NOT VERY INTELLIGENT DESIGN

Column No. 65 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - June 16, 2005 (Slightly edited, Nov. 7, 2006

"Intelligent Design" (ID) is an hypothesis about the origins of life on Earth, the Earth itself, and the Universe.  Although its developers claim that it is a science, by science's own definition of the term, it is not.  Science uses the known to explain the unknown.  Science uses data, physical evidence, measurement, reproducibility, experimentation, and an array of facts of this type, not just one.  It then proceeds to make logical deductions based upon the array of facts that it has uncovered or discovered.

With two exceptions, ID attempts to explain the unknown, how life began and has come to be, as we know it now, in terms of the unknown.  This is just what religion does.  The essence of religion is to attempt to explain the unknown in terms of the unknown.  This characteristic can be observed on a regular basis at any religious service and in any religious text.  The exception to the religious mode of explanation that ID employs is that it does use facts, in a limited manner.  Actually, it uses just one fact, a fact of observation and only observation: life as we know it is very, very complex.  Rather than use an array of facts, as science does, it stops there.  One fact.

The one other characteristic that ID has in common with science is that starting with its one fact, it then attempts to use logical deduction, if/then; if/then; if/then, to arrive at an explanatory conclusion.  There is one little difference, however.  Science uses logic to derive explanations for observed phenomenae from evidence that science has discovered or experimentally produced, using, however, an array of facts, not just one.  That is, if this is the reproducibly factual case, then, using logic just the way ID does (the one method that they have in common), this is the most plausible, believable explanation.  Such is scientific proof: here are a set of measurable facts, and over here is the best explanation for them at this time.

ID, however, uses logic only in an "it must be" mode that it has made up, without reliance on an array of facts or any of the other tools of science as laid out above.  That is, ID states: life is very complex (provable; the one fact it cites); it could not have gotten here on its own, so to say (not provable; just a statement of opinion with no reproducible facts to back it up); consequently, there MUST have been an "intelligent" (not defined) force, with universal consciousness, around at the beginning of time (again undefined).  It does not tell us why “there MUST have been” using anything other than pure guess-work, not information gathered from observation, analysis, and experimentation like science does; just that  ‘there must have been.”  This ID hypothesis postulates some guiding force, presumably in existence some time ago (how long appears to be unstated), endowed with "intelligence" (however that may be defined), such a force being responsible for life as we know it. How did this “guiding force” come into existence?  That is, “Mommy, who made God?”  This they don’t bother to tell us. This approach to developing an understanding of the origins of life on Earth has been criticized from many scientific quarters.

However, in this essay we are examining a different question.  For our purposes here let us assume that the ID folks are right, that there was some conscious or sentient force around at or even before the beginning of time that set things in motion.  The question then becomes, was it intelligent?  Was it smart?  Did it know what it was doing?  Is it therefore worthy of our recognition, or, shall we say, worship?  Well, using the ID method of deduction from one fact, I've got to come to the conclusion that given the evidence we have before us, evidence that the ID people themselves refer to, that is that the existence of the human species is the end result of the operation of forces that the Designer set in motion, it was not Intelligent Design that set the whole thing up.  In fact (if I may use that term when discussing ID), looking at the facts present in our era, one must conclude that it was Not Very Intelligent Design at work, not Intelligent Design at all, in fact.  For just look at what he, she, or it has produced, now and over the ages as the end product of all that work.

The human species is the one that slaughters itself in gigantic numbers.  It is the one that slaughters huge numbers of members others species, indeed makes extinct huge numbers of others species in whole, species that also were presumably the result of the work of the original Designer.  The human species is one that ravages the natural resources of the Earth into which it has come, so that certain of them, such as petroleum, will eventually be completely used up.  It pollutes and indeed poisons the environment in which it lives, both for itself and for the other species, at an ever-increasing rate.  Its current policies threaten its own very existence as a viable species and may threaten the future of all life on Earth.

Intelligent Design?  Sadly, no.  Couldn’t be.  If there were some conscious force around at the beginning of all of this, given the final outcome of its work, the human species, using the one fact and the logical deduction method of the ID school, one must say that it must be characterized rather as the Not Very Intelligent Design source of all things.

Postscript:  Obviously, my dear readers, I am making fun of the ID people here.  At the same time I am showing, I hope, how the kind of reasoning they use can be put to produce any outcome they want.  For example, in this case, given that they are factless except for the fact that life is very complicated, why could not the “Intelligent Designer” have come up with Evolution to produce the outcome he, she, or it desired?

The point is that all of this is beside the point. Except to the extent that its promoters are trying to come up with an alternative to the Theory of Evolution that could be taught in the schools so satisfying the goals of the Creationists (who have additional motives), “Intelligent Design” is not really interested in producing some alternative theory of the origin and development of life.  What it is really interested in doing is attacking, and hopefully eventually destroying the utility of, science for making policy in our country.

There are a variety of reasons why the Creationists, “Intelligent Designers,” “clinical impressionists” (see No. 5 in my Schiavo Series), Dominionists, Rapturists, and etc. attack science as a useful means for understanding life and many other observed phenomenae.  A major one is that they do not want science to be used to determine policy, whether the subject be when life begins, when it ends, stem cell research, global warming, environmental poisoning, regulation of the economy, agriculture/food, forestry, and so on and so forth.  This is a subject to which I will be returning on more than one occasion.  Suffice it to say now that the purpose of ID is neither to create a better understanding of how life came to be, nor to further develop the scientific method.  It is rather to extend the foundation for Georgite policy making: “I want it; I say it; I think it; therefore it is right and we are just going to go ahead and do it regardless of what science might say about it, because science just gets in our way.”

Note: This column is based on a “Short Shot,” No. 64, “A Consideration of  ‘Intelligent Design’ ” that appeared  on http://planetmove.blogspot.com/, for which I am a Contributing Editor, on May 28, 2005.

Pat Buchanan’s ‘What If?’, Part III

Column no. 64 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH, MS, - June 9, 2005, Modified 7-19-08

This is the third in what has grown to be an at-least four-part series on this subject.  (I’m having perverse fun with this one.  Thanks, Pat).  It’s right up my alley, like the scenario for “The 15% Solution” was.  It may go more than four.  However, it will also likely be suspended for a bit, due to the press of my time and the need to deal with other matters.

This writing and the series of which it is a part focuses on the subject of a book Patrick Buchanan published about a year ago.  He got some more publicity on it recently in the context of Bush’s remarks that “Yalta was worse than the Nazi-Soviet Pact.”  Buchanan has postulated that things could have been better in the world than they became had other paths been followed, especially for the US, given that there was a World War II.  His principal focus is on the evils of the Soviet Union, following its victory over German Nazism in World War II.  This series postulates that World War II as it did occur historically was not fought, as per Patrick Buchanan’s wish.  Given the imperialist designs of both Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan at the time, another war was, however.

In this scenario, I lay out what the world, and especially our country, might well have looked like over time, had indeed World War II not occurred.  The scenario postulates, however, that certain other events that really did happen, events that either occurred independent of World War II or, given what we know about the real world, well could have occurred had there been no World War II, did take place. The latter two types of events are summarized within parentheses.

At the end of the scenario set forth in last week’s column, the Republican candidate for President, Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, a strong anti-New Dealer, a moderate isolationist, no anti-Semite, but tolerant of both of those wings of his party, easily defeats the last-minute substitution for a totally demoralized, retired, and soon-to-be dead Franklin Delano Roosevelt, one Sen. Harry Truman.  The Nazi German and Japanese Empires rule much of the globe, allowing truncated empires of Great Britain (India and parts of Africa) and France (parts of Africa) to continue in existence.  The Germans control almost all of the world’s then-known oil reserves outside of the United States, having captured the Caucasus through their defeat and demolition of the Soviet Union, having set up a puppet Shah (the real one, Reza Pahlavi) in Iran, and having moved unopposed into Saudi Arabia.  The Japanese are quite content with the oil of the former Dutch East Indies, as they continue to develop their Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (their real goal of World War II).  Absent United States help, the Chinese Nationalist government of Chiang-Kai-Shek has collapsed.  The Chinese Communists, with no allies anywhere, struggle on in Szechuan Province, but with no hope to overcome the Japanese stranglehold on their country.

The U.S. is in an uncertain state.  One Prescott Bush (in the real world, and this one, too, as we will see in later installments, father of George H. W. Bush and grandfather of George W. Bush) and his colleagues had provided major funding for Nazi Germany.  (This was real.  In fact, into February 1942, Bush was still providing funding for Germany after Hitler declared war on the US, on December 8, 1941.  He did not want to do so at the time, but was obliged to do by certain treaty obligations to Japan.  [Hitler was not the only ruler who abided, or indeed abides, by the rule of law selectively.]  At any rate, in Feb. 1942 FDR threatened Prescott Bush with prosecution under the Trading with the Enemy Act and he stopped being a banker for Hitler.)

In the 1930s major elements of American society either supported or at least tolerated Nazi Germany (as they had done in the real world right up to December 8, 1941).  For example, Charles Lindbergh was an admirer.  Henry Ford was a traditional anti-Semite and actually an early financial supporter and literary colleague of Hitler.  Father Charles Coughlin and Gerald L.K. Smith were rabid anti-Semites.  The German-American Bund of course flourished.  (These were all real people and a real organization.)  However, the US as a whole was wary of the Germans and the Japanese as well.  While the country felt that it was protected by its oceans, there were some noises about re-armament, for “protecting our shores.”  They were not heeded by the governing powers in Washington.

Nazi Germany regarded the US warily as well.  Hitler knew of the American traditions of Constitutional Democracy and guaranteed rights, freedoms and liberties.  Similar provisions constituted major elements of the Weimar Constitution of his own country that he had overthrown upon taking power on January 30, 1933.  He was also wary of the potential of American industrial might.  He was concerned about what the reaction might be of the American Jewish community, should what had happened to European Jewry ever become known.  By 1944, the Germans had triumphed over the Soviet Union in a one-front war and demolished the country, literally as well as figuratively.  They found themselves at peace.  They then proceeded to finish methodically killing virtually every Jew in Europe.

No one believed the wild stories of the few who escaped (just as in the real world, no one would believe them as they started coming out as early as 1940, until it was too late to stop the mass murders in what came to be known as The Holocaust).  American Jewry was not nearly as powerful as the virulent anti-Semites of both Hitler and his American clones believed and stated repeatedly, but they did have some political influence.  Hitler was determined to deal with the Jews in the US, but he wanted to that without having to invade.  German industry was making increasingly profitable deals with such anti-Semitic American industrialists as Henry Ford, pro-Nazi bankers such as Prescott Bush, and the leading-edge American petroleum and other extractive industries.  He did not want to rock any boats, if he could avoid so doing.

The Nazis openly demanded that the Roosevelt Administration “repress” the American Jewish community, starting with rounding them up and putting them in camps (just as FDR did in the real world with the Japanese-American community on the West Coast).  However, the Nazis did no more than make demands until the end of 1944 because they were still militarily involved securing their control over the whole of what had been the Soviet Union.  With the election of Dewey, the Nazis demanded and got negotiations on the “resolution of the Jewish question.”  Dewey entered these negotiations with trepidation, and they proceeded slowly.  A protest movement began to develop over the issue of American cooperation with Nazi Germany and any form of it with Imperial Japan.  Not wanting to stir up trouble at home, Dewey responded in a desultory manner.

In the meantime, the Germans had been working on developing the atomic bomb.  Under the influence of the isolationist “anti-militarists” and the open German-collaborationists, of course the US Manhattan Project never took shape.  By the spring of 1945, the Germans had the bomb.  (In the real world, absent the destruction of Germany caused by the war, they probably would have had it a lot sooner, and probably would have beaten the US to it, even if there had been a Manhattan Project.)  They secretly tested it in their portion of Siberia.  They also developed a four-engine bomber capable of reaching the United States from Germany and returning safely.  (Such a bomber really was under development by the Germans in the early days of the war, and several prototypes were built and flown.  Development was stopped when the real war demanded the concentration of resources elsewhere.)  With the negotiations on the “Jewish Question” moving very slowly and the increasing anti-German protests in the United States, Hitler decided upon a different course of action. He decided to rock the US boat.

On August 6, 1945, with a monopoly on the bomb that lasted until the Japanese developed theirs 10 years later, without warning Hitler’s four-engine “American Bomber” drops one on New York City.  New York City was Hitler’s personal choice as the first target.  While the financial center serving many of Germany’s American corporate partners went up in flame, so did the largest concentration of Jews still surviving in the world.  (Anti-Semitism did run policy in the real world of Hitler, even when it went against his nation’s best interests.  For example, as they were losing the war to the Soviet Union in 1944-45, they still diverted resources from their war effort to murdering as many Jews as they could in the time remaining.)  The Nazis did forewarn many of their corporate allies in New York City that “something was going to happen,” and it might be a good idea for those who had not already left on vacation to do so.  None of them bothered to let the Dewey Administration of this development.

Three days later, Boston was obliterated.  Not expecting anything like either strike, of course, no American fighters rose to respond to the presence of a German bomber in American airspace.  It was thought to be simply a surprise good will visit.  Had interceptors intervened, however, they would have been shot out of the skies by the elite Japanese fighter force flying off the decks of the four elite carriers standing off the East Coast, the Hiryu, the Soryu, the Kaga, and the Akagi (which of course were not sunk at the Battle of Midway, because, in this version of history, there was none.)  In a “good will gesture,” they had been allowed to transit the Panama Canal by the Dewey Government two months earlier, and had refueled and refitted at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.  Some of the antiquated Army Air Corps fighters did manage to scramble from the Worcester Army Air Base in Massachusetts, but they were all destroyed by the Japanese.  Since there had been no modern weapons development going on in the US under the control of the isolationists and German sympathizers, the American craft were no match for the fourth-generation Zeros flown by the top Japanese pilots (pilots who, with no Battle of Midway in which, in the real world, the cream of the Japanese fighter pilot crop was killed, were still very much among the living).

In the face of the German possession of this monstrous weapon, the von Ribbentrop-Lodge negotiations proceeded very quickly.  The US was allowed to continue as an independent country.  In order to meet German demands and avoid any further atomic devastation, under what he claimed to be his inherent Commander-in-Chief powers (which in the real world a number of Presidents have claimed and used, e.g., Lincoln, FDR, and G.W. Bush, even though they nowhere appear in the Constitution), Dewey moved extra-constitutionally to crush the protests.  He imprisoned tens of thousands of protesters in hastily built camps.  The Republican-isolationist-pro-German Congress quickly ratified the Von Ribbentrop-Lodge Treaty and quickly offered its assent for the Dewey policy.

Ties between American and German corporations were strengthened, with a German “overseer” being put on every American corporate board of directors of any consequence.  Reinhard Heydrich arrived in the US with three elite SS divisions, to undertake the Final Solution for American Jewry as well.  (In the real world, Heydrich was the architect of the Final Solution for Europe.  He was killed by Czech partisans, called “terrorists” by the Nazis, who in the real world then proceeded to wipe out the male population of the Czech village of Lidice in a display of the doctrine of “collective responsibility” used by a number of governments around the world to this very day.)

A Constitutional Amendment depriving Jews of the equal protection of the law guaranteed to all Americans under the 14th Amendment (much like what the current “Protection of Marriage” Amendment would do to the homosexual population in the US) was quickly passed by Congress.  Under not-too-subtle German threats of further atomic bombings, it was quickly ratified by the states.  The SS, with the eager collaboration of American anti-Semites (just as happened in the real world in Eastern Europe and France), moved quickly and efficiently.  Some American Jews managed to flee and it was rumored for years that small colonies somehow managed to survive among the Inuit in Labrador, the Quechua in Patagonia, and high in the Southern Alps in New Zealand.  However, within two years, under assault by the new Masters of America and their acolytes, using highly efficient, third-generation extermination equipment, the American Jewish community as it had existed since the first Jews landed in New Amsterdam in the early 17th century, was no more.

Next on Hitler’s list was the Afro-American population, for whom he had shown open enmity at the 1936 Berlin Olympics during the four-gold medal domination of the sprints by the US track star Jesse Owens.  For these policies he found so many American allies that the Germans had to engage in a variety of lotteries of different types to determine who would get in on the campaign.  We will turn to the history of that era next time.

MUNICH AND THE NUCLEAR OPTION

Column No. 62a By Dr. Steven Jonas - May 26, 2005

On September 30, 1938, the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain arrived back in Great Britain following the conclusion of the Munich Agreement with the German Chancellor, Adolf Hitler.  Waving his copy of the document as he stepped out of his airplane, he announced that the agreement had achieved “Peace in Our Time.” That agreement permitted Hitler to march his army into Western Czechoslovakia and incorporate into the German Reich significant sections of it that happened to have significant numbers of German speakers in them --- an area known in German as the Sudetenland.

In doing this, the British, and their French allies, declined to honor treaty obligations they had to defend Czechoslovakia, ignored the open offer that Stalin had made to make the Soviet Army available for action against the Germans, and prevented the strong and well-equipped Czech army from fighting the Germans in defense of their own country.  In return for these non-actions, Chamberlain received a promise from Hitler that this would be his “last territorial claim in Europe.” In March 1939, Hitler marched into Prague, took over the balance of the Czech part of the original country and set up Slovakia as an “independent” country under a pro-Nazi, but native, dictator.

In resolving the “Nuclear Option” crisis in the US Senate, the Democrats agreed to confirmation by the full Senate on the Bush nominations of Janice Rogers Brown, William Pryor, and Priscilla Owen, for seats on various Circuit Courts of Appeal.  Among other things, Brown is a judge who, like Scalia and Thomas of the US Supreme Court, believes that there is some “Natural Law” standing above the US Constitution.  Since that Natural Law is unwritten, in practice that means that it is whatever she says it is, thus replacing the Constitution as the highest law of the land.  Pryor believes that church and state should be one.  Owen believes that judges who have previously taken money from corporations should represent their views on the bench.

In return for this agreement, the Democrats have received a promise from the Republicans that, with one exception, they will never invoke the “Nuclear Option” to destroy the power of the minority in the Senate to employ the filibuster to prevent a vote on judicial nominations. According to current Senate rules any change in them requires a two-thirds majority.  Under the Nuclear Option, the Republicans would violate this rule with a ruling from the Chair by the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, about which the Democrats could do nothing but scream bloody murder.  Oh yes, it just so happens that the “one exception” the Republicans gained as part of the deal was that they could employ the “Nuclear Option” in the future anyway, if they thought that its use were really indicated.

Sounding sort of like Neville Chamberlain, Harry Reid, the Democratic Minority leader said (New York Times, May 25, 2005):  “It took the nuclear option off the table.  The nuclear option is gone for our lifetime.”  Further (quoted in The Times), “Democrats said that there was a clear signal to President Bush that he needed to engage in ‘true consultation and cooperation’ with both parties before naming future court nominees, particularly to the Supreme Court.”  Big victory for the Democrats, eh, sort of like “peace in our time?”  Well, probably not.

The very next day (same issue of The Times), a headline said “Many Republicans Are Already Eager To Challenge Agreement on Filibusters.”  “This deal is really no deal,” said Sen. Larry Craig, Republican of Idaho.  According to The Times, “Other Republicans threatened to immediately invoke the nuclear option” anyway, if they happened not to like how the Democrats were interpreting the supposed agreement.  And as to the nature of the agreement itself, one which Sen. Reid saw as disposing of the nuclear option in  “our lifetime,” Sen. Orrin Hatch, a senior Republican and former Chair of the judiciary Committee said “this is merely a truce; it’s not a treaty.”  As for the Bush Regime and any possibility that they might change their criteria for choosing judges, namely, the further to the Right, like the three described above, the better, they said that they “did not intend to change  in any substantive way their method of selecting, vetting, and nominating candidates for the Federal bench, including the Supreme Court.”

Gee whiz, at least Hitler waited more than five months before he took over the rest of Czechoslovakia after promising that he would go no further than the Sudetenland.  The Republican Religious Right just has no class whatsoever.

Junkie:  Dr. Jonas’ article is an expanded version of his article currently published from THE MOVING PLANET BLOG, one of TPJ’s favorites. The Moving Planet Blog is published by TPJ Editor Michael Carmichael.

THE SCHIAVO CASE, V: THE ATTACK ON SCIENCE

Column No. 61 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - May 18, 2005

This column is the last; some of you may be pleased to know, of my five part series on the Schiavo case.  As I noted previously, I believe that history will come to see it as the Dred Scott case of this era, whether or not there is in fact a Second Civil War.  Why Dred Scott, you might ask?  That case made the nation face the reality of what was in the Constitution about slaves and the nature of slavery.  It also made the nation face the reality that the South wanted to expand slavery into the Territories without limit.  Schiavo will, I believe, eventually make the nation face the true nature of Georgitism and the RRR, a major feature of which is their goal to force the expansion of their religious belief system into the mind of every American using the force of the criminal law.

A major part of the belief system of the Republican Religious Right is that science and the scientific method are the enemies of what it calls “faith.”  (I illustrated what “faith” means to them in my column last week.)  In addition, precisely because science attempts to explain the unknown in terms of the known while religion attempts to explain the unknown in terms of the unknown, science is an enemy of what the RRR calls “faith.”

Of course, the concept of “God,” theism, and science are not necessarily mutually exclusive.  After all, there is no reason to think that it was none other than God that endowed humankind with the ability to reason and, therefore, with the potential for eventually discovering the scientific method and its many positive uses.  But that is not how the avatars of the RRR think.  To them science, which uses observation, analysis, reason, and experimentation -- rather than simply “I say so” or “the Book says so,” or “I say the Book says so” – science is anathema to them.  For they want the rules to be set entirely by them.  These rules are based entirely on what they claim that particular book called the Bible (in, by the way, for the Old Testament a particular English translation of a Latin translation of a Greek translation of a Hebrew translation of an Aramaic text) says, and that part of it they reference, backed up by the use of the criminal law.

The Schiavo case provided the RRR with several different convenient avenues of attack on science.  Dr. William Frist himself, Republican Senate Majority leader and a former cardiac surgeon (and through his family holdings, a current medical businessman in, among other things, medical malpractice insurance), presumed to make a diagnosis for Terry Schiavo based solely on a two-year old video tape which had been severely edited.  The RRR also brings into the case a neurologist, who happens to be active in the My Right to Control Your Life movement, who looks at the same tape and pronounces that Ms. Schiavo was not in a persistent vegetative state.

Forget that neither physician saw the patient and were doing their “examining” from a video tape, an old and doctored one at that.  What is really going on here is an attack on medical science.  Both physicians chose to ignore the scientific test results that showed that Schiavo had no brain activity on repeated electroencephalograms (EEGs, measures of electrical activity of the brain that science has shown for decades occurs when one is thinking—and that thinking does not occur in the absence of such activity).  Test results also showed that she could not have had such activity, because that part of the brain that responsible for it had unfortunately disintegrated (shown by Computerized Axial Tomography, CAT, Scan).

Frist, the neurologist, and a few other right-wing physicians, chose to substitute for science what in our profession is called “clinical impression.”  Clinical impression was the best diagnostic tool available to medicine – in the 19th century, before testing and other instrumentation became available.  It is still essential in helping to decide what scientific evaluative processes to use, and then, given their results, to round out the picture of what is going on with a given patient.  However, clinical impressions alone can and do differ widely among various observers (just as interpretations of the Bible differ)

Frist’s clinical impression, even if it had not rested on the terribly shaky grounds that it did, was only that: his clinical impression, without reference to the science of laboratory testing.  Doing what he did as a physician in this case served exquisitely the political needs of the RRR: to continue their assault on science and science-based knowledge, to get away from the use of reason, which they hate with a passion, so that they may substitute the “word of God,” as of course they interpret it and tell us what it “truly” is.  In essence, this doctor (Frist) was saying “forget testing, forget science, just take my word for it; this is what this patient has or hasn’t.”  It is the medical version of how the Republican Religious Right wants from everyone in the country: obedience, on their say-so, concerning the conduct of their private lives and thought.  No reason, no science, and of course no freedom, just obedience – because the RRR says so.

Too easily overlooked, also, was that as a physician (forgetting his political motivation for doing what he did) Dr. Frist came with serious limitations in getting seriously involved with this case.  He is a former cardiac surgeon, not known for any expertise either in neurology or end-of-life care.  He made his pronouncements on Terri Schiavo’s condition based on those video tapes.  And he did make a diagnosis.  Aside from everything else, one has to wonder:  A) Does he have a license to practice medicine either in Florida or the District of Columbia?  B) The next time he needs some medical attention, will he have it done by a doc who is not a specialist in the matter afflicting him at the time and who is looking at a two-year old doctored video tape of him, not directly at him, and who totally ignores any laboratory test results?  One useful outcome of this whole episode is that we now indeed know what the term “doctored tapes” really means to make a current diagnosis, given that Dr. Frist was in on their use.

In making their rulings, in coming to their findings, in handing down their decisions, and over a very long period of time, the Florida courts relied on science.  They relied on a science-based definition of life, that in the presence of a non-functioning brain incapable of ever functioning again, simply having active cardio-respiratory, digestive, and excretory systems occupying a body did not constitute life.  They relied on science-based medical testing, EEG and CAT scan, not clinical impression, to come to the conclusion that Terri Schiavo was clearly brain-dead.  And so the virulent attack on the courts was not only an attack on the whole concept of an independent judiciary.  It was also part of the attack on science that is at the center of such RRR campaigns as their efforts to exclude the teaching of evolution in the public schools to their denial of the fact of global warming.

This is an issue to which we shall return from time to time.

POSSIBLE EXPLANATIONS FOR BUSH-BEHAVIOR ON AND AROUND 9/11

Column No. 60 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - May 12, 2005

As you undoubtedly know, two critical documents have been recently released by the 9/11 Commission.  One concerned the 52 FAA pre-9/11 warnings that lead to no specific terrorist-act-prevention actions.  The other was the Richard Clarke memo of 1/25/01 to the new National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice that urgently called for a meeting on the subject of  aggressively dealing with al-Qaeda with a specific plan-for-planning to do so.

Now, it is possible that Rice ignored the memo because Clarke did not use the common English spelling for the name of the terrorist organization, but called it “Al Qida.”  Rice understandably might have thought that he was referring to a person named “Al,” and since she had many more important things to do, like planning the invasion of Iraq, she understandably put the whole thing on the back burner.  In addition, at one point Clarke used a word that is not to my knowledge found in the English language, “addressal.”  With her university background, Dr. Rice might have wondered how much could such an illiterate know about terrorism, anyway.

At any rate, with the release of these documents, presumably over the strenuous objections of the Georgite White House, the whole question of what they were thinking-not-thinking-doing-not-doing in the run-up to 9/11 gets onto the front burner again.  (Well, it is not on the front burner of our mainstream media, of course, but that does not mean that it should not be.)  In this context, in this column I am revisiting the column that I published on May 6, 2004, in an abridged version.  Much of the following text is taken from that column.

Despite the swirl of revelations over the past months, the public remains facing a large set of unanswered 9/11 questions, glaring inconsistencies, and seeming lies-at-the-time, combined with a drive by the Georgites to withhold as much information as possible (cover-up, anyone?).  Only extreme political pressure can force further key disclosures.  The subject of this writing is not a comprehensive review of that data.  I present here just a few of the more prominent unanswered questions.

There’s the famous August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) that seems to contain some very strong warnings of what eventually happened, well beyond what Rice described as “historical” information. . . .  There is Rice dancing to one tune in one place, on CNN not under oath, and quite another, when under oath, about just what was in the PDB, as well as about a lot of other material.

There is the fact that Ashcroft told Mr. Pickard, Acting Director of the FBI in the summer of 2001, not to bother him with talk about terrorism and counter-terrorism.  At the same time, Ashcroft just happened to have stopped flying on commercial flights.  There is the fact that Ashcroft turned down an internal request to massively expand the FBI’s anti-terrorism budget, on 9/10/01.

There’s Bush, according to Sidney Blumenthal in The Guardian (UK, April 15, 2004) not reading anything, whether it’s his PDBs or, for example, a 17 volume State Department report entitled “The Future of Iraq”, warning of nearly all the post-Iraq war pitfalls that have been encountered. . . .

Then there’s all the background about the Georgites trying to prevent the formation of the 9/11 Commission in the first place, then under-funding it, then not cooperating with it at all until forced to, then cooperating with it as little as possible, and so on.  That is combined with the peculiar non-reaction of our Air Defenses (NORAD) on 9/11 once it was known, and it was known very early on, that at least one plane had been high-jacked that awful morning.  Plus, there’s the Great Commander continuing to read to school children after being informed of the first collision of plane with building, and then spending the rest of the day flying around the country on Air Force One.  The litany could go on.

What possible explanations might have been offered last April for this series of events, non-events, actions, and inactions?  At the time, I saw at least six.  They fall neatly into two groups of three.  The first set assumes, at the worst, incompetence.  The second set assumes rather more than that.

1.        “We, the White House and the agencies, did everything we could have, and anyway it was all Clinton’s fault.”  One variation of this or another seems to be popular with Bush, Rice, Cheney, Powell, and Ashcroft.

2.        “Mistakes were made”, not by the White House of course (remember the famous Bush non-answer to that question at his April, 2004 news conference --- since they are so rare, one doesn’t have to give an exact date for it), but rather by the agencies.  “They should have been more on the ball.  But heck, everyone makes mistakes.  Nobody’s perfect (except us).”

3.        Beyond agency mistakes, the Georgites were, and are, incompetent.  They should have been paying attention, but because of other priorities and bureaucratic bungling just did not.  It could have, and should have, been played much better.

4.        The Georgites knew something might happen, but didn't know what.  They surely thought that if something did happen, it would not be on the scale of WTC.

5.       The Georgites knew pretty well what bin Laden wanted to do but they:

a.        Thought they had a deal with the Taliban to prevent him from doing it.  However, the Taliban either did not have the power to do so, or double-crossed the Georgites.

b.        Thought they had a deal with bin Laden either not to do anything or to do something small (in return for who knows what), and he double-crossed them.

6.   The Georgites were either directly or indirectly party to the bin Laden plan, and thus knew something would happen, possibly even as to day and time.

“Conspiracy theories,” you are thinking.  That’s the disdainful epithet the Republican Religious Right always throw out when such speculation arises, in the hope that the discussion will turn to the propriety of developing conspiracy theories and away from the substance of the suppositions.

But looking more closely, why not think “conspiracy?”  We have a post World War II Republican President.  Such folks have been at conspiracies for a long time.  Think Eisenhower, through the Dulles boys: Iran, Guatemala, and the sabotaging of the 1954 Geneva Agreement that ended the French-Indochinese War.  Think Nixon: Watergate and Chile.  Think Reagan: Iran-Contra.  Think Bush I and the Kuwait War, which happened in part because just before Bush invaded, the-then US Ambassador April Glaspie told Saddam, “We have no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.”  No conspiracies, full or partial, around 9/11?  Absolutely impossible?  Well let us see.

During that summer, remember, at home the Georgites were not doing so well politically.  The economy was sagging and all George was doing it about was offering tax cuts to the rich.  The Enron bubble burst, mighty close to the White House.  Cheney would not tell (and still will not) what he had talked about with his oil cronies.  There was a rapidly expanding deficit accompanied by a rapidly expanding unemployment rate.  Then there were the so-called Neocons, led by Perle and Wolfowitz, taking over most of the major foreign-policy responsibility for the new Administration.  They were looking for some pretext upon which to justify an invasion of Iraq, a policy they had been advocating quite openly, at least in neocon publications, since the mid-1990s.  Marjory about oil and bases and something called ‘establishing American hegemony.’  The public has never been let in on these little secrets.  Is that not the stuff of conspiracy?

Maybe I have read too many spy novels.  (Just think of what a left-wing Tom Clancy could do with some combination of 4, 5, and 6 above.)  On the other hand, just maybe there was no Georgite conspiracy.  Maybe it was just the Georgites moving really quickly after it happened to take advantage of public fear and panic, to regain the popularity they had lost, to rush through the Patriot Act, with a long-range view of being able to smash dissent at home without bothering with the judicial system, and to set up “grounds” the invasion of Iraq.  Can anyone say “Reichstag Fire?”  (See my TPJ columns of 6/3 and 6/24/04).

PAT BUCHANAN’S ‘WHAT IF?’, Part I

Column No. 62 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - May 26, 2005, Modified, 7-19-08

A note to my readers.  I am sure that many of you will be pleased to know that for the time-being, at least, I am going off the “Coming 2nd Civil War Series.”  This is not because I have become any less convinced that a 2nd Civil War is possible.  Indeed, I think that the way things are going it is highly likely, unless a serious, capable, well-organized, and well-funded political opposition develops very soon.  However, I think that regular readers at least have had enough repetition of similar text on the same theme.  And so, while from now on most of my columns will relate in one way or another to that possibility, I am planning not to ram that thought, with that same intro., down your throats every week.  I can hear the hurrahs from here!  And now, onto today’s subject.

Paul Vitello, a columnist for Newsday, began his commentary of May 12, 2005 with the following paragraph:

“In a column he wrote yesterday, headlined ‘Was World War Two Worth It?’ commentator Patrick Buchanan swiped at the legacies of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill – and millions of American and allied servicemen living and dead – by proposing that World War II was not worth fighting.”

First, one could note the irony that most of Buchanan’s most loyal admirers severely attack any American critics of either the Vietnam War or the War on Iraq as “unpatriotic,” as “not supporting our boys,” as, in Ann Coulter’s terms, “traitors.”  But an in depth examination of that fundamental contradiction of the Republican Religious Right shall be saved for another time.

The subject of this column, first in what will be a (planned for now) three-part series setting forth a “What If?” for Patrick Buchanan.  Just suppose World War II as it did occur historically had not been fought (although given the imperialist designs of both Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan at the time, another war surely would have been).  What might the world, and especially our country, look like today?

In developing the scenario below, I use a series of historical events that just might have gone in another direction than they actually did.  This direction is not simply guess-work, but could well have occurred in one form or another, given the facts as we know them.  It is a direction that easily could have led to the non-involvement of the powers that became the Western Allies of World War II in any war prosecuted by Nazi Germany in Eastern Europe.  The Eastern Front attacks, beginning with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, would have occurred, however.  The scenario will be interspersed with parenthetical comments concerning certain real events, real people, and what really happened.  The story here is presented in the form of highlights.  At some future time, the scenario that will be presented briefly in this current series might be developed in more depth.

The alternate scenario that in fact could very well have meant no World War II, as we know it to have happened, begins in 1937.  Edward, Prince of Wales, is crowned Edward VIII, King of England, that spring.  Although there had been much talk of his possible abdication both because he had married an American divorcee and was an open admirer of the German Chancellor, Adolf Hitler, Edward persisted in mounting the throne as the first-born son of George V.  (In this column, this coronation is the only event that is fictional.  But it is essential to the story.)

Since the Glorious Revolution of 1688 that had established William of Orange as the first constitutional monarch of Great Britain, British monarchs have not been supposed to take a direct hand in governmental policy.  However, certainly George III, Queen Victoria, and George V, Edward VIII’s father, himself did.  He played a significant role in getting Great Britain into World War I against his own cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany.  Edward VIII (remember, fictional here) would play a similar role in September 1939, being a major influence in the non-response of Great Britain to the German invasion of Poland.  In fact, had a different person been on the throne, let us say Edward VIII’s younger brother, the shy stammerer, the Duke of York, things might have gone rather differently.  (In real life, it was the former Duke of York who, as George VI, was king at the time.)  But Edward VIII liked Hitler, liked the idea of his “going East,” and made of views and those of the people he represented, the ultra-rich of the “Cliveden Set (real),” known forcefully to the Chamberlain government.  For Chamberlain, who in real life continued to try to negotiate with Hitler for a truce and “turn to the East” after the real start of World War II, Edward VIII would prove to be a very powerful ally for a policy of not responding militarily to the Polish Crisis.  Against this power, Churchill and the people he represented could not carry the day.

Turning to events that did take place and that form an essential part of the story, in 1936-39 the British government under the Conservative Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain refuses to come to the aid of the elected Republican Government of Spain, fighting for its life against the fascist general Francisco Franco, strongly supported by both Nazi German and fascist Italy.  Franco wins.  Without support from Great Britain, the government of France, even under socialist leadership, stays out as well.  In 1936, Hitler remilitarizes the Rhineland, in violation of the Versailles Treaty.  At the time, France has the strongest army in Europe, Germany the weakest.  Neither France nor Great Britain responds.  In March 1938, Hitler, with the aid of the powerful Nazi Party in Austria, absorbs his former homeland into the German Reich.  For France and Great Britain, it is an “internal matter” for German-speaking people.

In September 1938, Great Britain and France violate their treaty obligations to Czechoslovakia and in the Munich Agreement allow Hitler first to dismember and then shortly thereafter take over the whole country.  The offer made by Stalin to provide the Soviet Army for the defense of Czechoslovakia is turned down.  The Western version of these real events has always been termed “appeasement” on the part of Chamberlain.  However, the facts, as revealed by many government documents from the period that only came into the public record in the 1990s, show that Chamberlain’s policy was clearly to deal with Hitler to get him to follow through on his grand plans as laid out in Mein Kampf to undertake the “Drang Nach Osten,” the Drive to the East, to gain “Lebensraum,” Living Space, for the German people.  (It happens that at the time Germany had the lowest population density of any major European power, but what do facts matter when there are aggressive policies to be pursued and some, any, justification for them must be found.)  Chamberlain strove hard to give Hitler a “free hand” in Eastern Europe for what he hoped in return would be a hands-off policy from Germany when it came to the British Empire.  Although somewhat embarrassed publicly, Chamberlain is encouraged privately by the German moves in Czechoslovakia.

Hitler’s next target is Poland.  There is a part of Germany called East Prussia that is separated from the main body of the country by the “Polish Corridor” which is, in fact, Poland’s outlet to the sea (the Baltic in this case).  Hitler wants the Poles to turn that piece of real estate over to him.  This would, among other things, put a significant number of Poles under German rule, at a time when Slavs were only slightly above Jews on the German list of “untermenschen” (underpeople).  The move would also cut off the Poland from the world’s oceans.  Again, the Soviet Union offers to provide the Red Army for the defense of Poland.  The offer is turned down both by the right-wing Polish Government and by the supposed guarantors of the existing borders of Poland, Great Britain, and France.  On August 25, 1939, the Hitler-Stalin Pact is signed and on September 1, 1939, Germany invades Poland from the west while the Soviet Union invades it from the east.  (To be continued next week, as they used to say in adventure radio when I was a boy.)