Is a piece of paper worth the deaths in Iraq?

Text of Iraq constituion above - NY Times free registration may be required.

Was it worth it? If the constitution sticks, will the war be worth it? Is Saddam is executed, will it be worth it?

Well, ask yourself was Nuremberg worth the fuss we made over conquering the Nazis?
Was putting in a government and a new constitution in half of Germany worth the effort?

Actually, in my mind, a fight against tyranny, once engaged, is almost always worth it. To me, any one who died in the fight against totalitarianism, from Gulag to China to Vietnam, whether the battle was ultimately won, died not in vain. Just a thought!

Gerald Plessner - Gays, Gaza and a Brave New World

Last week (Aug 10), Gerald Plessner advises his mother would approve of gay marriage. No one has more right than a son to speak for his departed mother. Actually he says she 'says' “homosexuals were some of the nicest people I knew.” I agree and straights can be more mean-spirited - as well as spiritually “mean” (in the old sense). In fact the religious right is instructed to believe that we are ALL sinners. So what’s the problem? As his mother 'said': "Haven't they been pushed around enough?" Wouldn’t his mother have known marriage as a bond both spiritual and physical resulting in Gerald. By careful omission, he doesn’t tell his “blessed mother” that family is being redefined to suit a diversity of rights.

Now (Aug 17) he gets sillier about a concern also close to his heart. But I don’t know Plessner, a former intelligence analyst, can be so naïve. He expresses not only pleasant platitudes but once again blaming religion as a cause for social disruption. Yes, Ariel Sharon has done the practical thing but it is clear it was also unilateral and not part of any negotiations. There is no Sharon and Abbas as there was Begin and Sadat. There will be no peace prize for razing a few thousand homes unless the Palestinians freely want peace. Yes, they must be "tired of war and poverty" brought on by their oppressors (corrupt and cruel) - Arafat and Hamas! I think it is Plessner’s understanding that if passions of faith and ancient traditions of kinship and ethnicity disappeared that peace would reign, needing only a few UN blue helmets to dispatch any remaining discontents with happy words and happy gas. Such was the hope of utopia found in Huxley’s Brave New World. No family, no faith but tolerance and openness. Yet this is not reality and I would rather live in a world where faith and commitments to family and nation cause discontent than one without what gives purpose to life.

Navy Ships in Blue Cities? They don't want them

Stockton (most likely much Redder than Blue San Francisco) will most certainly get the USS Iowa to sail up the river to its final resting place.

Box of Docs Box 17 JGR DOJ Daily Reports 6

I received the above box as an assignment from Duane, Radioblogger and Hugh Hewitt’s right hand man, via an e-mail late Saturday night, August 20, 2005

This box, 17 JGR DOJ Daily Report 6, contains 60 pages. I cannot find much of interest but will try to give you a thorough report.

After all, this is a “busman’s holiday” for me as a paralegal, though I am more on the database side of litigation discovery analysis.

To summarize, again there are 60 pages and all documents are dated November and early December 1984. There are 2 inserts called “withdrawal sheets” which remove info on privacy grounds. There is a 3 page letter from DOJ to HUD. I assume the next 1 page is a handwritten note from John Roberts. If so, it is the only thing actually authored by him. All the correspondence is being sent to him and there is no discernable way to knowing if he had any role in the documents. But there do not seem to be any “smoking guns” on these issues. Only the cryptic nature of his handwritten comments on page 6 provide any amusement to me.

Anyhow, I need to continue the summary. There are 10 pages of DOJ press releases on tax shelters and antitrust inaction on acquisition of a Pabst brewery. There are 8 pages regarding Chicago Milwaukee St Paul and Pacific Railroad’s demise leading to some Right of way issues that concern creditors’ claims, timber harvesting, the Forest Service, and the Bureau of Land Management. The creditors’ it seems have applied to Senator Symms and McClure, so there is political pressure to settle though the land would seem to revert totally to federal rights. The following 6 pages are regarding the rights of certain Haitians to due process in trying to avoid deportation where the case has been granted Supreme Court cert. Then there is a 30 page letter in the form of a “brief” from DOJ to House Judiciary Chair Rodino which opposes bills to change contempt of Congress and Independent Counsel laws to allow criminal action where the Executive Branch claims “executive privilege”.

Again, even if someone finds objectionable stands in the remarks or actions in the documents (which is very little to find beside the vehemence of the constitutionality of “executive privilege” and the expression of being sensitive to congressional relations “ the give and take of the political world”), there is no evidence from these pages that Roberts was responsible for their writing or the opinions expressed coincided with his views, personal or professional.

Back to the handwritten page, page 6. It is entitled “Tuesday staff”
1st para – “ pocket veto case” ( no reference in box to such a case), then “invited (illegible) office (s)” to meeting. “No quick decision needed” yet “need to file soon to get S. Ct (supreme Court) decision this term.” “Give up on (illegible) to get decision?”

2nd para – “protective(?) notice of appeal”. “Do plan to appeal” (due to illegibility can’t hazard a guess on the case)

3rd para –“FFF” (Ah, hah Fred F. Fielding) concern on HUD matter... DAG & AG (Deputy and Atty General) share concern and will try to keep it from becoming a flap”
(The only HUD case here is the discrimination in government housing in East Texas. Did it ever become a “flap” in the Reagan Administration (a google search does show East Texas HUD has been a problem over many years!!)

4th para – “Reagan photo – hold”

Well, not much fun here!!!

Back to the future

Seriously, if you want to make a difference with human cells now, consider

Blood donation - The Red Cross is desperate this time of year - Red Cross

Register as a Bone Marrow Donor - http://www.marrow.org/
marrow


Are you signed up as an organ donor - http://www.donatelifecalifornia.org/
Donate life

(beyond the DMV pink dot - and you've done that, right?)

______________________________________________

Check out where progressive thought is on bioethics :

James Hughes, bioethics professor on transhumanism
Change surfer

Peter Singer, Princeton chair of bioethics,
Singer - Reason Magazine


Also specifically on the stem cell situation:

"Caution: this is right wing extremism":

versus the liberal Slate's reasoned approach:
Embrace the slippery slope

Finally, my favorite blog for these issues - Called "Second Hand Smoke" but no, it doesn't discuss ETS but ESCR, it's bioethics according to Wesley Smith.

wesleyjsmith

- And yes, comments within it by Robert B are from me

Brave New World Part I

I felt I had to read Brave New World for my Bioethics class coming up this fall at Lake Avenue Church in Pasadena and my priority interest in this topic.

It is a quick read and very enjoyable in a very disturbing way. I had never read it before, mainly because I thought it would be repetitive of the likes of Fahrenheit 451, Animal Farm and 1984. In some ways, it is of course, but then it is really not, and not just because of the test tube eugenics element.

The fundamental difference is that the first 3 books I mention, mainly focus on fears of the totalitarian states of Communism and that was represented in reality by Soviet Russia and Red China. Now the inner workings of these states turn truth on its head but as to its ideology and its need for a worker ethic, communism actually deals strictly in moral absolutism according to Marxism and most often becomes as puritanical as any possible theocracy in all areas of life.

Now Huxley's premise in Brave New World is that after apocalyptic wars, there is a convergence of regimes, a coming together based on an economy of high consumer wants, total employment, and assured social stability (Aside: China is perhaps at the vanguard of such a hybrid society - still totalitarian in nature but allowing economic "freedoms" to boost both consumption and export. A sort of neo-fascism of "opportunity" that creates a dynamic economy that communism has notoriously been unable to achieve previously.)

Although the test tube babies are what we focus on as we consider the consequences of genetic manipulation, Huxley’s prophetic words were basically his effective way of engendering such a society. If we have no father and mother, then the concept of family is simply gone, and the very idea of such relationships becomes obscenity. A fake religion (worshipping our Ford!!) is created to promote communal activity (both spiritual and otherwise - orgy-porgy) while eliminating real personal faith in a Creator God or any eternal principles at all.

A person's value cannot be left individual, and so the primacy of "society" is encouraged in community, work, and consumer settings. But beyond that, living for pleasure is the highest value (as long as you put in your 8 hours) not any greater purpose for yourself or others, and if that gets tiresome, there is "Soma" to sedate you and potions to purge your need for passion, commitment, or pregnancy (Need I mention the availability of paxil and prozac and contraceptives).

Anyway, instant gratification (of physical needs) and moral relativism are strangely enough the bedrock principles of the Brave New World's social stability. And unlike the double-speak of "black is white" of the other aforementioned books, when one of the "world directors" admits to a world where love is bad, and apathy is good, he is telling the truth.

Gratify their immediate desires, make them forget commitments and purpose, and you're halfway to a content society. Eliminate the eternals of family and faith, and celebrate a diverse but ordered society (pre-ordained genetically) and you will have only some little need of even a police force that will quiet any situation with happy words and happy gas. Today's modern society often mirrors such priorities - our preoccupation with material needs and convenient and "open" relationships, and our intolerance of the intolerant fundamentalist faiths that would interfere with personal freedoms and often foment social discontent at all levels. Lip service is still paid to family, but the focus is indeed "that it takes a village" and that "village" should have a progressive ethic of openness with economic and personal freedoms under a guiding compassionate hand of social planning.

Well such are my thoughts on how it is the "moral relativism" of a society that will drive the need for uses of technology including the medical and biological advances coming upon us. I will speak more to Huxley's prophesies of this eugenic "utopia" later.