DOCTOR BLACK STRIKES BACK: One of my favorite professors at LBJ, Bill Black, has surfaced in the Letters sections of various Middle Eastern newspapers with some strong words for anti-American and anti-Semitic journalists. I particularly like this part of his letter to The Middle Eastern Times:
PROUD TO BE HATED BY THOSE WHO HATE AMERICA
I noted that Khan erred in believing that Americans could not understand why we were hated by so many in the Middle East. We know full well that we are hated, but we think Khan is wrong as to why we are hated. We believe that the reasons we are hated reflect well on our society and nation. We have a saying that a man's character can be judged not simply by his friends, but by his enemies. The British hated my Irish ancestors: that reflected badly on the Brits, and well on the Irish. Who hates America with the greatest passion? Saddam Hussein, Bin Laden, the most anti-democratic and bigoted Iranian leaders, and people who rejoice at the mass murder of innocent women and children.(Via Bjorn Staerk)
Read the whole thing; it's all good stuff. Bill is a genuine American hero for his valiant investigation of the S&L Debacle. As Charles Keating found and any of his past PFM/PAM students can attest, he can also be a terrifying adversary.
NO MORE YELLOW TURBANS FOR AFGHAN HINDUS reports The Times of India. Under the Taliban, Hindus and Sikhs were forced to single themselves out by their headgear "for their own protection." The Northern Alliance has put a stop to this and now Hindu women are allowed to wear brightly-colored saris outside again.
CLONING: I'm glad to see Glenn Reynolds has offered a better explanation of why he opposes those who are against cloning than that they are "stupid" and "pro-death." I'm still not entirely convinced that therapeutic cloning does not involve the instrumental use of human life, though. Professor Reynolds says that no one has offered him a reason why these early embryos are human beings, only feelings that they are. But, he also doesn't offer us a reason why they are not human beings, only a feeling that they aren't. The main reason I think they may be human beings is that I am a human being and I began as an early embryo. In contrast, I was not once a skin cell. If these embryos are not human beings, what exactly are they? Because of their DNA, they must be classified as human. Because of their great potential to become people like you or me, I have severe moral reservations about destroying them to potentially save someone else's life at some time in the future. Especially since using ones own stem cells, of which scientists have recently been able to isolate millions from our most plentiful national resource-- the fat on our toushies, obviates this need to clone oneself to get stem cells.
Professor Reynolds also argues that if destroying these embryos is the same as abortion, then God must be the greatest abortionist, since so many of these die before reaching full term. I'm not really sure how destroying an embryo in a petri-dish is any different than destroying it in utero. Again, he doesn't explain the difference, but just offers a familiar argument for the morality of abortion. We've all heard it before, but the judgment of God on most embryos justifies neither abortion nor stem cell harvesting. God is also the greatest murderer of nonagenarians, but that doesn't make it moral to kill them for their parts.
I say all this as someone who believes, as Clinton claimed to once, that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. I worry that taking this road offered by therapeutic cloning advocates (TCAs) will make what is, in essence, abortion, tremendously common. In fact, in the Reason article Professor Reynolds points us to, Dr. Bailey says that he hopes one day everyone has a cloned embryo of himself waiting in the wings should one take ill.
And what is being suggested right now are the worst sorts of abortions, in my view, those of pure convenience. For there is currently only the potential to save lives, which surely is different than actually saving a life. I feel the same sort of discomfort with the intentional creation and then destruction of these embryos as I did in another situation. An acquaintance of mine announced to everyone that she and her husband had successfully conceived a child and we were all very happy for them. Then a couple of months later, she decided that this was a bad time in her social work career to have a child and announced in her second trimester that she was having a D&C. Frankly, the fact that the terminated pregnancy had been planned made me very sad and queasy. I can only imagine what her in-laws must have felt, if they were even told the truth about it. Yes, these are "only" feelings, but aren't our feelings the very basis of our moral sense of things? Don't we simply "feel" things are right or wrong in our gut or our hearts more often than we construct complicated ethical arguments for and against?
I realize that TCAs "feel" that a human life is not being taken when a 100-cell blastocyst is destroyed, but I worry that it will not stop there. What is the difference between an early embryo and a later one? At what point do you say this one is too advanced to be destroyed for its cells or proto-organs, but this one can go? Scientists have been working on alternatives to uterine development for some time now, and I think TCAs dismiss the fears of so-called "fetal-farms" all too quickly. It is reassuring that they believe that the idea is too horrible to be a valid possibility. But what is to stop this kind of mad science? I don't think any of the arguments for using 100-cell embryos preclude the use of more developed fetuses. And unfortunately many of the conditions for personhood, such as self-awareness and advanced cognition, which are used as examples of why an embryo is not a human being would also not apply to one-day-old humans. Anyone who's ever spent time with a newborn knows that, while they are adorable to us, probably because we are hard-wired to think them so, they honestly haven't the ability to love or reason as well as a three-year-old dog.
TCAs scoff at these fears of a slippery slope towards mass abuse of clones, but haven't we already seen a slippery slope toward embryonic experimentation? The creation of human embryos for scientific experimentation was once morally unthinkable to many people, and for this reason, it was banned in federally-funded research by President Clinton. Now, some people have been convinced there is no moral problem with it-- or more troubling, have been convinced that whatever slight moral concerns one might have are more than outweighed by the tremendous good that could be done with embryonic stem cells. It is this calculus that I find the most frightening. The act of deciding that this life is more valuable than that other is the act of devaluing human life.
I do not consider myself anti-science or against modernity, in any respect. Unlike Dr. Kass, I have no problems with cadaver dissection or consensual transplanting. I am quite supportive of adult stem cell technology, which is much further along than embryonic stem cell research. I want people to live as long as possible. But I don't think that anything done in the name of science or prolonging human life must be moral. I think, for example, that the Chinese use of prisoners for organ transplants is wrong, even if it saves lives. It should not just be up to scientists to decide these things, for they have a vested interest in pushing science to its limits. We should decide these matters together as a society. To do that we need more debate and discussion about what is really at stake here. It would be nice if this could happen without further name-calling.
More on Ron Bailey's Reason piece later.
CHARMING STORY in the UK Times about the Afghan woman who George Bush sees fairly often-- his hairdresser. Since the war began she has lost two dozen clients because of her nationality, but the Bushies are known for their loyalty. The President has kept her on and even seeks her opinion on plans for her native country. She says she wants ³the world to know this President isn¹t fighting a war against the Afghan people because otherwise I would be the first one to be fired².
BIZARRE GOOGLE SEARCHES: Here are some of the search strings that led people to dropscan or the photo site:
- "texan, patriotic, christmas" (You got me.)
- "lipstick index" (Look below.)
- "ceramic court flag penis" (Yeah, read on.)
- "photos of dead children" (No, you sick fuck.)
- "men who do things for themselves, clean, vacuum" (Have so far not felt the need to comment on such clever men, though I am blessed to be married to one.)
- "burka free photos" (La spécialité de la maison.)
- "urban legend" (See the links.)
- "Shiloh Bucher" (I got a little paranoid, but it turned out to just be someone looking for my email.)
- "hot photos of Sophia Loren" (Sorry, wrong site, Grandpa. My favorite search so far.)
FLIGHT 93 HEROS: Just got around to reading the incredible Newsweek account of Flight 93. It is an extraordinary story of the bravery of ordinary Americans, that had me shedding my first 9/11 tears in weeks. Here's an account of what the hijackers were up against:
If the hijackers had hoped for a timorous and infirm group of passengers, they picked the wrong plane. In addition to judo expert Glick and Tom Burnett, a take-charge type who had been a quarterback in college, there was Todd Beamer, who had never been the biggest or fastest guy on the court as a college point guard but who was known as a ³gamer,² the team member who makes the winning play. Mark Bingham, 6 feet 5, had played rugby at Cal on a national-championship team. A risk taker, he had once been arrested for tackling the Stanford mascot at a football game. Lou Nacke, at 5 feet 3 and 200 pounds, was a weight lifter with a Superman tattoo on his shoulder. Rich Guadagno, an enforcement officer with California Fish and Wildlife, had been trained in hand-to-hand combat. Flight attendant CeeCee Lyles had been a detective on the Ft. Pierce, Fla., police force. William Cashman was a former paratrooper with the 101st Airborne; at 60, the ex-ironworker was still fit. Linda Gronlund, a lawyer, had a brown belt in karate. Lauren Grandcolas had organized a sky-diving expedition; on her fridge was a note, get busy living or get busy dying. Alan Beaven, 6 feet 3, was a rock climber and former Scotland Yard prosecutor. The hijackers had been training for two years; the passengers came together in a few minutes.
THE PHOTOS: I've gotten a huge response to the photo site. Thanks to everyone who's linked to it or shown it to someone. There have been a few people who have dismissed the pictures as propaganda or had issues with my choice of captions. Some definitions of propaganda clearly fit, namely if by propaganda you mean anything that advances an argument or point of view in support of a policy. By this definition, many major newspapers put forth nothing but propaganda.
I found most of the photos on the wires; some came from other news outlets. Together, they make up a photo essay of sorts, one that seems to deal more completely with all of the new-found freedoms of the Afghans than has been seen elsewhere (let me know if there are others). This is one of the beauties of the internet-- that I can play "photo editor" with my picks of AP and Reuters (at least until I get shut down, which I'm a little surprised hasn't happened yet, except for one photo).
The goal of the photo collection is to show that the US bombing of the Taliban has resulted in the liberation of thousands of people. But the fact that I have that goal in showing the pictures should not take anything away from the credibility of the photos themselves. They are mostly pictures taken by AP and Reuters photographers, who are famous for their independence from the US government. They are also highly respectable professionals who can be counted on not to have doctored any of the images. I can assure you I did not skip over any pictures of the Northern Alliance bullying their new charges. It really is true that Afghans can now enjoy simple liberties that we take for granted, like shaving and going to the movies. Considering that they were also poor and starving under the Taliban, I believe there has been a net gain to the Afghan people from the bombing of the Taliban, even taking into account the civilian casualties.
I say that only by putting myself in their situation. If some theocrats took over Texas and tried to keep us from drinking or dancing or shopping on Sunday-- what am I saying- we have the Baptists! But if they also made women stay in their homes with the windows painted over, if they forbade them from going to the doctor and kept little girls out of school, or beat people for laughing in public, they would have to be stopped. If stopping them meant accidentally killing some innocent people, that would surely be a tragedy, yet a necessary one. I don't think, as some skeptics of the war seem to, that we cannot possibly understand how the Afghans feel about what has recently happened in their country. I think that's an extremely racist point of view, actually, to think that "those people" are in any way fundamentally different from us. They are human beings and they want to enjoy themselves, to laugh, to educate their children, to live free from fear. Nothing about that is so difficult to understand, and I think the pictures show it very well.
BEEN FEELING A LITTLE UNDER THE WEATHER. Real weather, actually, we may even get a little snow on the ground tonight in Central Texas, of all places. Have consumed massive quantities of hot soup, ibuprofin, and cardamom tea and am able to blog a little, I think.
THE GREATEST LOVE ALSO THE MOST DANGEROUS? That's what a recent British study suggests. Turns out that some commonly-held beliefs about self-esteem are myths. Low-self esteem is not a risk factor for violent crime, racism, drug use, or dropping out of school. On the other hand, young people with high self-esteem are more likely to engage in risky activities, such as drunken-driving, which endanger themselves and others. So all the energy that has been spent trying to raise the self-esteem of our youth may have been tremendously misspent.
BAD NEWS FOR THE ECONOMY: Lipstick sales are up since Sept. 11th, according to Estee Lauder. Women tend to buy a new lipstick when they can't afford a new outfit. The Lauder Lipstick Index has gone up in past recessions, as women treat themselves with what they view as an affordable luxury. Cosmetic sales are up in Kabul as well, I hear, but with the exception of black turbans, everything is moving off the shelves pretty quickly there.
GWICH'IN HYPOCRACY: Anybody who's following the ANWR debate closely should be interested in the news that the Gwich'in people have just joined an enterprise to drill for oil immediately east of a major migratory path for caribou. The Gwich'in have been used extensively in the anti-drilling propaganda war because of their opposition to oil exploration on the coastal plain of the refuge. They don't actually live there, but they have expressed concern that it might upset the caribou, which they consider sacred. Apparently they are not as worried about the effects of drilling on herds traveling near their own land.
Many of the hysterical appeals to stop drilling in ANWR have focused on the fact that the Gwich'in people consider the coastal plain to be too sacred to even visit. For example, the Alaskan Wilderness League declares on it's website:
The Gwich'in share the range of the Porcupine River caribou herd, except for the place the caribou go to bear their young each year: the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. To the Gwich'in, the coastal plain is sacred. Even in years of famine, the people did not travel to the coastal plain, where hunting would have been easy during the post-calving gathering of the herd.
Unfortunately, the Gwich'in's desire to restrict access to their sacred coastal plain ignores the native people who actually live there. You'd run into problems, too, if you decided that your next-door neighbor's backyard was hallowed ground, not to be touched. The Inupiat Eskimos who live in ANWR are very much in favor of drilling, because it will provide them with money for development. They have also seen firsthand the environmental success of oil drilling at nearby Prudhoe Bay, where caribou herds have quadrupled since 1968.
This conflict between the Inupiats and the Gwich'in mirrors that between Alaskans, who overwhelmingly support drilling on the coastal plain, and the many environmentalist mainlanders who will never visit ANWR, but just like the idea of preserving some piece of remote wilderness somewhere. Of course, most of ANWR (particularly the beautiful mountainous parts seen in the DNC ads) is permanently off-limits to drilling. And the caribou seem to thrive despite oil drilling, which is probably why the Gwich'in don't seem to mind drilling on land they control.
WATCH OUT OSAMA: Unbelievably, PETA finds itself on the right side of Operation Enduring Freedom. They are now targeting Osama bin Laden for running (gasp) tanneries and testing nerve gas on dogs. I hope this means they've ended their ill-conceived campaign to convince the poor of Africa that eating chicken when they can get it is wrong.
Matt Welch skewers Katrina vanden Heuvel and an UW-Madison professor for their "flawed assumptions and unintentional snobbery" in an LA Times op-ed Sunday. I know nothing about Professor Rogers but Ms. vanden Heuvel, the MCA heiress/ Nation editor, is famous (at least in the Bucher household) for being unable to name her Congressman on Hardball this summer, after being put on the spot by Matthews and Bob Dornan. I wonder if she even can be bothered to vote.
THE WIDOWS: Fascinating story about the growing political power of the September 11th widows. They have susscessfully pressured the Mayor to keep the recovery project going at Ground Zero, even on Thanksgiving Day, and they want to have a voice in decisions on the future of the site, which they view as a burial ground. Many of them also feel the City has not been straight with them concerning the probability of further recovery of remains. Apparently, they seem to be the only group that Giuliani has ever been afraid of offending.