral revolution to sanction and complete the political achievement of the American Revolution. . . . [YOU] must fight for capitalism, not as a “practical’ issue, not as an economic issue, but, with the most righteous pride, as a moral issue. That is what capitalism deserves, and nothing less will save it.”