By Sherwood Ross
August 17, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- “On my last day in Iraq,” veteran McClatchy News correspondent Leila Fadel wrote August 9th, “as on my first day in Iraq, I couldn’t see what the United States and its allies had accomplished. …I couldn’t understand what thousands of American soldiers had died for and why hundreds of thousands of Iraqis had been killed.”
Quite a few oil company CEO’s and “defense” industry executives, however, do have a pretty good idea of why that war is being fought. As Michael Cherkasky, president of Kroll Inc., said a year after the Iraq invasion boosted his security firm’s profits 231 percent: “It’s the Gold Rush.” What follows is a brief look at some of the outfits that cashed in, and at the multitudes that got took.
“Defense Earnings Continue to Soar,” Renae Merle wrote in The Washington Post on July 30, 2007. “Several of Washington’s largest defense contractors said last week that they continue to benefit from a boom in spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan…” Merle added, “Profit reports from Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin showed particularly strong results in operations in the region.” More recently, Boeing’s second-quarter earnings this year rose 17 percent, Associated Press reported, in part because of what AP called “robust defense sales.”
But war, it turns out, is not only unhealthy for human beings, it is not uniformly good for the economy. Many sectors suffer, including non-defense employment, as a war can destroy more jobs than it creates. While the makers of warplanes may be flying high, these are “Tough Times For Commercial Aerospace,” Business Week reported July 13th. “The sector is contending with the deepening global recession, declining air traffic, capacity cuts by airlines, and reduced availability of financing for aircraft purchases.”
The general public suffers, too. “As President Bush tried to fight the war without increasing taxes, the Iraq war has displaced private investment and/or government expenditures, including investments in infrastructure, R&D and education: they are less than they would otherwise have been,” write Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes in “The Three Trillion Dollar War”(Norton). Stiglitz holds a Nobel Prize in economics and Bilmes is former assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce. They say government money spent in Iraq does not stimulate the economy in the way that the same amounts spent at home would.
The war has also starved countless firms for expansion bucks. “Higher borrowing costs for business since the beginning of the Iraq war are bleeding manufacturing investment,” Greg Palast wrote in “Armed Madhouse”(Plume). And when entrepreneurs---who hire so many---lack growth capital, job creation takes a real hit.
We might recall too, the millions abroad who filled the streets to protest President Bush’s impending attack on Iraq and who have quit buying U.S. products, further reducing sales and employment. “American firms, especially those that have become icons, like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, may also suffer, not so much from explicit boycotts as from a broader sense of dislike of all things American,” Stiglitz and Bilmes write. “America’s standing in the world has never been lower,” they say, noting that in 2007, U.S. “favorable” ratings plunged to 29 percent in Indonesia and nine percent in Turkey. “Large numbers of wealthy people in the Middle East---where the oil money and inequality put individual wealth in the billions---have shifted banking from America to elsewhere,” they say.
Because the Iraq war crippled that country’s oil industry, output fell, supplies tightened, and, according to Palast, “World prices leaped to reflect the shortfall…” What’s more, he points out, after the Iraq invasion the Saudis withheld more than a million barrels of oil a day from the market. “The one-year 121% post-invasion jump in the price of crude, from under $30 a barrel to over $60, sucked that $120 billion windfall to the Saudis from SUV drivers and factory owners in the West.” Count the Saudis among the big winners.
The oil spike subtracted 1.2% from the gross domestic product, “costing the USA just over one million jobs,” Palast reckoned. Stiglitz and Bilmes said the oil price spike means “American families have had to spend about 5 percent more of their income on gasoline and heating than before.” Last year, the Iraq and Afghan wars cost each American household $138 per month in taxes, they estimated. Count the Joneses among the big losers.
Palast writes, “It has been a very good war for Big Oil---courtesy of OPEC price hikes. The five oil giants saw profits rise from $34 billion in 2002 to $81 billion in 2004…But this tsunami of black ink was nothing compared to the wave of $120 billion in profits to come in 2006: $15.6 billion for Conoco, $17.1 billion for Chevron and the Mother of All Earnings, Exxon’s $39.5 billion in 2006 on sales of $378 billion."
Palast notes the oil firms have their own reserves whose value is tied to OPEC’s price targets, and “The rise in the price of oil after the first three years of the war boosted the value of the reserves of ExxonMobil oil alone by just over $666 billion…Chevron Oil, where Condoleezza Rice had served as a director, gained a quarter trillion dollars in value…I calculate that the top five oil operators saw their reserves rise in value by over $2.363 trillion.” Who’s surprised when Forbes reports of the ten most profitable corporations in the world five are now oil and gas companies---Exxon-Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Chevron, and Petro-China.
“Since the Iraq War began,” Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive wrote, “aerospace and defense industry stocks have more than doubled. General Dynamics did even better than that. Its stock has tripled.” An Associated Press account published July 23rd observed: “With the military fighting two wars and Pentagon budgets on a steady upward rise, defense companies regularly posted huge gains in profits and rosier earnings forecasts during recent quarters. Even as the rest of the economy tumbled last fall, military contractors, with the federal government as their primary customer, were a relative safe haven.”
Among the big winners are top Pentagon contractors, as ranked by WashingtonTechnology.com as of 2008. Halliburton spun off KBR in 2007 and their operations are covered later. Data was selected for typical years 2007-09.
1.Lockheed Martin
2. Boeing
3. KBR
4. Northrop Grumman
5. General Dynamics
6. Raytheon
7. SAIC
8. L-3 Communciations
9. EDS Corporation
10. Fluor Corporation
Lockheed Martin, of Bethesda, Md., a major warplane builder, in 2007 alone earned profits of $3 billion on sales of nearly $42 billion.
Boeing, of Chicago, saw its 2007 net profit shoot up 84% to $4 billion, fed by “strong growth in defense earnings,” according to an Agence France-Presse report.
Northrop Grumman, of Los Angeles, a manufacturer of bombers, warships and military electronics, had 2007 profits of $1.8 billion on sales of $32 billion.
General Dynamics, of Falls Church, Va., had profits in 2008 of about $2.5 billion on sales of $29 billion. It makes tanks, combat vehicles, and mission-critical information systems.
Raytheon, of Waltham, Mass, reported about $23 billion in sales for 2008. It is the world’s largest missile maker and Bloomberg News says it is benefiting from “higher domestic defense spending and U.S. arms exports.”
Scientific International Applications Corp., of La Jolla, Calif., an engineering and technology supplier to the Pentagon, had sales of $10 billion for fiscal year ending Jan. 31, 2009, and net income of $452 million.
L-3, of New York City, has enjoyed sales growth of about 25% a year recently. Its total 2008 sales of $15 billion brought it profits of nearly $900 million. Its primary customer is the Defense Department, to which it supplies high tech surveillance and reconnaissance systems.
EDS Corp., of Plano, Tex., purchased by Hewlett-Packard in May, 2008, had 2007 sales of nearly $20 billion. Its priority project is building the $12 billion Navy-Marine Corps Intranet, said to be the largest private network in the world.
Fluor Corp., of Irvine, Tex., an engineering and construction firm, had net earnings of $720 million in 2008 on sales of $22 billion.
The good times continue to roll for military contractors under President Obama, who has increased the Pentagon’s budget by 4 percent to a total of about $700 billion. One reason military contractors fare so well is that no-bid contracts with built-in profit margins tumble out of the Pentagon cornucopia directly into their laps. The element of “risk,” so basic to capitalism, has been trampled by Pentagon purchasing agents even as its top brass rattle their missiles at socialist governments abroad. If this isn’t enough, in 2004 the Bush administration slipped a special provision into tax legislation to cut the tax on war profits to 7% compared to 21% paid by most U.S. manufacturers.
Former Halliburton subsidiary KBR, according to author Pratap Chatterjee in his “Halliburton’s Army”(Nation Books), raked in “more than $25 billion since the company won a ten-year contract in late 2001 to supply U.S. troops in combat situations around the world.” As all know, President Bush’s Vice President Dick Cheney previously headed Halliburton (1995-2000) and landed in the White House the same year Halliburton got its humongous outsourcing contract. Earlier, as Defense Secretary, (1989-1993) Cheney sparked the revolutionary change to outsourcing military support services to the privateers. Today, Halliburton ranks among the biggest “defense” winners of all.
Halliburton’s army “employs enough people to staff one hundred battalions, a total of more than 50,000 personnel who work for KBR, a contract that is now projected to reach $150 billion,” Chatterjee writes. “Together with the workers who are rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure and the private security divisions of companies like Blackwater, Halliburton’s Army now outnumber the uniformed soldiers on the ground in Iraq.”
Accompanying Pentagon outsourcing, Chatterjee writes, “is the potential for bribery, corruption, and fraud. Dozens of Halliburton/KBR workers and their subcontractors have already been arrested and charged, and several are already serving jail terms for stealing millions of dollars, notably from Camp Arifjan in Kuwait.”
There’s likely no better example of how Halliburton/KBR literally burned taxpayers’ dollars than its destruction of $85,000 Mercedes and Volvo trucks when they got flat tires and were abandoned. James Warren, a convoy truck driver testified to the Government Affairs Committee in July, 2004, “KBR didn’t seem to care what happened to its trucks…It was common to torch trucks that we abandoned…even though we all carried chains and could have towed them to be repaired.”
Bunnatine Greenhouse, once top contract official at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, made headlines by demanding old-fashioned free enterprise competitive bidding. She told a Senate committee in 2005: “I can unequivocally state the abuse related to contracts awarded to KBR represents the most blatant and improper abuse I have witnessed” in 20 years of working on government contracts. Greenhouse was demoted for her adherence to the law, Chatterjee said, but she became a cover girl at “Fraud” magazine and was honored by the Giraffe Society, a tribute to one Federal employee who stuck her neck out.
Tales of Halliburton/KBR’s alleged swindles fill books. Rory Maybee, a former Halliburton/KBR contractor who worked at dining facilities in Camp Anaconda in 2004 told the U.S. Senate Democratic Policy Committee “that the company often provided rotten food to the troops and often charged the army for 20 thousand meals a day when it was serving only ten thousand.” Food swindling, though, is small potatoes. Say Stiglitz and Bilmes: “KBR has also been implicated in a lucrative insurance scam that has gouged U.S. taxpayers for at least $600 million.”
To fatten profit margins, contractors who cheat U.S. taxpayers apparently think nothing of underpaying their help. “While the executives of KBR, Blackwater, and other firms are making profits, many of those performing the menial work, such as cooking, driving, cleaning, and laundry, are poorly paid nationals from India, Pakistan, and other Asian and African countries,” Stiglitz and Bilmes write. “Indian cooks are reported to earn $3-$5 a day. At the same time, KBR bills the American taxpayer $100 per load of laundry.” Blackwater, the security firm repeatedly charged with shoot-first tactics, fraudulently obtained small-business set-aside contracts worth more than $144 million, they assert.
According to “Blackwater”(Nation Books) by Jeremy Scahill, the security firm in 2004 got a five-year contract to protect U.S. officials in Iraq totaling $229 million but as of June, 2006, just two years into the contract, it had been paid $321 million, and by late 2007 it had been paid more than $750 million. Scahill reports an audit charged that Blackwater included profit in its overhead and its total costs. The result was “not only in a duplication of profit but a pyramiding of profit since in effect Blackwater is applying profit to profit.” Scahill writes, “The audit also alleged that the company tried to inflate its profits by representing different Blackwater divisions as wholly separate companies.”
“As of summer, 2007, there were more ‘private contractors’ deployed on the U.S. government payroll in Iraq (180,000) than there were actual soldiers (160,000),” Scahill said. “These contractors worked for some 630 companies and drew personnel from more than 100 countries around the globe. …This meant the U.S. military had actually become the junior partner in the coalition that occupies Iraq.” And each Blackwater operative was costing the American taxpayers $1,222 per day. The Defense Department remains, of course, America’s No. 1 Employer, with 2.3 million workers (roughly twice the size of Wal-Mart, which has 1.2 million staffers) perhaps because America’s biggest export is war.
“Who pays Halliburton and Bechtel?” philosopher Noam Chomsky asks rhetorically in his “Imperial Ambitions” (Metropolitan Books). “The U.S. taxpayer,” he answers. “The same taxpayers fund the military-corporate system of weapons manufacturers and technology companies that bombed Iraq. So first you destroy Iraq, then you rebuild it. It’s a transfer of wealth from the general population to narrow sectors of the population.” It’s also been a body blow to Iraq, killing a million inhabitants, forcing two million into exile and millions more out of their homes. Incredibly, the U.S. proposed to reconstruct the nation it invaded with their oil revenues---and then, after taking perhaps $8 billion left the job undone. (Since the U.S. kept no records of how the dough was dispensed, it is not possible to identify the recipients.)
As Stiglitz and Bilmes remind us, “The money spent on Iraq could have been spent on schools, roads, or research. These investments yield high returns.” In an article in the August 24th Nation, policy analyst Georgia Levenson Keohane cites the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities to the effect that 48 states are reporting deficits totaling nearly $166 billion, projected to reach, cumulatively, $350 billion-$370 billion by 2011. “Although many states have attempted tax increases, these are politically challenging and often insufficient to close the gaps. Consequently, statehouses have been forced to cut vital services at a time when the need for them is ever more desperate,” Keohane writes.
In the same issue, reporter Marc Cooper notes the poverty rate in Los Angeles county borders on 20 percent; that California’s schools are ranked 47th nationally; that the state college system has suspended admissions for Spring, 2010; that thousands of state workers are being laid off and/or forced to take furlough days; that unemployment has reached 12 percent; that state parks are being closed; that personal bankruptcies peaked last; that one in four “capsized mortgages in the U.S. is in California.” Plus, California’s bond rating is just above the junk level and it faces a $26 billion budget shortfall.
California’s woes need to be examined in the light of the $116 billion the National Priorities Project of Northampton, Mass., says its taxpayers have shelled out for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001. Those same dollars roughly would put four million California students through a four-year college. Bear in mind, too, outlays for those wars are but a fraction of all Pentagon spending, so the total military tax bill is far higher than $116 billion to California.
In calling for a reduction in military spending, Rep. Barney Frank (D.-Mass.) said, "The math is compelling: if we do not make reductions approximating 25 percent of the military budget starting fairly soon, it will be impossible to continue to fund an adequate level of domestic activity even with a repeal of Bush's tax cuts for the very wealthy….(American] well-being is far more endangered by a proposal for substantial reductions in Medicare, Social Security or other important domestic areas than it would be by canceling weapons systems that have no justification from any threat we are likely to face." On the other hand, maybe Americans want to keep paying to operate 2,000 domestic and foreign military bases and spend more money on armies and weapons of death than all other nations combined. Maybe they like living in the greatest Warfare State the world has ever known. My hunch, though, is a lot of Americans haven’t connected the country’s looming bankruptcy with the greedy, gang from the military-industrial complex out to control the planet, its people, and its precious resources.
After the long-suffering civilian population of Iraq, whose "crime" was having oil---a country Steiglitz says that has been rendered virtually unlivable---the big losers are the American taxpayers who are bleeding income, jobs, and quality of life, not just sacrificing family members, on behalf of a runaway war machine. California’s plight is being repeated everywhere. A great nation is being looted and millions of its citizens are being pauperized before our eyes.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Israel’s Fifth Column
By Jeff Gates
August 17, 2009 " Khaleej Times" -- In October 2007, Defense Secretary Robert Gates coined a generic term to describe the most challenging combatants when waging unconventional warfare. He called them simply “the people in between.” Those people, a dominant force in mainstream American media, comprise a fifth column in support of those skilled at waging war by way of deception.
The term ‘fifth column’ originated in the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s to depict forces that clandestinely undermine a populace — from within — to aid an external enemy. The term was later cited as a rationale for interning citizens during WWII, including Germans in the UK and Japanese in the US. Israelis routinely refer to Arab-Israelis as a fifth column residing within what Tel Aviv describes as the Jewish state.
Though misapplied in practice, the term remains an apt depiction of how internal influence can be wielded by a hostile force. In the Information Age, this fifth column focuses on those ‘in between’ domains where modest numbers can wield outsized influence. Television news is optimal as modern-day media operates “in between” a populace and the facts they require for a system of governance reliant on informed consent.
The dominant influence of pro-Israelis in mainstream media is not the focus of this article. Here the focus is Wolf Blitzer at Cable News Network who typifies how “the people in between” manipulate public opinion in plain sight and, to date, with legal impunity.
While working as a Washington correspondent for Jerusalem Post (1973-1990), Blitzer served as an editor of Near East Report, a publication founded by Isaiah Kenen, a registered foreign agent of Israel, who also founded the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. AIPAC coordinates a network of transnational political operatives known loosely as “the Israel lobby.” Neither AIPAC nor Blitzer has yet registered as a foreign agent in the US.
The son of Polish Ashkenazi émigrés, Blitzer first emerged on the media scene in 1989 with the publication of Territory of Lies, an account of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard that The New York Times obligingly included in its list of “Notable Books of the Year.” Reviewer Robert Friedman described Blitzer’s sympathetic treatment of Pollard’s treason (the theft of more than one million classified documents) “a slick piece of damage control that would make his former employers at AIPAC (not to mention Israel’s Defense Ministry) proud.”
As a writer for Hebrew language newspapers in the 1970s, Blitzer wrote under the name Ze’ev Barak—Hebrew for “wolf lightning.” The Blitzer media presence first emerged with his CNN coverage of the Gulf War in 1991 and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Initially a military reporter for CNN, he became a fixture on television news as CNN’s Clinton-era White House correspondent until 1999 when he became a high profile CNN anchor.
Since August 2005, CNN (marketed as “the most trusted name in news”) has featured the former AIPAC editor broadcasting from a White House-associative studio set branded as “The Situation Room.” CNN colleague John King deploys a similar credibility enhancing set by broadcasting from “The State of the Union.”
On one key media principle US law is clear: the airwaves belong to the public. The nation’s Founders knew that the preservation of self-governance depends on an informed populace. That’s why modern-day lawmakers enacted legislation to ensure that media outlets are not concentrated in a few hands, enabling a fifth column to shape public opinion around a predetermined agenda. Little could America’s first lawmakers have known that an ideologically aligned few would concentrate broadcast media in the hands of those who share an undisclosed bias. When Likud Prime Minister Ariel Sharon fell ill in Israel, Blitzer’s broadcast originated from Jerusalem. Likewise, when Israel invaded Lebanon in July 2006. Blitzer again relocated to Israel to focus viewer attention on the situation there.
As Tel Aviv sought to expand the war to Iran, several anti-Zionist rabbis appeared in Teheran alongside Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who echoed their wish that Zionism be “erased from the pages of history” (widely reported as a wish to “wipe Israel off the map”). Rather than interview these dissident rabbis, Blitzer featured David Duke, a former head of the Ku Klux Klan. Rather than associate the Iranian president with anti- Zionism, Blitzer used the Situation Room to associate him with racism and anti-Semitism.
Between the US populace and the facts they require for informed consent lies an “in between” domain. In that realm is found a network of like-minded fifth column operatives whose pro-Israeli bias works unseen — yet in plain sight — to shape public opinion around a predetermined agenda. That agenda-shaping “news” routinely features commentators from think tanks who share the same bias.
What is the reach of this media-induced corruption of informed consent? According to CNN’s August 2009 advertising in The New York Times, this cable network delivers trusted news to 70.6 million television viewers in the US. What’s been the cost in blood and treasure of this undisclosed bias — not just to the US but also worldwide?
The most trusted name in news featured National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in September 2002 when she issued a fact-free warning about Iraqi WMD: “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” From the Pentagon’s perspective, “the people in between” are waging unconventional warfare. From the perspective of this enemy within, the only unconventional aspect of their deception is the fact that a long-deceived public is now learning about it—many of them for the first time. The displacement of facts with what a populace can be induced to believe is the very threat to personal freedom that the Founders sought to escape. The only modern aspect of this ancient form of warfare is the reach of the media technologies with which such deception can now operate — as with CNN — on a global scale.
August 17, 2009 " Khaleej Times" -- In October 2007, Defense Secretary Robert Gates coined a generic term to describe the most challenging combatants when waging unconventional warfare. He called them simply “the people in between.” Those people, a dominant force in mainstream American media, comprise a fifth column in support of those skilled at waging war by way of deception.
The term ‘fifth column’ originated in the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s to depict forces that clandestinely undermine a populace — from within — to aid an external enemy. The term was later cited as a rationale for interning citizens during WWII, including Germans in the UK and Japanese in the US. Israelis routinely refer to Arab-Israelis as a fifth column residing within what Tel Aviv describes as the Jewish state.
Though misapplied in practice, the term remains an apt depiction of how internal influence can be wielded by a hostile force. In the Information Age, this fifth column focuses on those ‘in between’ domains where modest numbers can wield outsized influence. Television news is optimal as modern-day media operates “in between” a populace and the facts they require for a system of governance reliant on informed consent.
The dominant influence of pro-Israelis in mainstream media is not the focus of this article. Here the focus is Wolf Blitzer at Cable News Network who typifies how “the people in between” manipulate public opinion in plain sight and, to date, with legal impunity.
While working as a Washington correspondent for Jerusalem Post (1973-1990), Blitzer served as an editor of Near East Report, a publication founded by Isaiah Kenen, a registered foreign agent of Israel, who also founded the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. AIPAC coordinates a network of transnational political operatives known loosely as “the Israel lobby.” Neither AIPAC nor Blitzer has yet registered as a foreign agent in the US.
The son of Polish Ashkenazi émigrés, Blitzer first emerged on the media scene in 1989 with the publication of Territory of Lies, an account of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard that The New York Times obligingly included in its list of “Notable Books of the Year.” Reviewer Robert Friedman described Blitzer’s sympathetic treatment of Pollard’s treason (the theft of more than one million classified documents) “a slick piece of damage control that would make his former employers at AIPAC (not to mention Israel’s Defense Ministry) proud.”
As a writer for Hebrew language newspapers in the 1970s, Blitzer wrote under the name Ze’ev Barak—Hebrew for “wolf lightning.” The Blitzer media presence first emerged with his CNN coverage of the Gulf War in 1991 and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Initially a military reporter for CNN, he became a fixture on television news as CNN’s Clinton-era White House correspondent until 1999 when he became a high profile CNN anchor.
Since August 2005, CNN (marketed as “the most trusted name in news”) has featured the former AIPAC editor broadcasting from a White House-associative studio set branded as “The Situation Room.” CNN colleague John King deploys a similar credibility enhancing set by broadcasting from “The State of the Union.”
On one key media principle US law is clear: the airwaves belong to the public. The nation’s Founders knew that the preservation of self-governance depends on an informed populace. That’s why modern-day lawmakers enacted legislation to ensure that media outlets are not concentrated in a few hands, enabling a fifth column to shape public opinion around a predetermined agenda. Little could America’s first lawmakers have known that an ideologically aligned few would concentrate broadcast media in the hands of those who share an undisclosed bias. When Likud Prime Minister Ariel Sharon fell ill in Israel, Blitzer’s broadcast originated from Jerusalem. Likewise, when Israel invaded Lebanon in July 2006. Blitzer again relocated to Israel to focus viewer attention on the situation there.
As Tel Aviv sought to expand the war to Iran, several anti-Zionist rabbis appeared in Teheran alongside Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who echoed their wish that Zionism be “erased from the pages of history” (widely reported as a wish to “wipe Israel off the map”). Rather than interview these dissident rabbis, Blitzer featured David Duke, a former head of the Ku Klux Klan. Rather than associate the Iranian president with anti- Zionism, Blitzer used the Situation Room to associate him with racism and anti-Semitism.
Between the US populace and the facts they require for informed consent lies an “in between” domain. In that realm is found a network of like-minded fifth column operatives whose pro-Israeli bias works unseen — yet in plain sight — to shape public opinion around a predetermined agenda. That agenda-shaping “news” routinely features commentators from think tanks who share the same bias.
What is the reach of this media-induced corruption of informed consent? According to CNN’s August 2009 advertising in The New York Times, this cable network delivers trusted news to 70.6 million television viewers in the US. What’s been the cost in blood and treasure of this undisclosed bias — not just to the US but also worldwide?
The most trusted name in news featured National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in September 2002 when she issued a fact-free warning about Iraqi WMD: “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” From the Pentagon’s perspective, “the people in between” are waging unconventional warfare. From the perspective of this enemy within, the only unconventional aspect of their deception is the fact that a long-deceived public is now learning about it—many of them for the first time. The displacement of facts with what a populace can be induced to believe is the very threat to personal freedom that the Founders sought to escape. The only modern aspect of this ancient form of warfare is the reach of the media technologies with which such deception can now operate — as with CNN — on a global scale.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Formation of a New World Order and the Anti-Christic Cabal
THE BIG PICTURE
By: Dr. J. P. Hubert
Myriads of people throughout the world have increasingly realized that something has gone horribly wrong but few have been able to sift their way through all of the propaganda which is being promulgated by the elite ruling class.[1] In light of the tremendous amount of information available through the alternative media, it is now incontestable that a global Cabal[2] exists. This Cabal controls the so-called elite main-stream media in order to better insure their goal of world-wide domination.[3] Other investigators have copiously documented the various components of the cabal including the role played by various secret societies including the Order of Skull and Bones, the Bildeberger’s and others.[4] What follows is an attempt to explain in as simplified a way as possible what has already occurred and is currently transpiring in the geopolitical/spiritual realm--for ease of handling henceforth referred to as the New World Order (NWO). It is this writer’s contention that there is both a material and spiritual component to what the Cabal is doing to help bring about the NWO. MORE...
By: Dr. J. P. Hubert
Myriads of people throughout the world have increasingly realized that something has gone horribly wrong but few have been able to sift their way through all of the propaganda which is being promulgated by the elite ruling class.[1] In light of the tremendous amount of information available through the alternative media, it is now incontestable that a global Cabal[2] exists. This Cabal controls the so-called elite main-stream media in order to better insure their goal of world-wide domination.[3] Other investigators have copiously documented the various components of the cabal including the role played by various secret societies including the Order of Skull and Bones, the Bildeberger’s and others.[4] What follows is an attempt to explain in as simplified a way as possible what has already occurred and is currently transpiring in the geopolitical/spiritual realm--for ease of handling henceforth referred to as the New World Order (NWO). It is this writer’s contention that there is both a material and spiritual component to what the Cabal is doing to help bring about the NWO. MORE...
Friday, August 14, 2009
Justice and Freedom for the Human Embryo
Editor's NOTE:
In view of the National Health Care debate which is currently raging, this re-worked essay which I wrote several years ago and which was used to help lobby Congress against embryonic stem cell research and human cloning for biomedical research is included in order to counter assertions that some human beings are non-persons and unworthy of life.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
The Philosophy of the Human Person, the Body/Soul Issue and Ethics
(Personhood cannot be acquired or lost)
By: John P. Hubert Jr. MD FACS
In the past several years, a growing moral and ethical dilemma has presented itself. Largely because of an almost logrhythmic increase in bio-technologic expertise, certain options are now available which would have been unthinkable just a short several decades ago. Two of these as mentioned above are; Destructive Embryonic Stem Cell research (ESCR) and Human Research Cloning (CBR). They are very closely allied in that each involves the destruction of human embryos (DER) at an early stage in human development. The question which has yet to be adequately addressed is; are human embryos deserving of the full respect and protection afforded to any other member of the human species? The 3 positions taken in this review are as follows:
1. The human embryo is a human being, even at the one-celled stage that is; a genetically complete albeit nascent or undeveloped human organism with a complete human genome. This is true beyond all reasonable doubt and has been demonstrated empirically by multiple scientific investigators.[1]
2. Contemporary attempts to justify the intentional destruction of human embryos by maintaining that embryos are human beings but not human persons (and thus not deserving of full moral status and protection) are philosophically untenable and must be repudiated. On the basis of biology, metaphysics and ethics, the human embryo should be accorded full moral status including inviolability, a reality which (justice demands) should be codified in law. This is true irrespective of age, acquired characteristics or the way in which the embryo is regarded by others. It is true because of the inherent nature, being and essence that the embryo has, not because of any externally applied or acquired characteristic or ability.
3. Logic, intellectual honesty, consistency in the history of ethics, as well as justice demand that we treat like things similarly. If the assertions made here are correct, then destructive embryo research (DER) is immoral and its practice should be sanctioned by law. Only then will justice be achieved. This will insure that the human embryo is given the freedom to thrive that it rightly deserves. The right to life is the first of all rights and without it, no other rights follow. Since justice is; giving to another what they are due, it is clear that the human embryo possesses the right to life and the freedom to thrive that any other member of the human species has. This is a basic requirement of justice and is non-negotiable.[2] As such, the Catholic Church of record and most of Christianity rightly teaches that the right to life is fundamental and irrevocable. It is also a touchstone principle which is fundamental to the Judeo-Christian ethic upon which the American experiment was based.
Few topics are as timely and prescient today as that of human personhood (personhood theory) and with it, the continued philosophical debate over the “body/soul” issue. This is predominately displayed in the ongoing public discourse over abortion, destructive embryo research (DER) and euthanasia, in which some human beings are characterized as “non-persons”, non-humans or non-beings in order to justify their manipulation or death. Tragically, many secular bioethicists now advocate for a “quality of life” ethic which utilizes a utilitarian calculus in order to justify the taking of innocent human life.[3] It represents a radical departure from the traditional “sanctity of life” ethic[4] (also referred to as the equality of human life ethic).[5] It has resulted in a growing “culture of death."
One technique presently popular among bioethicists who embrace the “quality of life” (read culture of death) ethic, is to declare some human beings “non-persons” on the basis of their inability to measure up to certain arbitrarily selected characteristics which are alleged to be a requirement for human personhood (from the moral perspective). In their view, a human being does not possess personhood in virtue of the kind of entity or being they are, but on the basis of various “acquired” characteristics which they do or do not actually have and can demonstrate. This view has been popularized by many contemporary secular bioethicists including Fletcher, Tooley, Singer, Beauchamp, Harris and others.[6] Thus, certain heretofore obvious examples of human persons such as newborn babies and severely handicapped and cognitively disabled and or unconscious persons are labeled “non-persons” under this rubric, while some animals can even be considered persons![7] Such a view is outrageous on its face and incompatible with the sanctity of life (equality of life) ethic which has formed the bedrock of the Judeo-Christian ethic for over 3000 years.
Needless to say, this new “quality of life” (culture of death) ethic particularly among secular academic elites, the media and much of the political establishment is also totally incompatible with orthodox Catholicism, a point well made by the directive to politicians and others in public life published by the Vatican.[8] Despite the fact that the “culture of death” ethic is being embraced [9] by the courts in both North America and much of Europe[10], it is fundamentally flawed and based upon an incorrect and incomplete understanding of the human person grounded largely in modern and post-modern philosophical assumptions, and the embracing of philosophical and scientific naturalism (materialism) by the elites who are presently “in control” of the scientific establishment and much of the public discourse. This can be seen in the deliberations of the Presidents Council on Bioethics which has to date been unable and or unwilling as a commission to declare that human personhood is intrinsic to all human beings regardless of age or stage of development.[11] Specifically, a new term (based on subject/object or person/body Dualism) has been “invented” (intermediate or special status) by which embryos are declared to be more than simply human tissue but not human beings in the usual sense of that term and thus not human persons either until some arbitrary point has been reached in development.[12] While this enables them to be sacrificed (read killed) for their parts (embryonic stem cells), it is entirely ad hoc and philosophically untenable when subjected to rigorous analysis.
Multiple and varied philosophical interpretations exist regarding the nature of the human person including whether the human being is entirely a material entity or a material/immaterial composite.[13] This issue lies at the heart of the dilemma with respect to how the human embryo should be regarded. Professor Benedict Ashley recommends the Aristotelian model of the human person in his book[14] and in his lecture series which is quite similar to the much more extensive and thought provoking outline provided by Professor William Wallace, also based on Aristotelian and Thomistic ideas but updated in light of modern biological science.[15] On the basis of all the available data, this ethicist embraces the ideas so persuasively argued for by Professor Wallace as graphically depicted in his Powers Model of Human Nature above referenced on page 159 of his book. In brief it holds that human beings are rational animals that is, extremely complex and integrated body/soul composites or unions made up of protomatter (prime matter) and a unique immaterial “natural form” (the human soul).[16] Under this rubric, the soul is the principle of substantial unity also referred to as the organizing principle. The human soul (which possesses a special form) is unique to human beings among all other living beings. This paradigm is clearly most consistent with all the relevant data from general (nature subjected to empirical observation) and special revelation.
Many contemporary secular bioethicists either deny immaterial reality or contend that since it cannot be measured by empirical (scientific) methods, it can not be considered, (i.e., it does not exist), in effect subscribing to philosophical (metaphysical) naturalism (materialism). This view was held by the ancient Greeks including Democritus and Epicurus. Another philosophical error is to imagine that the soul is infused at some later date well after conception (fertilization). Under this rubric, the soul is reduced to a non-critical “religious” entity which is not required (for biological life to exist) and is not present from the one-celled zygote stage i.e. from conception, thus providing no role as the immaterial agent of substantial unity (organizing principle). This “Delayed Hominization theory/position” is reminiscent of certain Neo-Platonic assumptions in which the soul is “imprisoned” in the material body and cannot possibly be true (as was recognized by Aristotle and Aquinas not to mention all the data which now exists from the life sciences including the testimony of persons who have experienced “near death” experiences).[17] Tragically, not an insignificant number of Catholic moral theologians/secular bioethicists have embraced this view despite it being incompatible with Catholic moral teaching and careful philosophical analysis.[18]
To recapitulate then, the human person, according to Aristotle and Aquinas is a combination of matter and form like all other inorganic and organic beings (entities), where the human soul is the immaterial (spiritual) form of the person. This is the classic substance view of human personhood which best fits with all the available data in light of contemporary science and classical philosophical anthropology. Practically speaking this is denied only by those who subscribe to modern Epicurean materialism (Darwinism).
Unlike all other material entities or beings, the human person is capable of both intellection (including the formation of abstract concepts including universals), and will (which includes the “passions”, emotions and appetitive characteristics). This substance view also holds that there is an essential interdependence and unity between body and soul in each human person, a point well made by Professor William E. May in his book referred to above. He also cites the similar opinion of John Paul II, Jacques Maritain by reference, and the Working Group of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (in discussing the human person from the perspective of the issue of brain death and organ donation).[19] May and others refer to this unity as the principle of substantial unity of the body and indicates that it is the same as the principle of personhood.[20]
In this construct, the brain is the instrument of our intelligence, not its organ that is, the brain is instrumentally utilized by the soul to effect action in the material realm, but the brain is not synonymous with the soul.[21] Intellectual insight and reasoning are spiritual functions which, while requiring processing of sense data, are not merely material brain operations. Thus, the brain is used as a material instrument by which the spiritual soul engages in both intellection and will. Both Ashley and Wallace among many others including Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas successfully establish in this authors view, that it is impossible to account for some of the observable characteristics of human beings without invoking the spiritual (immaterial) dimension.[22] Rabid materialists (scientific naturalists) vehemently disagree, for example Professor Gazzaniga, a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics.[23] However, despite recent neurological research into the subcellular (molecular) level of the thought process including controlled studies utilizing PET scans and other physiologic modalities, the non-material nature of both intellection and will remains unaddressed in solely the natural realm and the scientific process which studies it.[24] This is another way of saying that modern biological science with its materialistic bias, is fundamentally unable to account for man’s ability to be self aware, self conscious, or as Professor Ashley argues; the ability to be “all at one point” not spread out or in parts like a material object, the “I know that I know that I know”.[25]
In addition to self awareness this higher level of human function is most obviously seen in the ability that human beings have for abstract thought and spoken and written language. Higher mathematics and the extreme degrees of abstraction called for in doing metaphysics would be additional examples which defy reduction to electrochemical reactions among the complex networks of integrated circuitry which are present in the human brain. Therefore, any construct with respect to the human person which denies the immaterial dimension or reality of human beings, is fatally flawed as is any ethical system or paradigm which builds upon it, and any biological science involving human behavior for that matter.[26]
Unfortunately, much of modern physical and biological science is inculcated with both philosophical and scientific naturalism (materialism) in which it is argued that only brute matter exists.[27] That is to say and it is asserted that there is no non-material reality, including the soul or the spiritual realm. This phenomenon flows out of British Empiricism and Continental European Idealism both of which have their roots in Cartesian subject/object dualism including Descartes “man as machine” formulation and the misinterpreted and misunderstood mechanistic cosmology of Newton in the wake of Galileo. In addition it is also now a consequence of Darwinism and post-enlightenment rationalism and atheism. Ironically this has produced a contemporary view of science which is closer to the ancient Greek mechanistic view that Democritus and Epicurus had of science than is often appreciated. It has meant that modern science has often been placed in open opposition to belief in God as the first cause of material reality, leaving the material (natural) realm that science investigates without an adequate foundation or appropriate first cause.[28] Pope John Paul II has written well that such a view, which he calls rigid “scientism”, is a tragic misinterpretation of the scientific data and in fact the promulgation of materialistic philosophy rather than an accurate description of scientific reality. Nevertheless, a great deal of public policy and discourse in the West is founded upon these false materialistic assumptions about reality and the human person as well. Thus the contemporary debate about human personhood really reduces to a profound disagreement about human anthropology and the nature of reality or in other words, metaphysics rather than science or ethics per se.[29]
A detailed discussion of the metaphysical flaws involved in philosophical naturalism or rigid scientism is beyond the scope of this paper, but careful analysis demonstrates that it is incompatible with all the data available from Divine Revelation and the study of nature subjected to the light of human reason. However, one can appreciate that it might seem reasonable to embrace a “quality of life” (culture of death) ethic if one assumes that human beings are only material entities, lacking an immaterial soul as many secular bioethicists do. Under such a construct, it is much easier to declare that some people are “persons” and others are not, in an entirely arbitrary and ad-hoc way. Since there is no non-material or spiritual aspect (that is understood to be common to all human persons) which grounds their dignity, personhood can be defined by those in power to do so, on any basis they choose as is presently being done with great vigor in the West. In that regard, the “Materialists” and “Sophists” of ancient Greece have reappeared on the contemporary scene in the form of secular utilitarian bioethicists who employ sophistry in order to mold public opinion. They have succeeded in making moral Darwinism (Culture of Death) the accepted moral construct in the West.[30]
A second error that underlies the “quality of life” ethic is the assumption of moral relativism. This view, despite the fact that it is self-contradictory, holds that there are no moral absolutes. It is very conveniently combined with Utilitarianism in which the non-moral benefit (which reduces to pleasure, preference or desire) of the community is considered the supreme “good” by which moral decisions are made. Thus, if it is “potentially” beneficial for thousands of patients that hundreds of thousands of embryos are sacrificed (read killed) for their stem cells, the utilitarian bioethical calculus is applied and the embryos are killed in the name of the greater good of society. This works particularly well if embryos are held either to be non-human (a scientific error),[31] or non-persons (a philosophical error).[32] There are many excellent works which demonstrate that moral relativism is an incoherent philosophical system,[33] yet it is held by many of the elites who are presently in control of academia, the media and much of the public policy establishment. Similarly, there are excellent works which either directly or indirectly demonstrate that utilitarianism is insufficiently powerful as a tool for moral decision making, given the demonstrable complexities of the human person.[34] Despite these realities, the “culture of death” ethic continues to advance in the realm of public policy, the courts, and the popular imagination.
It is now common to speak of “death with dignity” and the “right to die” when the “quality” of one’s life is no longer ideal or “tolerable”.[35] We now read about major University Medical Centers in which organs are “harvested” from people who are not yet dead, but in whom their quality of life was deemed inadequate (by ethics committees with a vested interest in obtaining organs for transplantation).[36] For that matter, the entire concept of “brain death” (philosophically questionable in itself) which has made this possible is beyond the scope of this paper. In any case, these developments were impossible a few short decades ago when the “sanctity of life” ethic reigned as part of the common morality. While this very rapid paradigm shift from the equality or sanctity of life ethic to a quality of life ethic is multifactorial, it is predicated in large part on a repudiation of the Aristotelian and Thomistic view of the human person which includes the notion that human beings are body/soul or material/immaterial (spiritual) composites which exist in unity or integration during biological life. As alluded to earlier, this is in large part related to the fact that much of modern science is predicated (philosophically and foundationally) upon Cartesian subject/object or person/body dualism and the metaphysical acceptance of Materialism.
In light of the foregoing, we can see how it is possible to dismiss the lives of some human beings by declaring them non-persons. Fr. Michael Schooyans has written:
“Men cast doubt on the human character of certain beings whenever they sought arguments to exploit or exterminate their fellow human beings. In antiquity slaves were considered as things and barbarians as second class men. In the sixteenth century, some conquerors considered the Indians as “beasts in human appearance.” The Nazis looked upon some men as “non-men”, as Unmenschen. To these arbitrary classifications dictated by the masters corresponded real discrimination and this, in turn, “legitimized” exploitation or extermination.[37]
This phenomenon is much easier to accomplish when philosophical naturalism or materialism (and with it the denial of the soul) and moral relativism are widely embraced as they are today. Materialism removes the soul (spiritual) from consideration, and moral relativism dispenses with any need to consider the individual objective moral act, the intent or the circumstances which classically have defined moral deliberations, at least in the Catholic Aristotelian/Thomistic tradition. Instead, the nonmoral value or practical consequences or benefit(s) is considered in utilitarian (consequentialist or proportionalist) terms only. Thus the entire notion of a just consideration of means vs: ends are eliminated in the name of utility (pleasure) or pragmatism and often unbridled notions of rigid autonomy, (particularly among the heavily financed biomedical research establishment who advocate for little or no restrictions).[38] Taking the lives of some innocent human beings is virtually inconceivable when the Aristotelian/Thomistic view of the human person is embraced as it is articulated by professors Ashley and Wallace. Under such a rubric, all human beings are persons of equal worth and dignity in virtue of the nature and kind of being they are, not because of some ad hoc criteria they meet or some acquired characteristics or abilities they are presently capable of demonstrating. The Catholic convert and English writer Malcolm Muggeridge succinctly summarized the issue as follows: "Either life is always and in all circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one, and in some the other."
In conclusion, it is vital to achieve an accurate and complete understanding of the human person, vis a vis the totality of their human being if the human embryo is to be treated justly. The only philosophy of the human person which adequately does so is the one articulated by Aristotle, Aquinas, John Paul II, May, Ashley, Wallace and others in which human beings are correctly identified as body/soul composite persons in substantial unity with the ability of intellection and will, each one of which enjoy an equal worth and human dignity. This worth and dignity exist not because of acquiring or losing some characteristic(s) or abilities, but as part of the substantial unity (unifying principle) which exists in reality, in virtue of the kind of being they are; a being in which matter is united to a very unique and special type of form which we call the human soul. In Christian terms this dignity is afforded on the basis of being created in the image (imago Dei) of an omnibenevolent triune God who creates that soul for its own sake out of Love. If this is not understood and applied, a panoply of disastrous consequences arise, exemplified by the tragedies associated with abortion, in-vitro fertilization (with embryo manipulation/destruction) and destructive embryo research to name only a few. All three demonstrate that a false/limited view of the human person (and the loss of the sanctity of human life ethic that is coincident with it), have brought great tragedy to contemporary Western culture as it has taken freedom and with it justice from the human embryo, and by extension, and as members of the human family, all human beings. Let us work, hope and pray that this “culture of death” ethic can be quickly and effectively reversed.
End Notes:
[1] Bruce Carlson. Human Embryology, (Livingston, New York: Churchill, 1994); C. Ward Kischer, PhD. “When Does Human Life Begin? The Final Answer,” The Linacre Quarterly 70, no. 4 (2003), pp 327-331, “Virtually every human embryologist and every major textbook of human embryology states that fertilization marks the beginning of the life of the new individual human being”; Scott Gilbert. Developmental Biology, 5th edition, (Sunderland Mass.: Sinnauer Associates, 1997; Msgr. Jeremiah J. McCarthy PhD. “Invoking Embryonic Development and the Notion of “Personhood” to Justify Early Abortion: A curious Argument,” The Linacre Quarterly 70, no. 4 (2003), p.348.
[2] Specifically a requirement of both commutative and legal justice.
[3] McCarthy. p. 347.
[4] John Paul II. 1995. Encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, in which the traditional “Inviolability of human life” ethical teaching was again powerfully affirmed.
[5] Wesley J Smith. Forced Exit: The Slippery Slope from Assisted Suicide to Legalized Murder. (Dallas: Spence Publishing Co. 2003), p. XXVII.
[6] Michael Tooley. Abortion and Infanticide. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 61-76; Peter Singer. Rethinking Life and Death: The Collapse of Our Traditional Ethics. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), pp 202-206; Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress. Principles of Biomedical Ethics, Fifth Edition. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Tom L. Beauchamp, “The Failure of Theories of Personhood,” Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 9, no. 4 (1999), p. 320; John Harris, “The Concept of the Person and the Value of Life,” Kennedy, Institute of Ethics Journal 9, no. 4 (1999), p. 297; Joseph Fletcher, “Indicators of Personhood,” Hastings Center Report 2 (November 1972) 1-4.
[7] R. G. Frey, “Moral Standing, the Value of Lives, and Speciesism,” Between the Species 4 (1988), pp. 196-197; Peter Singer. Animal Liberation. (New York: Avon Books, 1990), pp. 6, 18, 22.
[8] Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Doctrinal Note on some questions regarding The Participation of Catholics in Political Life, Rome, Nov. 24, 2002, paragraphs 3 & 4.
[9] Paul Nowak, “New Jersey First to Publicly Fund Embryonic Stem Cell Research”
LifeNews.com (June 29, 2004) http://www.lifenews.com/bio364.html “New Jersey has become the first state to use taxpayer dollars to fund human cloning for research purposes. Last week, Governor Jim McGreevey added $3 million to the state budget to fund embryonic stem cell research, only a day before the budget was supposed to be put to a vote.
[10] Kischer. pp. 331-333.
[11] The President’s Council on Bioethics, Human Cloning and Human Dignity.
(New York: Public Affairs, 2002).
[12] Ibid.
[13] James J. Mc Cartney. Unborn Persons: Pope John Paul II and the Abortion Debate. (New York: Peter Lang, 1987).
[14] Benedict M. Ashley and Kevin D. O’Rourke. Health Care Ethics: A Theological Analysis. (Washington D. C.: Georgetown University Press, 1997), pp. 321, p. 357.
[15] William A. Wallace. The Modeling of Nature: Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Nature in Synthesis. (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), pp. 157-189, particularly p. 159; William A. Wallace, O P. The Elements of Philosophy: A Compendium for Philosophers and Theologians (New York: Alba House, 1977), pp. 58-64, 80-83, & 145; Thomas Aquinas. Summa theologiae Ia-IIae, q. 94, a.3: “Since the rational soul is man’s proper form, he has a natural tendency (naturalis inclination) to act according to reason that is to say according to virtue”.
[16] Wallace. The Modeling of Nature. pp. 158 & 159.
[17] Patrick Lee. Abortion &Unborn Human Life. (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1997); Stephen Schwarz. The Moral Question of Abortion. (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1990).
[18] Joseph Donceel, “A Liberal Catholic’s View,” in Abortion and Catholicism: The American Debate, pp. 48-53; Joseph Donceel, S.J. “Immediate Animation and Delayed Hominization,” Theological studies 31 (1970). Thomas A Shannon, and Allan B. Wolter, OFM, “Reflections on the Moral Status of the Pre-Embryo,” Theological Studies 51 (1990); Pope John Paul II, encyclical letter, Evangelium Vitae, 1995; Pope John Paul II, encyclical letter, Veritatis Splendor, 1993; Germain Grisez. The Way of the Lord Jesus, Vol. 2, Living a Christian Life. (Quincy, Il: Franciscan Press, 1993).
[19] Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility. Trans. H. Willetts, (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1981), p 4; Jacques Maritain. The Person and the Common Good. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1947), chapter 3; William E. May. Catholic Bioethics and the Gift of Human Life. (Huntington Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., 2000) p. 200 & 204.
[20] May. Catholic Bioethics and the Gift of Human Life pp. 286-294.
[21] Or the mind, as argued in; S. Parnia, D.G. Waller, R. Yeates, and P. Fenwick, “A Qualitative and Quantitative Study of the incidence, Features and Aetiology of Near-Death Experience in Cardiac Arrest Survivors,” Resuscitation (February 2001); Sarah Tippit, “Scientist says Mind continues After Brain Dies,” Reuters (June 29, 2001)and Sam Parnia, “Near Death Experiences in Cardiac Arrest and the Mystery of Consciousness,” available at www.datadiwan.de/Sci/MedNet/library/articlesN75/N76+Parnia_nde.htm.
[22] Wallace. The Elements of Philosophy. p. 81, as follows; “The essential unity of man is manifest from the fact that the same concrete man who is experienced in his bodily presence is also a person who thinks. The spiritual activity of thinking and the material givenness of the body are both manifestations of one and the same human reality. Again, the transcendence of the spirit over material reality is manifested by the immateriality of intellection; this means that the human soul, having an activity that is intrinsically independent of material conditions, cannot have a mode of being inferior to its mode of operation, (emphasis mine). In other words, it must be essentially independent of matter. On the other hand, man is really material, and this is not merely accidental; the body belongs essentially to his nature. Now the only way in which one can reconcile all these data is by maintaining that the human soul informs matter as a substantial form; in so doing, however, it is not dependent on matter in the very fact of existing, but, on the contrary, man’s body is dependent on his soul and exists in virtue of the soul’s existence. Such a special and intimate ontological relationship between soul and body alone explains man’s substantial unity, the spiritual character of his soul, and the fact that his body is an essential part of this nature.”
[23] The President’s Council on Bioethics, Human Cloning and Human Dignity. (New York:
Public Affairs, 2002), pp. 290-294 in which he suggests that zygotes are not persons because they lack a nervous system thus ascribing to a form of “acquired personhood”.
[24] Note for example the unexplainable experiences of patients undergoing profound hypothermic circulatory arrest in which no brain waves are present (flat EEG’s) and who later report knowledge of what transpired during that portion of their operations. The fact that the brain was “non-functional” during the time in question, strongly suggests an immaterial (spiritual) explanation. Similar experiences have been reported by victims of “sudden cardiac death" in a non-operating room environment.
See also research by Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz M.D. of UCLA Medical Center including his book The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force, (New York: Harper Collins, 2002) e.g. pp. 24-53 in which he asserts that there is a non-material (spiritual) component to intellection that is in the use of the mind which is separate from the brain. I am indebted to Mr. Joel Gibbons for bringing the material of Dr. Schwartz to my attention. His web site can be reached HERE...
[25] Professor Ashley’s video lecture series, lesson number 6.
[26] A practical example is that no matter how educated a person becomes, no one is ever able to consistently choose only the true good that is, what is in the person’s genuine interest.
[27] This is despite the fact that one is unable to explain phenomena which are common to all human beings by invoking Materialism. It is an inadequately powerful paradigm or “world view” (total philosophical system) by which to explain what we observe in the process of living life. For example, the common experience in which people choose to act against what they understand to be contrary to their interest (good) despite recognizing by reason that the action is not in their interest. This is simply inexplicable in a Materialist paradigm.
[28]Axiomatic is that no action can be greater than its cause. The cause of every action must be greater than itself. An entity (being) can not give what it does not have. This is a matter of first principles of being.
[29] Tragically, as a result of Emmanuel Kant and the post-enlightenment Rationalists/modern analytical philosophy, metaphysics has fallen out of favor and with it much of our understanding of reality and human anthropology. This is particularly true now that Materialism (philosophical naturalism) has become the reigning paradigm.
[30] Benjamin Wiker. Moral Darwinism: How We Became Hedonists. (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2002), especially; 23, 89, 243-54, 301.
[31] Scott Gilbert. Developmental Biology, 5th edition, (Sunderland Mass.: Sinnauer Associates, 1997).
[32] Patrick Lee. Abortion &Unborn Human Life. (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1997); Stephen Schwarz. The Moral Question of Abortion. (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1990).
[33] Peter Kreeft. A Refutation of Moral Relativism: Interviews with an Absolutist. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999); Francis J. Beckwith and Gregory Koukl. Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air. (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Baker Books, 1998).
[34] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, translated, with introduction, notes, and glossary by Terence Irwin, second edition. (Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Co., Inc. 1999); Paul Ramsey. The Patient as Person. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970); Wesley J. Smith. Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America. (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2000); Robert P. George. The Clash of Orthodoxies: Law, Religion, and Morality in Crisis. (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2001); Edmund D. Pellegrino, and David C. Thomasma. The Christian Virtues in Medical Practice. (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1996); Leon R. Kass. M.D. Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics. (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2002); John Finnis. Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); May, William E. Catholic Bioethics and the Gift of Human Life. (Huntington Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., 2000).
[35] Smith, Culture of Death. pp. 65, 85-87, 109, 124-125.
[36] Ibid. pp 155-187.
[37] Michael Schooyans. Bioethics and Population: The Choice of Life. (St. Louis, MO.: Central Bureau, CCVA, 1996), p. 3.
[38] Classically, ethics (moral philosophy) ultimately reduces to a rational consideration of means vs: ends in which the "ends" are fixed by nature, and the "means" proper to achieving them are chosen by human beings.
In view of the National Health Care debate which is currently raging, this re-worked essay which I wrote several years ago and which was used to help lobby Congress against embryonic stem cell research and human cloning for biomedical research is included in order to counter assertions that some human beings are non-persons and unworthy of life.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
The Philosophy of the Human Person, the Body/Soul Issue and Ethics
(Personhood cannot be acquired or lost)
By: John P. Hubert Jr. MD FACS
In the past several years, a growing moral and ethical dilemma has presented itself. Largely because of an almost logrhythmic increase in bio-technologic expertise, certain options are now available which would have been unthinkable just a short several decades ago. Two of these as mentioned above are; Destructive Embryonic Stem Cell research (ESCR) and Human Research Cloning (CBR). They are very closely allied in that each involves the destruction of human embryos (DER) at an early stage in human development. The question which has yet to be adequately addressed is; are human embryos deserving of the full respect and protection afforded to any other member of the human species? The 3 positions taken in this review are as follows:
1. The human embryo is a human being, even at the one-celled stage that is; a genetically complete albeit nascent or undeveloped human organism with a complete human genome. This is true beyond all reasonable doubt and has been demonstrated empirically by multiple scientific investigators.[1]
2. Contemporary attempts to justify the intentional destruction of human embryos by maintaining that embryos are human beings but not human persons (and thus not deserving of full moral status and protection) are philosophically untenable and must be repudiated. On the basis of biology, metaphysics and ethics, the human embryo should be accorded full moral status including inviolability, a reality which (justice demands) should be codified in law. This is true irrespective of age, acquired characteristics or the way in which the embryo is regarded by others. It is true because of the inherent nature, being and essence that the embryo has, not because of any externally applied or acquired characteristic or ability.
3. Logic, intellectual honesty, consistency in the history of ethics, as well as justice demand that we treat like things similarly. If the assertions made here are correct, then destructive embryo research (DER) is immoral and its practice should be sanctioned by law. Only then will justice be achieved. This will insure that the human embryo is given the freedom to thrive that it rightly deserves. The right to life is the first of all rights and without it, no other rights follow. Since justice is; giving to another what they are due, it is clear that the human embryo possesses the right to life and the freedom to thrive that any other member of the human species has. This is a basic requirement of justice and is non-negotiable.[2] As such, the Catholic Church of record and most of Christianity rightly teaches that the right to life is fundamental and irrevocable. It is also a touchstone principle which is fundamental to the Judeo-Christian ethic upon which the American experiment was based.
Few topics are as timely and prescient today as that of human personhood (personhood theory) and with it, the continued philosophical debate over the “body/soul” issue. This is predominately displayed in the ongoing public discourse over abortion, destructive embryo research (DER) and euthanasia, in which some human beings are characterized as “non-persons”, non-humans or non-beings in order to justify their manipulation or death. Tragically, many secular bioethicists now advocate for a “quality of life” ethic which utilizes a utilitarian calculus in order to justify the taking of innocent human life.[3] It represents a radical departure from the traditional “sanctity of life” ethic[4] (also referred to as the equality of human life ethic).[5] It has resulted in a growing “culture of death."
One technique presently popular among bioethicists who embrace the “quality of life” (read culture of death) ethic, is to declare some human beings “non-persons” on the basis of their inability to measure up to certain arbitrarily selected characteristics which are alleged to be a requirement for human personhood (from the moral perspective). In their view, a human being does not possess personhood in virtue of the kind of entity or being they are, but on the basis of various “acquired” characteristics which they do or do not actually have and can demonstrate. This view has been popularized by many contemporary secular bioethicists including Fletcher, Tooley, Singer, Beauchamp, Harris and others.[6] Thus, certain heretofore obvious examples of human persons such as newborn babies and severely handicapped and cognitively disabled and or unconscious persons are labeled “non-persons” under this rubric, while some animals can even be considered persons![7] Such a view is outrageous on its face and incompatible with the sanctity of life (equality of life) ethic which has formed the bedrock of the Judeo-Christian ethic for over 3000 years.
Needless to say, this new “quality of life” (culture of death) ethic particularly among secular academic elites, the media and much of the political establishment is also totally incompatible with orthodox Catholicism, a point well made by the directive to politicians and others in public life published by the Vatican.[8] Despite the fact that the “culture of death” ethic is being embraced [9] by the courts in both North America and much of Europe[10], it is fundamentally flawed and based upon an incorrect and incomplete understanding of the human person grounded largely in modern and post-modern philosophical assumptions, and the embracing of philosophical and scientific naturalism (materialism) by the elites who are presently “in control” of the scientific establishment and much of the public discourse. This can be seen in the deliberations of the Presidents Council on Bioethics which has to date been unable and or unwilling as a commission to declare that human personhood is intrinsic to all human beings regardless of age or stage of development.[11] Specifically, a new term (based on subject/object or person/body Dualism) has been “invented” (intermediate or special status) by which embryos are declared to be more than simply human tissue but not human beings in the usual sense of that term and thus not human persons either until some arbitrary point has been reached in development.[12] While this enables them to be sacrificed (read killed) for their parts (embryonic stem cells), it is entirely ad hoc and philosophically untenable when subjected to rigorous analysis.
Multiple and varied philosophical interpretations exist regarding the nature of the human person including whether the human being is entirely a material entity or a material/immaterial composite.[13] This issue lies at the heart of the dilemma with respect to how the human embryo should be regarded. Professor Benedict Ashley recommends the Aristotelian model of the human person in his book[14] and in his lecture series which is quite similar to the much more extensive and thought provoking outline provided by Professor William Wallace, also based on Aristotelian and Thomistic ideas but updated in light of modern biological science.[15] On the basis of all the available data, this ethicist embraces the ideas so persuasively argued for by Professor Wallace as graphically depicted in his Powers Model of Human Nature above referenced on page 159 of his book. In brief it holds that human beings are rational animals that is, extremely complex and integrated body/soul composites or unions made up of protomatter (prime matter) and a unique immaterial “natural form” (the human soul).[16] Under this rubric, the soul is the principle of substantial unity also referred to as the organizing principle. The human soul (which possesses a special form) is unique to human beings among all other living beings. This paradigm is clearly most consistent with all the relevant data from general (nature subjected to empirical observation) and special revelation.
Many contemporary secular bioethicists either deny immaterial reality or contend that since it cannot be measured by empirical (scientific) methods, it can not be considered, (i.e., it does not exist), in effect subscribing to philosophical (metaphysical) naturalism (materialism). This view was held by the ancient Greeks including Democritus and Epicurus. Another philosophical error is to imagine that the soul is infused at some later date well after conception (fertilization). Under this rubric, the soul is reduced to a non-critical “religious” entity which is not required (for biological life to exist) and is not present from the one-celled zygote stage i.e. from conception, thus providing no role as the immaterial agent of substantial unity (organizing principle). This “Delayed Hominization theory/position” is reminiscent of certain Neo-Platonic assumptions in which the soul is “imprisoned” in the material body and cannot possibly be true (as was recognized by Aristotle and Aquinas not to mention all the data which now exists from the life sciences including the testimony of persons who have experienced “near death” experiences).[17] Tragically, not an insignificant number of Catholic moral theologians/secular bioethicists have embraced this view despite it being incompatible with Catholic moral teaching and careful philosophical analysis.[18]
To recapitulate then, the human person, according to Aristotle and Aquinas is a combination of matter and form like all other inorganic and organic beings (entities), where the human soul is the immaterial (spiritual) form of the person. This is the classic substance view of human personhood which best fits with all the available data in light of contemporary science and classical philosophical anthropology. Practically speaking this is denied only by those who subscribe to modern Epicurean materialism (Darwinism).
Unlike all other material entities or beings, the human person is capable of both intellection (including the formation of abstract concepts including universals), and will (which includes the “passions”, emotions and appetitive characteristics). This substance view also holds that there is an essential interdependence and unity between body and soul in each human person, a point well made by Professor William E. May in his book referred to above. He also cites the similar opinion of John Paul II, Jacques Maritain by reference, and the Working Group of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (in discussing the human person from the perspective of the issue of brain death and organ donation).[19] May and others refer to this unity as the principle of substantial unity of the body and indicates that it is the same as the principle of personhood.[20]
In this construct, the brain is the instrument of our intelligence, not its organ that is, the brain is instrumentally utilized by the soul to effect action in the material realm, but the brain is not synonymous with the soul.[21] Intellectual insight and reasoning are spiritual functions which, while requiring processing of sense data, are not merely material brain operations. Thus, the brain is used as a material instrument by which the spiritual soul engages in both intellection and will. Both Ashley and Wallace among many others including Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas successfully establish in this authors view, that it is impossible to account for some of the observable characteristics of human beings without invoking the spiritual (immaterial) dimension.[22] Rabid materialists (scientific naturalists) vehemently disagree, for example Professor Gazzaniga, a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics.[23] However, despite recent neurological research into the subcellular (molecular) level of the thought process including controlled studies utilizing PET scans and other physiologic modalities, the non-material nature of both intellection and will remains unaddressed in solely the natural realm and the scientific process which studies it.[24] This is another way of saying that modern biological science with its materialistic bias, is fundamentally unable to account for man’s ability to be self aware, self conscious, or as Professor Ashley argues; the ability to be “all at one point” not spread out or in parts like a material object, the “I know that I know that I know”.[25]
In addition to self awareness this higher level of human function is most obviously seen in the ability that human beings have for abstract thought and spoken and written language. Higher mathematics and the extreme degrees of abstraction called for in doing metaphysics would be additional examples which defy reduction to electrochemical reactions among the complex networks of integrated circuitry which are present in the human brain. Therefore, any construct with respect to the human person which denies the immaterial dimension or reality of human beings, is fatally flawed as is any ethical system or paradigm which builds upon it, and any biological science involving human behavior for that matter.[26]
Unfortunately, much of modern physical and biological science is inculcated with both philosophical and scientific naturalism (materialism) in which it is argued that only brute matter exists.[27] That is to say and it is asserted that there is no non-material reality, including the soul or the spiritual realm. This phenomenon flows out of British Empiricism and Continental European Idealism both of which have their roots in Cartesian subject/object dualism including Descartes “man as machine” formulation and the misinterpreted and misunderstood mechanistic cosmology of Newton in the wake of Galileo. In addition it is also now a consequence of Darwinism and post-enlightenment rationalism and atheism. Ironically this has produced a contemporary view of science which is closer to the ancient Greek mechanistic view that Democritus and Epicurus had of science than is often appreciated. It has meant that modern science has often been placed in open opposition to belief in God as the first cause of material reality, leaving the material (natural) realm that science investigates without an adequate foundation or appropriate first cause.[28] Pope John Paul II has written well that such a view, which he calls rigid “scientism”, is a tragic misinterpretation of the scientific data and in fact the promulgation of materialistic philosophy rather than an accurate description of scientific reality. Nevertheless, a great deal of public policy and discourse in the West is founded upon these false materialistic assumptions about reality and the human person as well. Thus the contemporary debate about human personhood really reduces to a profound disagreement about human anthropology and the nature of reality or in other words, metaphysics rather than science or ethics per se.[29]
A detailed discussion of the metaphysical flaws involved in philosophical naturalism or rigid scientism is beyond the scope of this paper, but careful analysis demonstrates that it is incompatible with all the data available from Divine Revelation and the study of nature subjected to the light of human reason. However, one can appreciate that it might seem reasonable to embrace a “quality of life” (culture of death) ethic if one assumes that human beings are only material entities, lacking an immaterial soul as many secular bioethicists do. Under such a construct, it is much easier to declare that some people are “persons” and others are not, in an entirely arbitrary and ad-hoc way. Since there is no non-material or spiritual aspect (that is understood to be common to all human persons) which grounds their dignity, personhood can be defined by those in power to do so, on any basis they choose as is presently being done with great vigor in the West. In that regard, the “Materialists” and “Sophists” of ancient Greece have reappeared on the contemporary scene in the form of secular utilitarian bioethicists who employ sophistry in order to mold public opinion. They have succeeded in making moral Darwinism (Culture of Death) the accepted moral construct in the West.[30]
A second error that underlies the “quality of life” ethic is the assumption of moral relativism. This view, despite the fact that it is self-contradictory, holds that there are no moral absolutes. It is very conveniently combined with Utilitarianism in which the non-moral benefit (which reduces to pleasure, preference or desire) of the community is considered the supreme “good” by which moral decisions are made. Thus, if it is “potentially” beneficial for thousands of patients that hundreds of thousands of embryos are sacrificed (read killed) for their stem cells, the utilitarian bioethical calculus is applied and the embryos are killed in the name of the greater good of society. This works particularly well if embryos are held either to be non-human (a scientific error),[31] or non-persons (a philosophical error).[32] There are many excellent works which demonstrate that moral relativism is an incoherent philosophical system,[33] yet it is held by many of the elites who are presently in control of academia, the media and much of the public policy establishment. Similarly, there are excellent works which either directly or indirectly demonstrate that utilitarianism is insufficiently powerful as a tool for moral decision making, given the demonstrable complexities of the human person.[34] Despite these realities, the “culture of death” ethic continues to advance in the realm of public policy, the courts, and the popular imagination.
It is now common to speak of “death with dignity” and the “right to die” when the “quality” of one’s life is no longer ideal or “tolerable”.[35] We now read about major University Medical Centers in which organs are “harvested” from people who are not yet dead, but in whom their quality of life was deemed inadequate (by ethics committees with a vested interest in obtaining organs for transplantation).[36] For that matter, the entire concept of “brain death” (philosophically questionable in itself) which has made this possible is beyond the scope of this paper. In any case, these developments were impossible a few short decades ago when the “sanctity of life” ethic reigned as part of the common morality. While this very rapid paradigm shift from the equality or sanctity of life ethic to a quality of life ethic is multifactorial, it is predicated in large part on a repudiation of the Aristotelian and Thomistic view of the human person which includes the notion that human beings are body/soul or material/immaterial (spiritual) composites which exist in unity or integration during biological life. As alluded to earlier, this is in large part related to the fact that much of modern science is predicated (philosophically and foundationally) upon Cartesian subject/object or person/body dualism and the metaphysical acceptance of Materialism.
In light of the foregoing, we can see how it is possible to dismiss the lives of some human beings by declaring them non-persons. Fr. Michael Schooyans has written:
“Men cast doubt on the human character of certain beings whenever they sought arguments to exploit or exterminate their fellow human beings. In antiquity slaves were considered as things and barbarians as second class men. In the sixteenth century, some conquerors considered the Indians as “beasts in human appearance.” The Nazis looked upon some men as “non-men”, as Unmenschen. To these arbitrary classifications dictated by the masters corresponded real discrimination and this, in turn, “legitimized” exploitation or extermination.[37]
This phenomenon is much easier to accomplish when philosophical naturalism or materialism (and with it the denial of the soul) and moral relativism are widely embraced as they are today. Materialism removes the soul (spiritual) from consideration, and moral relativism dispenses with any need to consider the individual objective moral act, the intent or the circumstances which classically have defined moral deliberations, at least in the Catholic Aristotelian/Thomistic tradition. Instead, the nonmoral value or practical consequences or benefit(s) is considered in utilitarian (consequentialist or proportionalist) terms only. Thus the entire notion of a just consideration of means vs: ends are eliminated in the name of utility (pleasure) or pragmatism and often unbridled notions of rigid autonomy, (particularly among the heavily financed biomedical research establishment who advocate for little or no restrictions).[38] Taking the lives of some innocent human beings is virtually inconceivable when the Aristotelian/Thomistic view of the human person is embraced as it is articulated by professors Ashley and Wallace. Under such a rubric, all human beings are persons of equal worth and dignity in virtue of the nature and kind of being they are, not because of some ad hoc criteria they meet or some acquired characteristics or abilities they are presently capable of demonstrating. The Catholic convert and English writer Malcolm Muggeridge succinctly summarized the issue as follows: "Either life is always and in all circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one, and in some the other."
In conclusion, it is vital to achieve an accurate and complete understanding of the human person, vis a vis the totality of their human being if the human embryo is to be treated justly. The only philosophy of the human person which adequately does so is the one articulated by Aristotle, Aquinas, John Paul II, May, Ashley, Wallace and others in which human beings are correctly identified as body/soul composite persons in substantial unity with the ability of intellection and will, each one of which enjoy an equal worth and human dignity. This worth and dignity exist not because of acquiring or losing some characteristic(s) or abilities, but as part of the substantial unity (unifying principle) which exists in reality, in virtue of the kind of being they are; a being in which matter is united to a very unique and special type of form which we call the human soul. In Christian terms this dignity is afforded on the basis of being created in the image (imago Dei) of an omnibenevolent triune God who creates that soul for its own sake out of Love. If this is not understood and applied, a panoply of disastrous consequences arise, exemplified by the tragedies associated with abortion, in-vitro fertilization (with embryo manipulation/destruction) and destructive embryo research to name only a few. All three demonstrate that a false/limited view of the human person (and the loss of the sanctity of human life ethic that is coincident with it), have brought great tragedy to contemporary Western culture as it has taken freedom and with it justice from the human embryo, and by extension, and as members of the human family, all human beings. Let us work, hope and pray that this “culture of death” ethic can be quickly and effectively reversed.
End Notes:
[1] Bruce Carlson. Human Embryology, (Livingston, New York: Churchill, 1994); C. Ward Kischer, PhD. “When Does Human Life Begin? The Final Answer,” The Linacre Quarterly 70, no. 4 (2003), pp 327-331, “Virtually every human embryologist and every major textbook of human embryology states that fertilization marks the beginning of the life of the new individual human being”; Scott Gilbert. Developmental Biology, 5th edition, (Sunderland Mass.: Sinnauer Associates, 1997; Msgr. Jeremiah J. McCarthy PhD. “Invoking Embryonic Development and the Notion of “Personhood” to Justify Early Abortion: A curious Argument,” The Linacre Quarterly 70, no. 4 (2003), p.348.
[2] Specifically a requirement of both commutative and legal justice.
[3] McCarthy. p. 347.
[4] John Paul II. 1995. Encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, in which the traditional “Inviolability of human life” ethical teaching was again powerfully affirmed.
[5] Wesley J Smith. Forced Exit: The Slippery Slope from Assisted Suicide to Legalized Murder. (Dallas: Spence Publishing Co. 2003), p. XXVII.
[6] Michael Tooley. Abortion and Infanticide. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 61-76; Peter Singer. Rethinking Life and Death: The Collapse of Our Traditional Ethics. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), pp 202-206; Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress. Principles of Biomedical Ethics, Fifth Edition. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Tom L. Beauchamp, “The Failure of Theories of Personhood,” Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 9, no. 4 (1999), p. 320; John Harris, “The Concept of the Person and the Value of Life,” Kennedy, Institute of Ethics Journal 9, no. 4 (1999), p. 297; Joseph Fletcher, “Indicators of Personhood,” Hastings Center Report 2 (November 1972) 1-4.
[7] R. G. Frey, “Moral Standing, the Value of Lives, and Speciesism,” Between the Species 4 (1988), pp. 196-197; Peter Singer. Animal Liberation. (New York: Avon Books, 1990), pp. 6, 18, 22.
[8] Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Doctrinal Note on some questions regarding The Participation of Catholics in Political Life, Rome, Nov. 24, 2002, paragraphs 3 & 4.
[9] Paul Nowak, “New Jersey First to Publicly Fund Embryonic Stem Cell Research”
LifeNews.com (June 29, 2004) http://www.lifenews.com/bio364.html “New Jersey has become the first state to use taxpayer dollars to fund human cloning for research purposes. Last week, Governor Jim McGreevey added $3 million to the state budget to fund embryonic stem cell research, only a day before the budget was supposed to be put to a vote.
[10] Kischer. pp. 331-333.
[11] The President’s Council on Bioethics, Human Cloning and Human Dignity.
(New York: Public Affairs, 2002).
[12] Ibid.
[13] James J. Mc Cartney. Unborn Persons: Pope John Paul II and the Abortion Debate. (New York: Peter Lang, 1987).
[14] Benedict M. Ashley and Kevin D. O’Rourke. Health Care Ethics: A Theological Analysis. (Washington D. C.: Georgetown University Press, 1997), pp. 321, p. 357.
[15] William A. Wallace. The Modeling of Nature: Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Nature in Synthesis. (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), pp. 157-189, particularly p. 159; William A. Wallace, O P. The Elements of Philosophy: A Compendium for Philosophers and Theologians (New York: Alba House, 1977), pp. 58-64, 80-83, & 145; Thomas Aquinas. Summa theologiae Ia-IIae, q. 94, a.3: “Since the rational soul is man’s proper form, he has a natural tendency (naturalis inclination) to act according to reason that is to say according to virtue”.
[16] Wallace. The Modeling of Nature. pp. 158 & 159.
[17] Patrick Lee. Abortion &Unborn Human Life. (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1997); Stephen Schwarz. The Moral Question of Abortion. (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1990).
[18] Joseph Donceel, “A Liberal Catholic’s View,” in Abortion and Catholicism: The American Debate, pp. 48-53; Joseph Donceel, S.J. “Immediate Animation and Delayed Hominization,” Theological studies 31 (1970). Thomas A Shannon, and Allan B. Wolter, OFM, “Reflections on the Moral Status of the Pre-Embryo,” Theological Studies 51 (1990); Pope John Paul II, encyclical letter, Evangelium Vitae, 1995; Pope John Paul II, encyclical letter, Veritatis Splendor, 1993; Germain Grisez. The Way of the Lord Jesus, Vol. 2, Living a Christian Life. (Quincy, Il: Franciscan Press, 1993).
[19] Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility. Trans. H. Willetts, (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1981), p 4; Jacques Maritain. The Person and the Common Good. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1947), chapter 3; William E. May. Catholic Bioethics and the Gift of Human Life. (Huntington Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., 2000) p. 200 & 204.
[20] May. Catholic Bioethics and the Gift of Human Life pp. 286-294.
[21] Or the mind, as argued in; S. Parnia, D.G. Waller, R. Yeates, and P. Fenwick, “A Qualitative and Quantitative Study of the incidence, Features and Aetiology of Near-Death Experience in Cardiac Arrest Survivors,” Resuscitation (February 2001); Sarah Tippit, “Scientist says Mind continues After Brain Dies,” Reuters (June 29, 2001)and Sam Parnia, “Near Death Experiences in Cardiac Arrest and the Mystery of Consciousness,” available at www.datadiwan.de/Sci/MedNet/library/articlesN75/N76+Parnia_nde.htm.
[22] Wallace. The Elements of Philosophy. p. 81, as follows; “The essential unity of man is manifest from the fact that the same concrete man who is experienced in his bodily presence is also a person who thinks. The spiritual activity of thinking and the material givenness of the body are both manifestations of one and the same human reality. Again, the transcendence of the spirit over material reality is manifested by the immateriality of intellection; this means that the human soul, having an activity that is intrinsically independent of material conditions, cannot have a mode of being inferior to its mode of operation, (emphasis mine). In other words, it must be essentially independent of matter. On the other hand, man is really material, and this is not merely accidental; the body belongs essentially to his nature. Now the only way in which one can reconcile all these data is by maintaining that the human soul informs matter as a substantial form; in so doing, however, it is not dependent on matter in the very fact of existing, but, on the contrary, man’s body is dependent on his soul and exists in virtue of the soul’s existence. Such a special and intimate ontological relationship between soul and body alone explains man’s substantial unity, the spiritual character of his soul, and the fact that his body is an essential part of this nature.”
[23] The President’s Council on Bioethics, Human Cloning and Human Dignity. (New York:
Public Affairs, 2002), pp. 290-294 in which he suggests that zygotes are not persons because they lack a nervous system thus ascribing to a form of “acquired personhood”.
[24] Note for example the unexplainable experiences of patients undergoing profound hypothermic circulatory arrest in which no brain waves are present (flat EEG’s) and who later report knowledge of what transpired during that portion of their operations. The fact that the brain was “non-functional” during the time in question, strongly suggests an immaterial (spiritual) explanation. Similar experiences have been reported by victims of “sudden cardiac death" in a non-operating room environment.
See also research by Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz M.D. of UCLA Medical Center including his book The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force, (New York: Harper Collins, 2002) e.g. pp. 24-53 in which he asserts that there is a non-material (spiritual) component to intellection that is in the use of the mind which is separate from the brain. I am indebted to Mr. Joel Gibbons for bringing the material of Dr. Schwartz to my attention. His web site can be reached HERE...
[25] Professor Ashley’s video lecture series, lesson number 6.
[26] A practical example is that no matter how educated a person becomes, no one is ever able to consistently choose only the true good that is, what is in the person’s genuine interest.
[27] This is despite the fact that one is unable to explain phenomena which are common to all human beings by invoking Materialism. It is an inadequately powerful paradigm or “world view” (total philosophical system) by which to explain what we observe in the process of living life. For example, the common experience in which people choose to act against what they understand to be contrary to their interest (good) despite recognizing by reason that the action is not in their interest. This is simply inexplicable in a Materialist paradigm.
[28]Axiomatic is that no action can be greater than its cause. The cause of every action must be greater than itself. An entity (being) can not give what it does not have. This is a matter of first principles of being.
[29] Tragically, as a result of Emmanuel Kant and the post-enlightenment Rationalists/modern analytical philosophy, metaphysics has fallen out of favor and with it much of our understanding of reality and human anthropology. This is particularly true now that Materialism (philosophical naturalism) has become the reigning paradigm.
[30] Benjamin Wiker. Moral Darwinism: How We Became Hedonists. (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2002), especially; 23, 89, 243-54, 301.
[31] Scott Gilbert. Developmental Biology, 5th edition, (Sunderland Mass.: Sinnauer Associates, 1997).
[32] Patrick Lee. Abortion &Unborn Human Life. (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1997); Stephen Schwarz. The Moral Question of Abortion. (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1990).
[33] Peter Kreeft. A Refutation of Moral Relativism: Interviews with an Absolutist. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999); Francis J. Beckwith and Gregory Koukl. Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air. (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Baker Books, 1998).
[34] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, translated, with introduction, notes, and glossary by Terence Irwin, second edition. (Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Co., Inc. 1999); Paul Ramsey. The Patient as Person. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970); Wesley J. Smith. Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America. (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2000); Robert P. George. The Clash of Orthodoxies: Law, Religion, and Morality in Crisis. (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2001); Edmund D. Pellegrino, and David C. Thomasma. The Christian Virtues in Medical Practice. (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1996); Leon R. Kass. M.D. Life, Liberty and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics. (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2002); John Finnis. Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); May, William E. Catholic Bioethics and the Gift of Human Life. (Huntington Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., 2000).
[35] Smith, Culture of Death. pp. 65, 85-87, 109, 124-125.
[36] Ibid. pp 155-187.
[37] Michael Schooyans. Bioethics and Population: The Choice of Life. (St. Louis, MO.: Central Bureau, CCVA, 1996), p. 3.
[38] Classically, ethics (moral philosophy) ultimately reduces to a rational consideration of means vs: ends in which the "ends" are fixed by nature, and the "means" proper to achieving them are chosen by human beings.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
The Brain is not the Soul: Aquired Personhood and National Health Insurance
NOTE:
I wrote this piece several years ago and sent a letter to Pope Benedict XVI concerning the role of secular bioethics in furthering the culture of death and the new theory of "acquired personhood" which has made it much easier to take the lives of human beings who have been deemed non-persons. In that letter I described the corrosive effect that the embracing of Darwinian naturalism and the subject/object dualism of Descartes has had on the depersonalizing of the sick, disabled and dying. I received no reply.
Given the current attempt to pass national health insurance in the United States, this piece is provided in order to focus attention on the need to repudiate the ever growing culture of death which has begun to significantly effect medical care and decision making. The perennial philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas as always is best suited for that purpose.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
The Brain is not the Soul:
The Tragic Error of the Terry Schiavo case
John P. Hubert Jr. MD FACS
Biomedical and Health Care Policy Ethicist
As expected, the elite media in the wake of the Terry Schiavo autopsy have suggested that since Terry had “irreversible” brain damage according to the forensic pathologist, it was morally acceptable to kill her.[1] This betrays an alarming misunderstanding of human anthropology which is based in Darwinian naturalism.[2] It also means that the “elites” equate the human brain with the human “mind” and that when the brain is “irreversibly” damaged; the “person” no longer exists since the “mind” no longer functions.[3] This is not a matter of saying that when there is total brain death (total death of the entire brain) the person as an integrated body/soul composite entity has ceased to exist.[4] The assertion being made here is that since Terry Schiavo was judged to be “mindless” due to a profound purportedly irreversible brain injury, she was “non-human.” In other words, she had a “life” (vegetative existence according to culture of death bioethicists) no longer worthy of living.[5] These notions are demonstrably false when subjected to detailed philosophical analysis.[6] In fact, if it were true, it would mean that no one could ever be secure in their status as a human person since at any moment their personhood could be lost. Elite bioethicists or the courts might decide that because of trauma, disease or the effects of aging, a given human being could be subsequently labeled a non-person and thus not deserving of the usual care, compassion and protection of their human rights (the most fundamental of which is the right to existence).[7] Strange as it may seem, this is precisely what is presently transpiring with regard to the prematurely born, the infirm, retarded and other disabled persons in the West, particularly in the Netherlands, Belgium, the U.K. and progressively the United States.
There now exits the widespread assumption that the soul (referred to as “mind” in contemporary parlance an outgrowth of Descartes and Kant) is synonymous with or at least for practical purposes, analogous to the brain. This concept flows from Cartesian false Dualism, the idealism of Emmanuel Kant; (specifically his notion of complete personal autonomy), and radical Darwinism in which it is assumed that reality is completely confined to the material realm that is, there is no immaterial reality.[8] Secular elite bioethicists have utilized these false post-Enlightenment philosophical concepts as a foundation for their bioethic which has now mutated into a "culture of death" characterized by rabid notions of personal autonomy (read unbridled personal selfishness) without regard for and often in direct opposition to the common good. This new ethic is also associated with a virtual complete moral relativism, something Pope Benedict XVI has repeatedly stressed in public commentary.[9] American Catholics continue to be very confused by the constant public promulgation of the "Culture of Death," even by highly visible Catholic politicians and other Catholic public personages particularly in light of the extremely poor level of catechesis which has been ongoing in the West for over 40 years.
These tendencies and developments undergird the secular atheist elite bioethics rubric which has essentially over-taken the dialogue regarding "life issues" particularly in the developed West. It allows the "culture of death" community to discount the lives of all but the most perfect human beings (as secular elite bioethicists define it) among us. This new bioethic embraces the concept of "acquired" personhood in which it is necessary to demonstrate through various abilities and characteristics (most frequently higher cognitive function) that one is not only a human being but a human person as well. It also means that the “elites” artificially separate “human being” from “human personhood” in direct opposition to the substance view of personhood that the Catholic Church has accepted and promulgated through its support of the Aristotelian/Thomistic synthesis.[10] The very notion of acquired personhood is philosophically untenable and is in direct contradiction to Divine Revelation as consistently taught in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition.[11]
It appears that the time has come to approach the great debates in bioethics and the rapidly declining public morality from the perspective of overall worldview analysis in which the diametrically opposite notions of epistemology (theory of truth), metaphysics (theory of reality) and morality (theory of right and wrong) [between the new post-modern atheistic secularism {neo-paganism} The traditional Comprehensive Catholic World View is the only adequate antidote to the increasingly widespread radical secularization which is presently ongoing particularly in the West since it alone possesses the necessary metaphysical resources.
With respect to the growing interest here in Euthanasia and Physician Assisted Suicide (PAS), the author recently participated in the protests against the court ordered death of Terry Schiavo by demonstrating peacefully outside her hospice. This included holding signs, praying, fasting singing hymns and giving several Television interviews in which he attempted to present the Catholic bioethical position against euthanasia to the mass media. None of those interviews made it to air. Any actual explanation of Catholic teaching regarding the prohibition against Euthanasia was simply either marginalized or dismissed as “religious” that is "subjective" and regarded as simply fundamentalist "opinion" (value) rather than philosophically and theologically demonstrable fact.[12]
This “Value/Fact” dichotomy has become a huge problem in the West along with the specious notion of separation of Church and State understood as the disjunction of morality from the civil law, the institutions of government and society at large. Most distressingly, the pro-life demonstrators on behalf of saving Terry had absolutely no help (in our attempt to stop the court ordered killing of Terry Schiavo)[13] from the bishop of St. Petersburg Florida who apparently instructed his priests not to appear at Terry Schiavo's hospice or to speak in public about what was transpiring. Worse yet, in attending mass on several occasions during his stay during Holy Week, not once did the author hear the issue addressed in any homily; something which under the circumstances was obviously missing. This was a disgrace. The protesters were forced to rely on outside help from several Priests (including Fr. Frank Pavone of "Priests for Life") many of whom traveled great distances in order to provide the last rites and the sacrament of Holy Communion to Ms. Schiavo shortly before her death.
It is incumbent upon orthodox Catholics and all people of good will to reject the Cartesian false dualism and metaphysical naturalism of the cultural “elites” including contemporary secular bioethicists in which human personhood is allowed to be “conferred” upon only certain members of the human species by the Gnostics of our time (secular elite bioethicists and the courts). Their empty sophistry must be totally rejected. All human beings are “persons” by definition from the moment of conception until natural death! This must be proclaimed far and wide! It is also something that can be determined by the light of human reason after subjecting the relevant data to meticulous philosophical analysis. It is not necessary to invoke Divine Revelation in the form of Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition or constant Magisterial teaching in order to establish the truth of this proposition, although all “3” are perfectly consistent with that conclusion as derived from the study of the philosophy of the human person and the philosophy of nature absent a-priori commitment to a materialistic (metaphysical naturalism) bias. As thoughtful Catholics, we can make the case either philosophically or theologically with equal effectiveness, a fact which demonstrates the need for an aggressively promulgated Comprehensive Catholic World View. We know that secularists are simply wrong when they allege that those who demonstrated on behalf of Terry Schiavo’s right to life were engaging in fundamentalist “opinions” which cannot be established in fact. Our task is to obtain a hearing for the truth while we oppose the lie.
NOTES:
[1] While her brain was significantly atrophied in a generalized way which is consistent with a profound hypoxic encephalopathic injury (due to prolonged lack of oxygen), it is not the case that she was “brain dead and deserving of burial! Her heart and lungs were adequate to sustain her life indefinitely. In fact had she not been dehydrated to death, they might have served in another context as organs for human transplantation, something which was impossible due to the court ordered desiccation dehydration.
[2] Radical Darwinists assert that reality is completely confined to the material realm, that there is no spiritual (immaterial) realm and that human nature is only apparent, not real, that is, constantly changing or “evolving” only giving the appearance of stable “forms.” This means that there is no God by definition and no stable “human nature” according to radical Darwinists.
[3] Classically, in the philosophical sense, the mind was called “soul” referring to a spiritual or immaterial reality which utilized the brain as an instrument but was not synonymous with it. See: William A. Wallace, The Modeling of Nature: Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Nature in Synthesis. Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1996. Descartes changed everything with his Cogito-ergo-sum (I think therefore I am). He placed thinking before being rather than the classical notion, “being comes before thinking.”
[4] A separate assertion which can be philosophically debated in a separate context. Terry Schiavo did not have “brain death” she had a severe brain injury of uncertain etiology (explanation) a situation which still exists despite the performing of an autopsy. For an interesting discussion regarding the issue of “Brain Death” and its use as a criterion for death of the person see: William E. May, Catholic Bioethics and the Gift of Human Life. Huntington Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., 2000, chapter 8, particularly pp. 291-310.
[5] Judge Greer found on the basis of highly questionable testimony at the trial court level that Terry would not have wanted to remain alive under those circumstances. Thus the entire issue of killing her became a matter of supposedly “honoring her wishes” an example of Kantian autonomy “run amuck” where individual preference or desire is seen as being more important than the “common good.” See Wesley J. Smith. Forced Exit: The Slippery Slope from Assisted Suicide to Legalized Murder. Dallas: Spence Publishing Co. 2003 for a discussion of elite secular Bioethicists’ notion of life unworthy of being lived.
[6] See my article: “Justice and Freedom for the Human Embryo in light of The Philosophy of the Human Person, the Body/Soul Issue and Ethics”, Social Justice Review, 95: November-December, 2004. See also my essay: “The Moral Status of the Human Embryo ‘Intermediate’ or ‘Special Status’ for the human embryo is invalid”, available upon request.
[7] How many “non-person human beings” can conceivably be defined under this rubric is open to serious question and is constantly being re-defined by secular elite “culture of death” bioethicists, the U.S. judiciary and foreign courts.
[8] Understand that what is at stake here is a debate about the very nature of reality.
[9] e.g. his homily at the start of the recent conclave and in a prior speech at the meeting of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with the presidents of the Doctrinal Commissions of the Bishops' Conferences of Latin America, held in Guadalajara, Mexico, in May 1996.
[10] In which human beings during life are complex composite matter/form or body/soul entities where the soul is immaterial and serves as the principle of substantial unity. As a spiritual entity the soul thus considered is indivisible and not confined to any physical location in the body including the brain.
[11] See my article: “Justice and Freedom for the Human Embryo in light of The Philosophy of the Human Person, the Body/Soul Issue and Ethics”, Social Justice Review, 95: November-December, 2004. See also my essay: “The Moral Status of the Human Embryo ‘Intermediate’ or ‘Special Status’ for the human embryo is invalid” available upon request.
[12] Based as it is on a correct understanding of human anthropology including the substance view of personhood which the Church has taught for centuries based on the Aristotelian/Thomistic synthesis.
[13] Note that Judge Greer was not satisfied with simply removing Terry’s feeding tube. It was necessary that she be starved and dehydrated to death by ordering that no one was allowed to attempt feeding her by mouth. He had police guards stationed about her room to insure that not one drop of water was administered. The autopsy as expected, documented that she was dehydrated to death.
I wrote this piece several years ago and sent a letter to Pope Benedict XVI concerning the role of secular bioethics in furthering the culture of death and the new theory of "acquired personhood" which has made it much easier to take the lives of human beings who have been deemed non-persons. In that letter I described the corrosive effect that the embracing of Darwinian naturalism and the subject/object dualism of Descartes has had on the depersonalizing of the sick, disabled and dying. I received no reply.
Given the current attempt to pass national health insurance in the United States, this piece is provided in order to focus attention on the need to repudiate the ever growing culture of death which has begun to significantly effect medical care and decision making. The perennial philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas as always is best suited for that purpose.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
The Brain is not the Soul:
The Tragic Error of the Terry Schiavo case
John P. Hubert Jr. MD FACS
Biomedical and Health Care Policy Ethicist
As expected, the elite media in the wake of the Terry Schiavo autopsy have suggested that since Terry had “irreversible” brain damage according to the forensic pathologist, it was morally acceptable to kill her.[1] This betrays an alarming misunderstanding of human anthropology which is based in Darwinian naturalism.[2] It also means that the “elites” equate the human brain with the human “mind” and that when the brain is “irreversibly” damaged; the “person” no longer exists since the “mind” no longer functions.[3] This is not a matter of saying that when there is total brain death (total death of the entire brain) the person as an integrated body/soul composite entity has ceased to exist.[4] The assertion being made here is that since Terry Schiavo was judged to be “mindless” due to a profound purportedly irreversible brain injury, she was “non-human.” In other words, she had a “life” (vegetative existence according to culture of death bioethicists) no longer worthy of living.[5] These notions are demonstrably false when subjected to detailed philosophical analysis.[6] In fact, if it were true, it would mean that no one could ever be secure in their status as a human person since at any moment their personhood could be lost. Elite bioethicists or the courts might decide that because of trauma, disease or the effects of aging, a given human being could be subsequently labeled a non-person and thus not deserving of the usual care, compassion and protection of their human rights (the most fundamental of which is the right to existence).[7] Strange as it may seem, this is precisely what is presently transpiring with regard to the prematurely born, the infirm, retarded and other disabled persons in the West, particularly in the Netherlands, Belgium, the U.K. and progressively the United States.
There now exits the widespread assumption that the soul (referred to as “mind” in contemporary parlance an outgrowth of Descartes and Kant) is synonymous with or at least for practical purposes, analogous to the brain. This concept flows from Cartesian false Dualism, the idealism of Emmanuel Kant; (specifically his notion of complete personal autonomy), and radical Darwinism in which it is assumed that reality is completely confined to the material realm that is, there is no immaterial reality.[8] Secular elite bioethicists have utilized these false post-Enlightenment philosophical concepts as a foundation for their bioethic which has now mutated into a "culture of death" characterized by rabid notions of personal autonomy (read unbridled personal selfishness) without regard for and often in direct opposition to the common good. This new ethic is also associated with a virtual complete moral relativism, something Pope Benedict XVI has repeatedly stressed in public commentary.[9] American Catholics continue to be very confused by the constant public promulgation of the "Culture of Death," even by highly visible Catholic politicians and other Catholic public personages particularly in light of the extremely poor level of catechesis which has been ongoing in the West for over 40 years.
These tendencies and developments undergird the secular atheist elite bioethics rubric which has essentially over-taken the dialogue regarding "life issues" particularly in the developed West. It allows the "culture of death" community to discount the lives of all but the most perfect human beings (as secular elite bioethicists define it) among us. This new bioethic embraces the concept of "acquired" personhood in which it is necessary to demonstrate through various abilities and characteristics (most frequently higher cognitive function) that one is not only a human being but a human person as well. It also means that the “elites” artificially separate “human being” from “human personhood” in direct opposition to the substance view of personhood that the Catholic Church has accepted and promulgated through its support of the Aristotelian/Thomistic synthesis.[10] The very notion of acquired personhood is philosophically untenable and is in direct contradiction to Divine Revelation as consistently taught in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition.[11]
It appears that the time has come to approach the great debates in bioethics and the rapidly declining public morality from the perspective of overall worldview analysis in which the diametrically opposite notions of epistemology (theory of truth), metaphysics (theory of reality) and morality (theory of right and wrong) [between the new post-modern atheistic secularism {neo-paganism} The traditional Comprehensive Catholic World View is the only adequate antidote to the increasingly widespread radical secularization which is presently ongoing particularly in the West since it alone possesses the necessary metaphysical resources.
With respect to the growing interest here in Euthanasia and Physician Assisted Suicide (PAS), the author recently participated in the protests against the court ordered death of Terry Schiavo by demonstrating peacefully outside her hospice. This included holding signs, praying, fasting singing hymns and giving several Television interviews in which he attempted to present the Catholic bioethical position against euthanasia to the mass media. None of those interviews made it to air. Any actual explanation of Catholic teaching regarding the prohibition against Euthanasia was simply either marginalized or dismissed as “religious” that is "subjective" and regarded as simply fundamentalist "opinion" (value) rather than philosophically and theologically demonstrable fact.[12]
This “Value/Fact” dichotomy has become a huge problem in the West along with the specious notion of separation of Church and State understood as the disjunction of morality from the civil law, the institutions of government and society at large. Most distressingly, the pro-life demonstrators on behalf of saving Terry had absolutely no help (in our attempt to stop the court ordered killing of Terry Schiavo)[13] from the bishop of St. Petersburg Florida who apparently instructed his priests not to appear at Terry Schiavo's hospice or to speak in public about what was transpiring. Worse yet, in attending mass on several occasions during his stay during Holy Week, not once did the author hear the issue addressed in any homily; something which under the circumstances was obviously missing. This was a disgrace. The protesters were forced to rely on outside help from several Priests (including Fr. Frank Pavone of "Priests for Life") many of whom traveled great distances in order to provide the last rites and the sacrament of Holy Communion to Ms. Schiavo shortly before her death.
It is incumbent upon orthodox Catholics and all people of good will to reject the Cartesian false dualism and metaphysical naturalism of the cultural “elites” including contemporary secular bioethicists in which human personhood is allowed to be “conferred” upon only certain members of the human species by the Gnostics of our time (secular elite bioethicists and the courts). Their empty sophistry must be totally rejected. All human beings are “persons” by definition from the moment of conception until natural death! This must be proclaimed far and wide! It is also something that can be determined by the light of human reason after subjecting the relevant data to meticulous philosophical analysis. It is not necessary to invoke Divine Revelation in the form of Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition or constant Magisterial teaching in order to establish the truth of this proposition, although all “3” are perfectly consistent with that conclusion as derived from the study of the philosophy of the human person and the philosophy of nature absent a-priori commitment to a materialistic (metaphysical naturalism) bias. As thoughtful Catholics, we can make the case either philosophically or theologically with equal effectiveness, a fact which demonstrates the need for an aggressively promulgated Comprehensive Catholic World View. We know that secularists are simply wrong when they allege that those who demonstrated on behalf of Terry Schiavo’s right to life were engaging in fundamentalist “opinions” which cannot be established in fact. Our task is to obtain a hearing for the truth while we oppose the lie.
NOTES:
[1] While her brain was significantly atrophied in a generalized way which is consistent with a profound hypoxic encephalopathic injury (due to prolonged lack of oxygen), it is not the case that she was “brain dead and deserving of burial! Her heart and lungs were adequate to sustain her life indefinitely. In fact had she not been dehydrated to death, they might have served in another context as organs for human transplantation, something which was impossible due to the court ordered desiccation dehydration.
[2] Radical Darwinists assert that reality is completely confined to the material realm, that there is no spiritual (immaterial) realm and that human nature is only apparent, not real, that is, constantly changing or “evolving” only giving the appearance of stable “forms.” This means that there is no God by definition and no stable “human nature” according to radical Darwinists.
[3] Classically, in the philosophical sense, the mind was called “soul” referring to a spiritual or immaterial reality which utilized the brain as an instrument but was not synonymous with it. See: William A. Wallace, The Modeling of Nature: Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Nature in Synthesis. Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1996. Descartes changed everything with his Cogito-ergo-sum (I think therefore I am). He placed thinking before being rather than the classical notion, “being comes before thinking.”
[4] A separate assertion which can be philosophically debated in a separate context. Terry Schiavo did not have “brain death” she had a severe brain injury of uncertain etiology (explanation) a situation which still exists despite the performing of an autopsy. For an interesting discussion regarding the issue of “Brain Death” and its use as a criterion for death of the person see: William E. May, Catholic Bioethics and the Gift of Human Life. Huntington Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., 2000, chapter 8, particularly pp. 291-310.
[5] Judge Greer found on the basis of highly questionable testimony at the trial court level that Terry would not have wanted to remain alive under those circumstances. Thus the entire issue of killing her became a matter of supposedly “honoring her wishes” an example of Kantian autonomy “run amuck” where individual preference or desire is seen as being more important than the “common good.” See Wesley J. Smith. Forced Exit: The Slippery Slope from Assisted Suicide to Legalized Murder. Dallas: Spence Publishing Co. 2003 for a discussion of elite secular Bioethicists’ notion of life unworthy of being lived.
[6] See my article: “Justice and Freedom for the Human Embryo in light of The Philosophy of the Human Person, the Body/Soul Issue and Ethics”, Social Justice Review, 95: November-December, 2004. See also my essay: “The Moral Status of the Human Embryo ‘Intermediate’ or ‘Special Status’ for the human embryo is invalid”, available upon request.
[7] How many “non-person human beings” can conceivably be defined under this rubric is open to serious question and is constantly being re-defined by secular elite “culture of death” bioethicists, the U.S. judiciary and foreign courts.
[8] Understand that what is at stake here is a debate about the very nature of reality.
[9] e.g. his homily at the start of the recent conclave and in a prior speech at the meeting of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with the presidents of the Doctrinal Commissions of the Bishops' Conferences of Latin America, held in Guadalajara, Mexico, in May 1996.
[10] In which human beings during life are complex composite matter/form or body/soul entities where the soul is immaterial and serves as the principle of substantial unity. As a spiritual entity the soul thus considered is indivisible and not confined to any physical location in the body including the brain.
[11] See my article: “Justice and Freedom for the Human Embryo in light of The Philosophy of the Human Person, the Body/Soul Issue and Ethics”, Social Justice Review, 95: November-December, 2004. See also my essay: “The Moral Status of the Human Embryo ‘Intermediate’ or ‘Special Status’ for the human embryo is invalid” available upon request.
[12] Based as it is on a correct understanding of human anthropology including the substance view of personhood which the Church has taught for centuries based on the Aristotelian/Thomistic synthesis.
[13] Note that Judge Greer was not satisfied with simply removing Terry’s feeding tube. It was necessary that she be starved and dehydrated to death by ordering that no one was allowed to attempt feeding her by mouth. He had police guards stationed about her room to insure that not one drop of water was administered. The autopsy as expected, documented that she was dehydrated to death.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
This Depression is just beginning
Skip the Happy Talk
By Mike Whitney
August 03, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- Too bad Pulitzer's aren't handed out for blog-entries. This year's award would go to Zero Hedge for its "The 'Money on the Sidelines' Fallacy" post. This short entry shows why the economy will continue its downward slide and why the US consumer will not get off the mat and resume spending as he has in the past. The fact is the Net Wealth of US Households has "declined from a peak of $22 trillion to just under $12 trillion in early March."
Ouch!
The problem is compounded by the fact that Total US Household debt, as of first quarter 2009, amounts to roughly $13 trillion, and has stayed within that range for the last 3 and a half years.
Zero Hedge:
"From the end of 2007 through Q1 of 2009, household equity has declined by 94%. Is it surprising that today's GDP number would have been a complete debacle if the consumer had been left alone to prop the U.S. economy, on whom 70% of the economy is reliant? Obama pulled a Hail Mary with the stimulus: without it there would be no debate America is in a depression right now." MORE...
What does all this mean?
It means the consumer is down-for-the-count. His credit lines have been cut, his home equity eviscerated, and his checking account swimming in red ink. That spells trouble for an economy that's 70% dependent on consumer spending for growth....which brings us to another interesting point. The uptick in GDP last quarter was almost entirely the result of the surge in government spending; ie "fiscal and monetary stimulus". How long can that go on? How long will China keep slurping up US Treasuries rather than let their currency rise? Here's a clip from the Wall Street Journal on Friday:
"Shaky auctions of Treasury notes this week reignited concerns about whether the government can attract buyers from China and elsewhere to soak up trillions in new debt.
A fuse was lit this week when traders noted China's apparent absence from direct participation in two Treasury bond auctions. While China may have bought Treasury's just before the auctions, market participants read the country's actions as a worrying sign that China and other foreign investors may be ratcheting back purchases at a time when the U.S. is seeking to fund a $1.8 trillion budget deficit.
This week alone, the U.S. deluged the bond market with more than $200 billion in record-size sales. The U.S. has had little trouble finding buyers in recent months. But that demand is fading, and the Treasury market has become volatile."
Uncle Sam is goosing the bond market just like he is the stock market. (more on that later) Take a look at Treasury's latest bit of chicanery which appeared in the back pages of the Wall Street Journal in June:
"The sudden increase in demand by foreign buyers for Treasury's, hailed as proof that the world's central banks are still willing to help absorb the avalanche of supply, mightn't be all that it seems.
When the government sells bonds, traders typically look at a group of buyers called indirect bidders, which includes foreign central banks, to divine overseas demand for U.S. debt. That demand has been rising recently, giving comfort to investors that foreign buyers will continue to finance the U.S.'s budget deficit.
But in a little-noticed switch on June 1, the Treasury changed the way it accounts for indirect bids, putting more buyers under that umbrella and boosting the portion of recent Treasury sales that the market perceived were being bought by foreigners." ("Is foreign Demand as solid as it looks, Min zeng)
Hmmmm.
So, someone doesn't want you and me to know that foreign demand has gone to the dogs. That's not encouraging. So, they move the shells around the table and "Presto"---central banks and foreign investors can't get enough of those fetid T-Bills. What a racket.
This is what happens when monetary policy is handed over to bank-vermin and Ponzi-scam artists. Anything goes!
The Zero Hedge article shows that homeowners used the equity in their homes to fuel the soaring stock market.
Zero Hedge: "Most interesting is the correlation between Money Market totals and the listed stock value since the March lows: a $2.7 trillion move in equities was accompanied by a less than $400 billion reduction in Money Market accounts!
Where, may we ask, did the balance of $2.3 trillion in purchasing power come from? Why the Federal Reserve of course, which directly and indirectly subsidized U.S. banks (and foreign ones through liquidity swaps) for roughly that amount. Apparently these banks promptly went on a buying spree to raise the all important equity market, so that the U.S. consumer who net equity was almost negative on March 31, could have some semblance of confidence back and would go ahead and max out his credit card. Alas, as one can see in the money multiplier and velocity of money metrics, U.S. consumers couldn't care less about leveraging themselves any more."
You read that right! Only $400 billion of that fantastic 6 month "green shoots" stock market rally came from money market accounts. The rest ($2.3 trillion) was laundered through the banks and other financial institutions to create the appearance of recovery and to raise equity for underwater banks rather than forcing them into receivership (which is where they belong) Bernanke probably knew that congress wouldn't approve another TARP-type bailout for dodgy mortgage-backed assets, so he settled on this shifty plan instead. The only problem is, the banks are still broke, business investment is at historic lows, consumers are on the ropes, the unemployment lines are swelling, the homeless shelters are bulging, the pawn shops are bustling, tent cities are sprouting up everywhere, and according to MarketWatch, Corporate insiders have recently been selling their companies' shares at a greater pace than at any time since the top of the bull market in the fall of 2007."
Face it; the economy is in the crapper and Bernanke's trickery hasn't done a lick of good.
It's been two years since the crisis began and nothing... NOTHING has been done to fix the banking system or force the banks to write-down their shi**y assets to market. But the losses are real and no amount of Congressionally approved accounting hanky-panky (like suspending mark-to-market) will change a bloody thing.
So, how bad will it get?
Well, it depends on whether the FDIC decides to continue to allow financial institutions like Corus and Guaranty Banks to operate with "negative Tier 1 ratio" hoping that all the green shoots happy talk can turn insolvent institutions into thriving mega-banks. "Abrakadabra".
Karl Denninger explains this latest hoax in a recent entry on his site Market Ticker:
"So what's going on here?
Simple: An enormous number of banks are holding loans at or close to "par" that really aren't. They're holding mortgages at massively-inflated values, even on defaulted properties, and this is why you are not seeing more foreclosure sales - that is, why inventory is being held back. If they sell it the accountants will force recognition of the loss, which will render them instantly insolvent, but so long as they "extend and pretend" they are marking these loans way, way above recovery value. The upshot of this is that these firms' balance sheet claims on asset values are massively inflated, regulators know it, and they're intentionally ignoring it."
Bingo! It's all 100% fakery conducted right under the nose of the Fed, the Treasury and the FDIC.
How many hundreds of banks are being kept on life-support because the FDIC is down to its last few farthings and doesn't want to ignite a panic?
Stay tuned.
The banking system is insolvent and the fact that the politically-connected big banks talked their their friends at the Fed into pumping liquidity into equities so they could access the capital markets, doesn't change matters for the hundreds of local and regional banks that will be caught in next year's downdraft. Prepare for massive consolidation with G-Sax and JPM left to pick up former competitors for pennies on the dollar.
FIRING UP THE PRINTING PRESS
Keep in mind that Wall Street veterans knew from the very beginning that Bernanke's quantitative easing (QE) was a load of malarkey intended to justify keeping toxic asset prices artificially high while pumping trillions into the stock market. Here's former hedge fund manager Andy Kessler's analysis way back in May:
"On March 18, the Federal Reserve announced it would purchase up to $300 billion of long-term bonds as well as $750 billion of mortgage-backed securities. Of all the Fed's moves, this "quantitative easing" gets money into the economy the fastest -- basically by cranking the handle of the printing press and flooding the market with dollars (in reality, with additional bank credit). Since these dollars are not going into home building, coal-fired electric plants or auto factories, they end up in the stock market.
A rising market means that banks are able to raise much-needed equity from private money funds instead of from the feds. .....It's almost as if someone engineered a stock-market rally to entice private investors to fund the banks rather than taxpayers." (Andy Kessler "Was it a Sucker's Rally" Wall Street Journal)
What a swindle.
Bernanke's had a good go-of-it, juicing the market through the backdoor and concealing--as much as possible--who is still buying US Treasuries. (who knows; maybe it's the Fed buying its own paper offshore?!?) But what good will it do? The US consumer is broke; the tank is on empty. Household equity has declined by 94%, jobs are scarce, personal savings are rising, and families are cutting back and hunkering down. It will take a decade or more before household debt is whittled-away to a point where people can consume at pre-crisis levels. Another stock market bubble won't change a damn thing. This Depression is just beginning.
By Mike Whitney
August 03, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- Too bad Pulitzer's aren't handed out for blog-entries. This year's award would go to Zero Hedge for its "The 'Money on the Sidelines' Fallacy" post. This short entry shows why the economy will continue its downward slide and why the US consumer will not get off the mat and resume spending as he has in the past. The fact is the Net Wealth of US Households has "declined from a peak of $22 trillion to just under $12 trillion in early March."
Ouch!
The problem is compounded by the fact that Total US Household debt, as of first quarter 2009, amounts to roughly $13 trillion, and has stayed within that range for the last 3 and a half years.
Zero Hedge:
"From the end of 2007 through Q1 of 2009, household equity has declined by 94%. Is it surprising that today's GDP number would have been a complete debacle if the consumer had been left alone to prop the U.S. economy, on whom 70% of the economy is reliant? Obama pulled a Hail Mary with the stimulus: without it there would be no debate America is in a depression right now." MORE...
What does all this mean?
It means the consumer is down-for-the-count. His credit lines have been cut, his home equity eviscerated, and his checking account swimming in red ink. That spells trouble for an economy that's 70% dependent on consumer spending for growth....which brings us to another interesting point. The uptick in GDP last quarter was almost entirely the result of the surge in government spending; ie "fiscal and monetary stimulus". How long can that go on? How long will China keep slurping up US Treasuries rather than let their currency rise? Here's a clip from the Wall Street Journal on Friday:
"Shaky auctions of Treasury notes this week reignited concerns about whether the government can attract buyers from China and elsewhere to soak up trillions in new debt.
A fuse was lit this week when traders noted China's apparent absence from direct participation in two Treasury bond auctions. While China may have bought Treasury's just before the auctions, market participants read the country's actions as a worrying sign that China and other foreign investors may be ratcheting back purchases at a time when the U.S. is seeking to fund a $1.8 trillion budget deficit.
This week alone, the U.S. deluged the bond market with more than $200 billion in record-size sales. The U.S. has had little trouble finding buyers in recent months. But that demand is fading, and the Treasury market has become volatile."
Uncle Sam is goosing the bond market just like he is the stock market. (more on that later) Take a look at Treasury's latest bit of chicanery which appeared in the back pages of the Wall Street Journal in June:
"The sudden increase in demand by foreign buyers for Treasury's, hailed as proof that the world's central banks are still willing to help absorb the avalanche of supply, mightn't be all that it seems.
When the government sells bonds, traders typically look at a group of buyers called indirect bidders, which includes foreign central banks, to divine overseas demand for U.S. debt. That demand has been rising recently, giving comfort to investors that foreign buyers will continue to finance the U.S.'s budget deficit.
But in a little-noticed switch on June 1, the Treasury changed the way it accounts for indirect bids, putting more buyers under that umbrella and boosting the portion of recent Treasury sales that the market perceived were being bought by foreigners." ("Is foreign Demand as solid as it looks, Min zeng)
Hmmmm.
So, someone doesn't want you and me to know that foreign demand has gone to the dogs. That's not encouraging. So, they move the shells around the table and "Presto"---central banks and foreign investors can't get enough of those fetid T-Bills. What a racket.
This is what happens when monetary policy is handed over to bank-vermin and Ponzi-scam artists. Anything goes!
The Zero Hedge article shows that homeowners used the equity in their homes to fuel the soaring stock market.
Zero Hedge: "Most interesting is the correlation between Money Market totals and the listed stock value since the March lows: a $2.7 trillion move in equities was accompanied by a less than $400 billion reduction in Money Market accounts!
Where, may we ask, did the balance of $2.3 trillion in purchasing power come from? Why the Federal Reserve of course, which directly and indirectly subsidized U.S. banks (and foreign ones through liquidity swaps) for roughly that amount. Apparently these banks promptly went on a buying spree to raise the all important equity market, so that the U.S. consumer who net equity was almost negative on March 31, could have some semblance of confidence back and would go ahead and max out his credit card. Alas, as one can see in the money multiplier and velocity of money metrics, U.S. consumers couldn't care less about leveraging themselves any more."
You read that right! Only $400 billion of that fantastic 6 month "green shoots" stock market rally came from money market accounts. The rest ($2.3 trillion) was laundered through the banks and other financial institutions to create the appearance of recovery and to raise equity for underwater banks rather than forcing them into receivership (which is where they belong) Bernanke probably knew that congress wouldn't approve another TARP-type bailout for dodgy mortgage-backed assets, so he settled on this shifty plan instead. The only problem is, the banks are still broke, business investment is at historic lows, consumers are on the ropes, the unemployment lines are swelling, the homeless shelters are bulging, the pawn shops are bustling, tent cities are sprouting up everywhere, and according to MarketWatch, Corporate insiders have recently been selling their companies' shares at a greater pace than at any time since the top of the bull market in the fall of 2007."
Face it; the economy is in the crapper and Bernanke's trickery hasn't done a lick of good.
It's been two years since the crisis began and nothing... NOTHING has been done to fix the banking system or force the banks to write-down their shi**y assets to market. But the losses are real and no amount of Congressionally approved accounting hanky-panky (like suspending mark-to-market) will change a bloody thing.
So, how bad will it get?
Well, it depends on whether the FDIC decides to continue to allow financial institutions like Corus and Guaranty Banks to operate with "negative Tier 1 ratio" hoping that all the green shoots happy talk can turn insolvent institutions into thriving mega-banks. "Abrakadabra".
Karl Denninger explains this latest hoax in a recent entry on his site Market Ticker:
"So what's going on here?
Simple: An enormous number of banks are holding loans at or close to "par" that really aren't. They're holding mortgages at massively-inflated values, even on defaulted properties, and this is why you are not seeing more foreclosure sales - that is, why inventory is being held back. If they sell it the accountants will force recognition of the loss, which will render them instantly insolvent, but so long as they "extend and pretend" they are marking these loans way, way above recovery value. The upshot of this is that these firms' balance sheet claims on asset values are massively inflated, regulators know it, and they're intentionally ignoring it."
Bingo! It's all 100% fakery conducted right under the nose of the Fed, the Treasury and the FDIC.
How many hundreds of banks are being kept on life-support because the FDIC is down to its last few farthings and doesn't want to ignite a panic?
Stay tuned.
The banking system is insolvent and the fact that the politically-connected big banks talked their their friends at the Fed into pumping liquidity into equities so they could access the capital markets, doesn't change matters for the hundreds of local and regional banks that will be caught in next year's downdraft. Prepare for massive consolidation with G-Sax and JPM left to pick up former competitors for pennies on the dollar.
FIRING UP THE PRINTING PRESS
Keep in mind that Wall Street veterans knew from the very beginning that Bernanke's quantitative easing (QE) was a load of malarkey intended to justify keeping toxic asset prices artificially high while pumping trillions into the stock market. Here's former hedge fund manager Andy Kessler's analysis way back in May:
"On March 18, the Federal Reserve announced it would purchase up to $300 billion of long-term bonds as well as $750 billion of mortgage-backed securities. Of all the Fed's moves, this "quantitative easing" gets money into the economy the fastest -- basically by cranking the handle of the printing press and flooding the market with dollars (in reality, with additional bank credit). Since these dollars are not going into home building, coal-fired electric plants or auto factories, they end up in the stock market.
A rising market means that banks are able to raise much-needed equity from private money funds instead of from the feds. .....It's almost as if someone engineered a stock-market rally to entice private investors to fund the banks rather than taxpayers." (Andy Kessler "Was it a Sucker's Rally" Wall Street Journal)
What a swindle.
Bernanke's had a good go-of-it, juicing the market through the backdoor and concealing--as much as possible--who is still buying US Treasuries. (who knows; maybe it's the Fed buying its own paper offshore?!?) But what good will it do? The US consumer is broke; the tank is on empty. Household equity has declined by 94%, jobs are scarce, personal savings are rising, and families are cutting back and hunkering down. It will take a decade or more before household debt is whittled-away to a point where people can consume at pre-crisis levels. Another stock market bubble won't change a damn thing. This Depression is just beginning.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Tell Israel: Cool the Jets!
By Pat Buchanan
July 31, 2009 "Creators Syndicate" - – Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, who is wired into the cabinet of "Bibi" Netanyahu, warns that if Iran's nuclear program is not aborted by December, Israel will strike to obliterate it.
Defense Secretary Gates' mission to Israel this week, says Bolton, to relay Obama's red light, was listened to attentively, but will not be decisive.
Israel will decide.
One trusts Gates got into the face of Defense Minister Ehud Barak. For an Israeli strike on Iran, which Joe Biden foolishly said was Israel's call, would drag this country into a third war in the Middle East and destroy a policy that is visibly succeeding.
The Iranian regime is still reeling from the June 12 election, widely perceived in Iran and worldwide as stolen, and its tumultuous aftermath. Hundreds of thousands poured into the streets to protest the election, and then attack the legitimacy itself of the Islamic regime.
The government is gripped by its worst crisis since the revolution of 1979. Members of Iran's establishment with unimpeachable revolutionary credentials have declared the election a fraud.
Ahmadinejad's selection as first vice president of Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie, whose son is married to his daughter, and who has said some kind words about Israel, outraged conservatives.
Ahmadinejad was ordered by Ayatollah Khamenei to rescind the Mashaie appointment. For days he balked, then sent a curt note saying he would comply. Ahmadinejad further affronted the ayatollah by naming Mashaie his chief of staff.
Teheran is now ablaze over reports that scores of street protesters arrested in June may have been beaten to death in prison.
There is talk in Teheran, even before he has been sworn in for a second term, that Ahmadinejad may be impeached or ousted long before he can complete it.
America's policy of patience is working.
And as Ahmadinejad is Israel's bete noire, who Netanyahu cites as the religious fanatic who wants to "wipe Israel off the map" and will launch a nuclear weapon on Tel Aviv as soon as he gets it, why would Israel strike now, and reunite Iranians behind this regime?
Why does Israel insist that America has only five months to halt Iran's nuclear program, or Israel must attack?
Says Bolton: "(W)ith each passing day, Iran's nuclear and ballistic laboratories, production facilities, and military bases are all churning. Israel is focused on these facts, not the illusion of 'tough' diplomacy."
Now, Iran's nuclear "production facilities" may be "churning" out the low-enriched uranium of which it has produced enough for one test bomb. But IAEA inspectors still have their eyes on this pile. None of the LEU has been diverted anywhere.
There is no evidence Iran has built the cascade to raise LEU to highly enriched weapons-grade uranium, or that the facilities even exist to do this. The Iranian regime has declared it has no intention of building nuclear weapons, indeed, that their possession would be a violation of Koranic law.
And the United States has not rescinded its own National Intelligence Estimate of 2007 that Iran, in 2003, abandoned its weapons program.
Israel has been saying for years an Iranian bomb is months away.
Where is the proof? Where is the evidence to justify a new U.S. war in the Middle East to destroy weapons of mass destruction that may not exist in Iran, as they did not exist in Iraq?
Iran may wish to have a nuclear deterrent, considering what happened to neighbor Iraq, which did not. But the idea that the regime, having built a nuclear weapon, would launch it on Tel Aviv and bring massive retaliation by scores of Israeli nukes on Teheran and other cities, killing millions of Iranians and all the leaders and their families of all factions of this disputatious people, seems like total madness.
For Israel to launch a war on such reasoning would seem to meet Bismarck's definition of preemptive war as "committing suicide out of fear of death."
America lived for decades under a threat of nuclear annihilation. We relied on a policy of containment and deterrence, outlasted the Soviet regime in a 40-year Cold War, and are now at peace with Russia.
Ahmadinejad is not so tough a customer as Stalin, Khrushchev or Mao, who talked of accepting 300 million dead in a nuclear exchange. Moreover, Ahmadinejad has no nukes, no authority to take Iran to war, and is looking like a very lame duck before his second term has begun.
And when one looks to U.S. and Iranian interests, they coincide as much as they conflict. Iran detested the Taliban before we took them down, and no more wants them back than do we. Iran is even more pleased with the Shia regime we brought to power in Baghdad than we are.
Iran needs technology to restore its depleted oil and gas fields, and an end to sanctions to restore an economy whose disintegration helped put the regime in crisis and lose it the support of its young.
Obama should tell the Israelis, "Cool the jets!" literally.
NOTE:
Patrick Buchanan has made some excellent practical arguments for why it would be foolish for either Israel and or the United States to attack Iran. These are all without doubt noteworthy. However, the utilitarian case albeit persuasive is of far less significance than the moral one.
As frequent readers of this blog are well-aware, I have written extensively about the absolute moral illicitness of the concept of preventive war (mistakenly termed pre-emptive war by the Neo-Con's and their sympathizer's). Preventive War is totally incompatible with the Just War Doctrinal Corpus as well as being illegal under international and US law.
The radical Zionists of the Israeli right-wing including the Zionist Lobby in America continue to agitate for an aggressive (offensive) war against Iran even though Iran has attacked no one. Ironically it is the Israeli government which should be reigned in--Israel is known to have in excess of 200 nuclear weapons and has demonstrated on more than one occassion that she will resort to offensive war, a war crime under international and humanitarian law as well.
It is immoral to provide billions of dollars of yearly assistance to Israel knowing that it will be routinely used to commit immoral and illegal acts which without our support would be impossible. As American citizens, we are all culpable in the death and destruction that Israel brings to its neighbors.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
July 31, 2009 "Creators Syndicate" - – Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, who is wired into the cabinet of "Bibi" Netanyahu, warns that if Iran's nuclear program is not aborted by December, Israel will strike to obliterate it.
Defense Secretary Gates' mission to Israel this week, says Bolton, to relay Obama's red light, was listened to attentively, but will not be decisive.
Israel will decide.
One trusts Gates got into the face of Defense Minister Ehud Barak. For an Israeli strike on Iran, which Joe Biden foolishly said was Israel's call, would drag this country into a third war in the Middle East and destroy a policy that is visibly succeeding.
The Iranian regime is still reeling from the June 12 election, widely perceived in Iran and worldwide as stolen, and its tumultuous aftermath. Hundreds of thousands poured into the streets to protest the election, and then attack the legitimacy itself of the Islamic regime.
The government is gripped by its worst crisis since the revolution of 1979. Members of Iran's establishment with unimpeachable revolutionary credentials have declared the election a fraud.
Ahmadinejad's selection as first vice president of Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie, whose son is married to his daughter, and who has said some kind words about Israel, outraged conservatives.
Ahmadinejad was ordered by Ayatollah Khamenei to rescind the Mashaie appointment. For days he balked, then sent a curt note saying he would comply. Ahmadinejad further affronted the ayatollah by naming Mashaie his chief of staff.
Teheran is now ablaze over reports that scores of street protesters arrested in June may have been beaten to death in prison.
There is talk in Teheran, even before he has been sworn in for a second term, that Ahmadinejad may be impeached or ousted long before he can complete it.
America's policy of patience is working.
And as Ahmadinejad is Israel's bete noire, who Netanyahu cites as the religious fanatic who wants to "wipe Israel off the map" and will launch a nuclear weapon on Tel Aviv as soon as he gets it, why would Israel strike now, and reunite Iranians behind this regime?
Why does Israel insist that America has only five months to halt Iran's nuclear program, or Israel must attack?
Says Bolton: "(W)ith each passing day, Iran's nuclear and ballistic laboratories, production facilities, and military bases are all churning. Israel is focused on these facts, not the illusion of 'tough' diplomacy."
Now, Iran's nuclear "production facilities" may be "churning" out the low-enriched uranium of which it has produced enough for one test bomb. But IAEA inspectors still have their eyes on this pile. None of the LEU has been diverted anywhere.
There is no evidence Iran has built the cascade to raise LEU to highly enriched weapons-grade uranium, or that the facilities even exist to do this. The Iranian regime has declared it has no intention of building nuclear weapons, indeed, that their possession would be a violation of Koranic law.
And the United States has not rescinded its own National Intelligence Estimate of 2007 that Iran, in 2003, abandoned its weapons program.
Israel has been saying for years an Iranian bomb is months away.
Where is the proof? Where is the evidence to justify a new U.S. war in the Middle East to destroy weapons of mass destruction that may not exist in Iran, as they did not exist in Iraq?
Iran may wish to have a nuclear deterrent, considering what happened to neighbor Iraq, which did not. But the idea that the regime, having built a nuclear weapon, would launch it on Tel Aviv and bring massive retaliation by scores of Israeli nukes on Teheran and other cities, killing millions of Iranians and all the leaders and their families of all factions of this disputatious people, seems like total madness.
For Israel to launch a war on such reasoning would seem to meet Bismarck's definition of preemptive war as "committing suicide out of fear of death."
America lived for decades under a threat of nuclear annihilation. We relied on a policy of containment and deterrence, outlasted the Soviet regime in a 40-year Cold War, and are now at peace with Russia.
Ahmadinejad is not so tough a customer as Stalin, Khrushchev or Mao, who talked of accepting 300 million dead in a nuclear exchange. Moreover, Ahmadinejad has no nukes, no authority to take Iran to war, and is looking like a very lame duck before his second term has begun.
And when one looks to U.S. and Iranian interests, they coincide as much as they conflict. Iran detested the Taliban before we took them down, and no more wants them back than do we. Iran is even more pleased with the Shia regime we brought to power in Baghdad than we are.
Iran needs technology to restore its depleted oil and gas fields, and an end to sanctions to restore an economy whose disintegration helped put the regime in crisis and lose it the support of its young.
Obama should tell the Israelis, "Cool the jets!" literally.
NOTE:
Patrick Buchanan has made some excellent practical arguments for why it would be foolish for either Israel and or the United States to attack Iran. These are all without doubt noteworthy. However, the utilitarian case albeit persuasive is of far less significance than the moral one.
As frequent readers of this blog are well-aware, I have written extensively about the absolute moral illicitness of the concept of preventive war (mistakenly termed pre-emptive war by the Neo-Con's and their sympathizer's). Preventive War is totally incompatible with the Just War Doctrinal Corpus as well as being illegal under international and US law.
The radical Zionists of the Israeli right-wing including the Zionist Lobby in America continue to agitate for an aggressive (offensive) war against Iran even though Iran has attacked no one. Ironically it is the Israeli government which should be reigned in--Israel is known to have in excess of 200 nuclear weapons and has demonstrated on more than one occassion that she will resort to offensive war, a war crime under international and humanitarian law as well.
It is immoral to provide billions of dollars of yearly assistance to Israel knowing that it will be routinely used to commit immoral and illegal acts which without our support would be impossible. As American citizens, we are all culpable in the death and destruction that Israel brings to its neighbors.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
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