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Intelligence² Debates

Intelligence² occupies a unique position in London’s social and intellectual landscape. It is the only institution in town - aside from Parliament - to provide a forum for debate on the crucial issues of the day; but unlike Parliament, its debates are consistently exciting, witty, provocative… and comfortable, held as they are at the Royal Geographical Society’s Ondaatje Theatre and other venues.

Intelligence² takes information and analysis as its raw material, and translates this into discussion, conversation, and sexy debate.

IQ² debate: “Pakistan: what next?”

Richard Lindley introduces this debate on the future of Pakistan.

Opening the discussion, General Sir David Richards argues that the international community has been terribly good at coming up with bright ideas, but terribly poor at implementing them.

Imran Khan is heavily critical of the ways in which General Musharraf, President Asif Ali Zardari and the US have carried out their military offensive in the tribal areas of Pakistan since 2004. He said they had failed to distinguish between al-Qaida and the Taliban, which held limited ideological beliefs.

Anatol Lieven suggests that Pakistan, not Afghanistan, is our key strategic interest in the long term, and that the Western presence is driving radicalisation. He said he had been shocked to find that many Pakistanis regard the Taliban as they did the Mujahedeen, and support the Taliban’s right to fight against foreign occupiers.

Jonathan Paris foresees that, over the next one to three years, Pakistan will neither turn into a failed state, nor grow significantly. It would, he predicted, muddle through. Pakistan, he suggests, is not attracting enough investment, and needs to break away from the IMF stranglehold.

Farzana Shaikh reassesses the claim that the US is primarily responsible for Pakistan’s problems. Instead, she proposes, the country’s malaise lies in its historic conflict with India and uncertainty over the role of religion.

Jaswant Singh Jaswant Singh discusses the Future of Pakistan. Since the start of the 20th century, the whole of the South Asian region has been at the crossroads of a collapsed empire, be it Ottoman, How is it possible, Singh asked, that 60 years after Independence, the region was once again subject to the whims of the West?

William Dalrymple points out that while the media has been only too eager to praise India as an emerging superpower, neighbouring Pakistan has been portrayed as a failed state - and the only US ally bombed regularly by Washington. This contrast, Dalrymple said, was a huge exaggeration.

 

Intelligence Squared (US edition) hosted a debate (on December 1 2009) on the motion:

America is to blame for Mexico’s drug war

MODERATOR: John Donvan is a correspondent for ABC News Nightline. He has served as ABC White House Correspondent, along with posting in Moscow, London, Jerusalem and Amman.

FOR THE MOTION:  Andrés Martinez directs the New America Foundation’s Bernard L. Schwartz Fellows Program. He was the editorial page editor of the Los Angeles Times from 2004-2007, and presided over the newspaper’s op-ed page and Sunday opinion section.

FOR THE MOTION: Jeffrey A. Miron is senior lecturer and director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Economics at Harvard University. Miron holds a B.A. from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. in economics from M.I.T.

FOR THE MOTION: Fareed Zakaria was named editor of Newsweek International in October 2000, overseeing all Newsweek’s editions abroad. The magazine has an audience of over 24 million worldwide. He also writes a regular column for Newsweek, which appears in Newsweek International and the Washington Post.

AGAINST THE MOTION:  Asa Hutchinson has been elected three times to the United States Congress and has been confirmed by the United States Senate both as administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration and as the nation’s first undersecretary for the Department of Homeland Security after the 9-11 attacks.

AGAINST THE MOTION: Chris W. Cox is the executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action (ILA), the lobbying arm of the National Rifle Association of America. Cox oversees seven ILA divisions: Federal Affairs, State & Local Government Affairs, Public Relations, Grassroots, Finance and Administration, Research & Information, Conservation, Wildlife & Natural Resources; as well as the Office of Legislative Counsel.

AGAINST THE MOTION: Jorge Castañeda was foreign minister of Mexico from 2000 to 2003. Castañeda is a renowned public intellectual, political scientist, and prolific writer, with an interest in Mexican and Latin American politics, comparative politics and US-Mexican and U.S.-Latin American relations.

 

Transcript:

 

 

Meta-note on permission, access and economics of media such as posted here:

The video is publicly available and so is the transcript, hence this post. I’m a big fan of these debates, and I will likely become a paying “subscriber” — the problem is that I won’t be able to share anything I get access to as paying member. What a dilemma! This does raise the question: whether a “blog use permit” could exist for per-post use of generally unavailable media? It’s just a thought — a way to make money, but not “everything is free” and not “content for paying subscribers only.” I’d be happy to throw IQ² some cash for the priviledge of sharing content I find particularly compelling.

Impl. note: Using “access here only” video and document embeds, with a key generated by the content provider, sent after the one-shot payment has been received.

iq2-us-transcript-Mexico-Drug-War-120109 (.pdf media enclosure)

 

Intelligence² Debate: “Atheism is the new fundamentalism”

This was the first IQ² debate broadcast live, with an associated twitter hashtag. A few questions were taken from the twitter stream. Note: many of the uses of the hashtag since yesterday are “hashtag spam.”

Intelligence² on twitter

Twitter search: #iq2atheism

 

The motion proposes that “atheism is the new fundamentalism”, i.e., atheism has replaced religion as the new faith of the secular age, exploring the notion that modern atheism is itself guilty of the very dogma and belief in its own infallibility which it scorns in the religious community.

Speaking for the motion are Richard Harries and Charles Moore.

Richard Harries outlines the features and the history of fundamentalism, arguing that many of the criteria required for it are in fact apparent in today’s atheists. He portrays a set of people with narrow views, arguing against a specific view of God, who forget that some of the greatest philosophy, art, poetry and music has been inspired and supported by Christianity the very belief system that is accused of restricting the creative process by its refusal to allow for the grand perhaps (Browning).

Charles Moore insists that his opponents cannot see the true complexity of the argument, and that they emphasise the physical and the scientific aspect of humanity at the cost of any spiritual understanding. He criticises Richard Dawkins for embodying this crude and narrow pursuit of literal truth above all else.

Opposing the motion are A.C. Grayling and Richard Dawkins.

Professor Grayling maintains that since 9/11, the nature of the debate on religious commitment has become far more serious. He distinguishes between atheism, secularism and humanism. He refutes Moore’s suggestion that atheists cannot fully understand the complexity of the religious experience, insisting that many atheists understand it all too well, having been brought up in a religious family or community.

Richard Dawkins defines fundamentalism as the following: blind obedience to scripture regardless of evidence, allied to extremism. He argues that far from being entrenched fundamentalists, atheists have a commitment to exploring evidence, and a readiness to embrace change, and that we should not mistake the passion of their arguments or their refusal to remain silent for fundamentalism.

 

UPDATE: debate booklet, media enclosure (pdf)

Intelligence² Debates

Intelligence² occupies a unique position in London’s social and intellectual landscape. It is the only institution in town - aside from Parliament - to provide a forum for debate on the crucial issues of the day; but unlike Parliament, its debates are consistently exciting, witty, provocative… and comfortable, held as they are at the Royal Geographical Society’s Ondaatje Theatre and other venues.

Intelligence² takes information and analysis as its raw material, and translates this into discussion, conversation, and sexy debate.

IQ² debate: “The Catholic church is a force for good”

Debate booklet

 

Iq2 Briefing The Catholic Church