Enron phone calls preceded lockout
Ginger "What she really thinks" Stampley makes a good point:

The thing that bugs me about all this calling is that, lest we forget, Enron employees were locked out of trading stock from their 401(k)s starting October 29. Go back and read the phone call articles again: Ken Lay was begging the government for a bailout before the lockout. The calls include Alan Greenspan (10/26), Don Evans (10/26), and Paul O'Neill (10/28).

So employee-shareholders were the last to know. Check out Ms. Stampley's post for all the links, and see her site for lots more about Enron. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:21:00 PM -- |    

 

Gramm and Enron: what's mean about pointing out the connection?
Earlier today, I read a brief note on the "More than Zero" (MTZ) site about a Bill Keller article in the New York Times. So I checked out Bill Keller's article, Mr. T., Mr. G. and Mr. H.. Keller takes up the careers of Senators Thurmond, Gramm, and Helms, and let's 'em have it. Good on ya, I said, I couldn't think of three more disagreeable toads than those guys; but that's just me. Of Gramm, Keller notes,

One of Senator Gramm's most generous benefactors was Enron, which lavished money on his campaigns and paid his wife handsomely as a corporate director. Senator Gramm, in turn, had a hand in legislation that exempted Enron's explosive energy derivatives business from government regulation and oversight. How big a hand, and whether that legislation enabled the secret funny business that led to the company's collapse, may emerge in one of the many investigations under way. Enron's business was built on the premise that just about anything could be turned into a commodity and bought and sold. The beleaguered little taxpayers who lost their jobs and pensions in the Enron fiasco will be interested to know whether that included their senator.

Ouch! But to my surprise, when I returned to read the MTZ take, the note was gone (as had been forecast), replaced by an expanded piece ("A meaner, rougher Times editorial") that takes great issue with Keller's article, and the Gramm part of it in particular. MTZ writes:

Keller saves his most dubious accusations for Gramm, pinning the Enron scandal on him before we have any evidence distinguishing Gramm from the rest of the congress. [...cites same text above ...]

Well, they'd also be interested to know if Bill Keller was involved, but don't you think it's a bit premature? For that matter, does deregulating an industry automatically convey approval of fraud? That's a bit of a stretch Bill, don't you think?

Oh, right, I forgot. It's the private sector. They're all criminals by definition. So every financial company starts scheming to rob us blind the minute the government stops warehousing a brand new set of "examiners" in their offices for a month every year and then sending them the bill.

This isn't about "every" company scheming to rob us blind. It's about one particular company that apparently succeeded in that or in fraud, and left a lot of people holding the bag while CEOs and board members appear to be doing all right. In retrospect, this company should have had a watchdog. Many thought that watchdog was Arthur Andersen Inc., but that watchdog seems to have spent its time either sleeping or eating the homework, so to speak. The private sector are definitely not criminals by definition, but some true oversight -- as opposed to the Andersen variety -- might have done wonders for Ken Lay and his company.

As for Gramm and Congress, Keller does provide a distinction about Gramm: he had a hand in the legislation exempting Enron's kind of business from federal oversight. (I'll try to fact-check that, starting over at Oliver Willis' "Enrongate", but I doubt Keller pulled it out of thin air.) It seems like that was a big mistake now. Doesn't it? If so, Gramm, according to Keller, has a direct responsibility for that, and it's completely fair game both to make him take responsibility and to point out his and his wife's Enron connections. No one is saying Gramm approves of fraud. We're saying, if Keller is right, that Gramm made fraud easier: if City Council defunds the police department, and robberies go up, then City Council shares some blame, even if they personally don't approve of robbery. As Michael Kinsley puts it, sometimes the scandal is what's legal, and this may be one of those times. (Thanks to Jim Henley for reminding me of Kinsley's bon mot, although I don't get how he comes up with a case for "reining in the regulatory state" out of the Enron affair.)

Now, Enron's business per se, the commoditization of electricity and other utility-type goods, still seems like a good idea to me, although it apparently was not as profitable as they made it seem. I'm hoping MTZ's writer, a financial analyst, will share some thoughts on that as well; I'm sure he'll set me straight on this post of mine, and I welcome that.

At any rate, I'd say the post-9/11 "era of good feelings" has been over for a while. Maybe that's just as well -- although I hope that era is not over between myself and "More Than Zero," whose opinions I value, and often share.

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Update: MTZ responds, sticking to his anti-regulation guns, and backing that up with some facts about the Enron debacle and securities regulation today. I responded with a comment suggesting that financial transparency (statements that reveal rather than conceal the truth about companies) seems to need more help these days, MTZ agreed with that, pinpointing accounting standards and FASB as a problem worth writing about. Incidentally, re "era of good feelings over," I meant Keller, not MTZ, so I lengthened the last sentence of the post, which was poorly written (and may still be). posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:31:00 PM -- |    

 

Newsrack blog technical update
The "comment" links aren't working for me or anyone else using BlogBack. Its developer is "having to convert all data from flat files into MySQL records. It'll take a while to do that and reprogram all the scripts. Sorry." Whatever. It's a nice service, thanks to Marcus for taking care of it. I assume all the old comments will resurface when he's done.

This may have to do with the BlogBack+ service upgrade; this upgrade makes it easier for me to see if older posts of mine have suddenly been commented on. It also lets me delete or edit posts. Herewith my policy on that: I will not edit anyone's posts, except to correct spelling or grammar on request. I may delete a post if it's redundant, or I think it's offensive.

Returning readers will note a redesign pushing the growing list of weekly blog archive files off the left hand column, and over to a separate parent archive page.

Let me know if you have suggestions or requests that would make visiting this blog more fun for you.

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Update 1/12: Obviously, comments still aren't working. Also, the developer appears to have jettisoned the URL and e-mail information in old comments, which I'm not happy about, but what can I do. The motivation is to make BlogBack easier on its servers via a better database system; wish it hadn't come at the cost of losing data. Maybe those data can be restored later on.
Update 1/15: added "redundant" deletion policy posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:26:00 AM -- |    

 

Israel targets PA naval facilities, Arafat targets PA naval personnel
As predicted here earlier -- not that it was a tough call -- the Washington Post reports fewer PA boats that float, or at least fewer PA boats that look brand new:

Israel, dismissing the Palestinian moves as insufficient, fired on Palestinian naval targets in Gaza early Saturday, setting a fuel depot and a barracks on fire, Palestinian security sources told the Associated Press. A small patrol boat was also hit. There were no reports of casualties.

Likewise, Arafat moved to arrest the ringleaders-or-scapegoats Fuad Shubaki and Adel Mughrabi. Israel continues to maintain that only Arafat could have authorized such an important transaction, while PA officials deny he had knowledge of the operation. posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:04:00 AM -- |    

 

German publisher Rudolf Augstein to US, Israelis: drop dead
German newsweekly Der Spiegel has published an article, "Der blutige Präzisionskrieg" ("The bloody precision war"), based on Marc Herold's newsclippings "study" of late last year. A good overview of the problems with this study was provided by Dan Hartung ("Lake Effect"), who also links to others by Damian Penny and Bruce Rolston. Briefly, Herold picks and chooses his sources, believes them all implicitly, probably double-counts casualties, and often counts all casualties in an incident as civilian when many may well have been military. Thick helpings of rhetoric about racism are ladled on as well, such as "there is no instance (except during World War II) of a foreign Caucasian state being targeted by the U.S. government"; pretty big exception! So are World War I, the Civil War, and the American Revolution; why, that would be practically every major war we've fought (as Penny points out). More importantly, perhaps, Herold says "Killing civilians even if unintentional is criminal," which, if taken seriously, amounts to a recipe for Al Qaeda to remain safe and sound forever.

No matter. The study provides Der Spiegel and its fearless leader Rudolf Augstein with the propaganda opportunity they need:

According to an American study, 4050 Afghans have been killed by the beginning of January -- more than in the terror attacks in New York and Washington.

Well, that settles it. US bad, Taliban/Al Qaeda good. Or both bad, Spiegel good. Or something.

Augstein is a real piece of work. As this article by University of Duisburg's Siegfried Jaeger argues, Augstein has been on a "getting over the Third Reich" kick for quite some time now, apparently to clear the way for frequent Augstein lectures to the US and Israel on how to survive gracefully. Jaeger points out how Augstein uses the phrase "Auschwitz myth," which he Gott sei Dank does not use to claim that Auschwitz never happened, but more as the notion that Auschwitz provides the background story for the creation of Israel. Which is true as far as it goes, but Augstein seems to draw the false conclusion that as Auschwitz recedes in history, Israel's justification and right to self-defense does as well. Jaeger describes Augstein's thinking:

Hitler is trumped up to a founding father of the state of Israel -- to my mind simply a perverse thought, one that Augstein makes use of again when he writes: "to thank one's craziest enemy for a part of the idea of one's state, that was a bitter look back, at least for those with consciences, who suddenly saw how far the current annex-state had come from Theodor Herzl's vision." The fall of the German wall, Augstein goes on to deduce, was what forced the Israelis to seek "settlement [Ausgleich] with the humiliated Palestinians."

No doubt news to Israelis. I think of this as updated anti-Semitism: what happened in Auschwitz was awful, sure, but now look how mean they are to the poor Palestinians. (Never mind suicide bombing kids one minute and their rescuers five minutes later, wars started by their neighbors, etc.) More recently, Augstein compared Sharon's moves against Arafat to Hitler's hopes that Churchill would replace Neville Chamberlain once he'd secured the non-aggression pact with Stalin, so he could have himself a nice war. Which rather completely reverses the roles I would have assigned if I were compelled to use this far-fetched analogy.

Augstein's snide "Big sticks, small intellects" article and similar "How to support terrorism" (by bombing them, apparently), seem like the anti-American side of the same coin; they'd have been prime candidates for Andrew Sullivan's "Hoffman" or "Sontag" awards last year. In the latter article, Augstein cries crocodile tears over the demise of "the America of the two Roosevelts", warns that bombing during Ramadan will stir up the Arab world, compares the WTC attack with Truman's Hiroshima and Nagasaki decisions, etc. He concludes, with Olympian detachment,

What lured the USA into the Afghan trap? Its hubris? Its thirst for revenge? Envy those who are free of these.

No, Rudolf, it was simply a deeply felt need to prevent those bastards from doing it again; you have to start somewhere, and a country full of Al Qaeda training camps seemed a reasonable choice. To Augstein, there appears to be no acceptable way for Israelis or Americans to defend themselves, besides "sich besinnen und nicht loszuschlagen" (come to their senses and not strike out).

So it seems fair to ask: What makes Augstein write this stuff? His not-so-latent anti-Semitism? His anti-Americanism? His hopes for a smug Augstein-socialist version of a "We're back" (Wir sind wieder wer) Germany? Envy those who are free of these. But not Rudolf Augstein. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:42:00 PM -- |    

 

Pretty tricky
Via Steve Den Beste, the Washington Post article "Plan Would Store Nuclear Warheads":

The Bush administration's new strategic nuclear plan would keep in storage thousands of warheads being removed from the active arsenal under a pledge given by President Bush, defense officials acknowledged Wednesday.

That's instead of taking them out of circulation altogether by destroying them. I wrote "Disarmament and missile defense: one step forward, two steps back?" back in late November, when the Crawford arms "cuts" were announced. Looks like it should have been "One half step forward, two steps back."

As Steve notes, the Russians are not amused. I can't say I blame them. It seems to me that this is the kind of thing you can do once, at great cost to future relations. Putin is no saint, but he hasn't made the trouble he could have so far; we may have seen all the cooperation we're going to get. Good thing the Afghanistan fight is winding down, too bad there's a lot left to do. posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:58:00 PM -- |    

 

Internal Palestinian strife over Karine A affair?
The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reports at the end of an article ("Powell: PA linked to arms ship, no direct connection to Arafat") today:

Officials in the Palestinian Authority are split over the Karine A affair, Israel Radio reported. Both allies and enemies of Fuad Shubaki [and] Abu Mughrabi thought to have masterminded the weapons smuggling plot, are trading accusations of blame for conception of the plot and its failure.

These officials admitted that it has become clear to them that elements with in the Palestinian Defense establishment had conceived of the plot to smuggle weapons from Iran aboard the ship Karine A into Palestinian held areas of the West Bank.

According to an article from the New York Times ("Skipper Ties Arms Cargo to Arafat's Group"), Shubaki is a close aide to Arafat. It may be worth noting that according to this article, the Karine A captain only dealt with Shubaki's subordinate Mughrabi by radio, under the assumed name Adelwallah -- and never saw him. So my current theory -- Hamas/Hezbollah subversion of highly placed PA naval personnel -- is still alive. Of course, so is the theory that Arafat himself ordered the weapons.

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1/11, 10:30pm: units->personnel makes more sense. posted by Thomas Nephew at 4:43:00 PM -- |    

 

No point, I just think it's cool how they put this together
There's a Michael Crichton or Greg Bear novel in this somewhere: a NASA press release says "Ancient supernova may have triggered eco-catastrophe." Johns Hopkins scientists are suggesting that the supernova may have wiped out marine bivalves 2 million years ago by damaging the Earth's ozone layer and killing the plankton they feed on.

The new theory brings together puzzling clues from several different fields of research, including paleontology, geology and astronomy.

Narciso Benítez, an associate research scientist in astronomy in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at The Johns Hopkins University, says the "missing smoking gun" that brought the clues together was the revelation that a stellar cluster with many large, short-lived stars prone to producing supernovae had passed near Earth's solar system several million years ago.

The JHU scientists would like more confirming evidence, but the theory seems to be a good one. The story (1) illustrates to me how space telescopy (turns out the data were from the ESA "Hipparcos" telescope, not from Hubble) is having completely unexpected effects on research, (2) how the Internet itself may be catalyzing research: putting together the astronomical findings with the geological ones must have been much easier with the library and database access available today, and (3) may be an example of how "virtual astronomy" works, using astronomical observations archived in specialized databases to answer questions not necessarily envisioned when the observations were made. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:54:00 PM -- |    

 

German bloggers: an occasional series
I suddenly realized: there must be German bloggers! What are they up to? How do they differ from the American community of bloggers, especially the 9/11 "warbloggers" and their (our) political brethren?

Of course, that last question assumes that there is such a community in the first place. I don't like to use the word "community": it evokes memories of meetings that last too long, earnestness, misunderstandings escalating into ill feelings, and agendas never fully shared. (Hmm.) Instead of that kind of handwaving definition of "community", let me suggest another, in which some kind of network analysis is performed counting permanent links, referrals, etc., and resulting in charts showing a few heavily linked and visited bloggers: Andrew Sullivan, Reynolds, Den Beste, Layne, Johnson, Jarvis, and Welch; a few less heavily linked, say Hofer, Samizdat, Blair etc.; and myself and most others as relatively small. Likewise, some kind of political text analysis -- again, of the sites I frequent (see "blog tour" under Backflips) -- might show the predominant strain of political philosophy to be a kind of libertarian/Jacksonian/pragmatic mix, with the odd liberal thrown in for flavoring. This doubtless reflects my own "contrarian liberal" tendencies, but I think it might ring true for many other blog readers out there.

By contrast, there really is no "warblog" scene per se in Germany, and the whole scene seems more decentralized, more ironic and less political than the Anglosphere+lutefisk blog-circles I frequent. PC tendencies prevail, and the average German blogger, while predictably "fassungslos" (shocked) and/or "zutiefst betroffen" (deeply moved) when 9/11 happened, quickly recovered and began posting concerns about American saber-rattling and starving Afghans within days, sometimes within hours.

That's not to say there aren't some remarkable blogs, voices in the wilderness, and sharp writing whether you like what's said or not. Herewith the first of a few reviews of the best and/or (apparently) the most popular politically oriented German blogs. It's an interesting case, I think.

Le Sofa Blogger: the lonely fight of Peter Praschl
Le Sofa Blogger is one part of "le sofa: a virtual hangout," in which a group of 7 or 8 people from what appears to be the Munich area do tag-team blogging. Of the group, Peter Praschl is the most active blog poster, and has generated some nationwide dead-tree news attention and controversy in Germany. That's because Praschl is the single iconoclast figure I've run across among overseas German bloggers. On September 25, he eschewed the usual hand-wringing about Bush, sabers, etc. etc. in favor of a long, angry soliloquy ("Endless loops"). Praschl was on vacation in Tunisia when he learned of 9/11, so German newspapers were hard to come by:

... The first newspapers with more in them than one has seen. Background, lead articles. I glean from the [Munich newspaper] Süddeutsche, that one must have begun balancing the books in Germany. They don't say that the people in the WTC deserved their fate, but they see to it that one gets the idea. The ignorance of American foreign policy, especially in the Middle East, the desperation of the Arabs, the humiliation, the unsolved Palestine problem. That it's senseless to bomb somebody or other and not solve the problems. And so on. It sounds as if the attackers had something like a position, that one ought to consider. And as if the destruction of the WTC and all the humans inside was something that could be answeredd in some other way than Bush is doing. Except nobody says how that would work. Negotiations? A Marshall Plan for the fundamentalists? Declaring a Palestinian state? Symposiums to deepen mutual understanding?[...]

Whatever Osama Bin Laden had to do with the WTC attack, its high time to remove the Taliban. Is that a solution? Yes, I think. The fewer people who believe women shouldn't go to school, shouldn't get medical treatment, can't be allowed to use make-up, who shoot adulterers, forbid tape players, forbid music, forbid card games, forbid nail polish, the better for the world, and not just for the western world. If the West had been good, it would have bombed the Taliban a long time ago; if it bombs them now, it will improve, at least a little bit. [...]

Praschl stuck to his angry guns for quite a while thereafter. It was one of the later posts that got him a "takedown" of sorts in the German newsweekly Die Tageszeitung (TAZ), the +/- "Village Voice" of Germany. In the 30-point post, titled "Rules of Engagement," Praschl unwisely confessed that (to paraphrase) he didn't give a rat's ass about Afghan civilians. In context, he may have meant that he didn't have the exaggerated concern for their well-being that anti-war types professed (but maybe he just meant he didn't give a rat's ass). A self-righteous twit by the name of Roger Willemsen at TAZ decided to pound him for it -- in a contemptuous tone that didn't sit well with many of Le Sofa Blogger's visitors, to the distortion of this point, and to the exclusion of discussing any of his other points, such as

8. Maybe you are so sick of pacifists, because you're quite certain that the people whose suffering they use in arguments are just as unimportant to them as they are to you... [...]

13. Hard to take, the way Germans critique American warmaking. Of all people. There's never been as much reparations. [lit:becoming good again, play on words of "Wiedergutmachung", the German reparations to Israel. -TN] [...]

15. And the oil fields, of course. Hard to believe, how many oil fields are waiting to be explored by the Americans. Usually [these war opponents] say that reserves are dwindling. [...]

28. My rather gallant desire not to rub too many noses in it has been one reason I've hung back on the issue; the other is the sheer mawkish melodrama with which too many journalists have written about the events. Of all the acres of newsprint, only the words of Christopher Hitchens seem to resonate above the mire of mediocre opinion and received wisdom; that the bottom line about the men who did this is that they committed the act not so that innocents may have the right to live freely on the West Bank, but so that they might have the right to throw acid in the faces of innocent unveiled women in Baghdad and Bradford. Resistance is essential; any attempt to understand or compromise with such madness is to become part of the madness oneself.

Willemsen continued to pillory Praschl, who fought back gamely for a while. Comments about his posts were mixed, and support from other "Sofa" bloggers appears to have been nonexistent. Reading on, I get the impression this wasn't what Praschl had signed up for. The political posts have dwindled, to be replaced with lighter but still interesting fare about Japanese prints at the Library of Congress, chin-pulling about blogs vs. journalism, and the like.

Nevertheless, and whether despite or because of this controversy, the other thing I notice about Le Sofa Blog is this: it's one of the most consistently featured links in German blogs. It just might be that Praschl is saying things many people like to read, but that few are willing to write. posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:19:00 PM -- |    

 

Depends what you think his job really is
Jeff Jarvis, Ken Layne and others complain that Tom Ridge isn't doing anything. Jarvis has a poll asking, "Is Tom Ridge doing his job?" I'd say "Of course!" It seems to me the Office of Flak-catching Defense -- excuse me, Homeland Defense -- is working precisely as it was designed to. You want progress, get after his boss. posted by Thomas Nephew at 9:43:00 PM -- |    

 

Is it the entire Palestinian Authority, or "just" some of their naval police?
Not news to anyone by now, just recorded here: ABC News: "Israel releases detailed account of its seizure of an arms shipment at sea". The story connects the dots between the Palestinian Authority, Hezbollah, and Iran. Or at least elements thereof.

On Sunday, an Israeli military official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the Karine A was purchased in Lebanon by Adel Mughrabi, who it said buys arms for the Palestinian Authority.

The ship sailed to Sudan, where it picked up a cargo of "innocent merchandise" that it took to Yemen, the official said. In Yemen's port of Hudayda, the original crew was replaced by a crew headed by Omar Akawi, a colonel in the Palestinian naval police, the official said.

Last month, on orders from Mughrabi, the vessel sailed to a point near the island of Qeys, off the coast of Iran, to a prearranged meeting with a ferry that had brought the weapons in about 80 large crates, the official said.

The arms included Katyusha rockets, guided anti-tank missiles, mortars, anti-tank mines, machine guns, assault rifles, explosives and large quantities of ammunition.

Inside the crates the weapons were packed in watertight plastic cylinders that were manufactured in Iran and can be set to float at whatever depth is desired, the official said.

One crew member, a Palestinian diver, had been trained by the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon on how to operate the cylinders, the official said, adding that a Hezbollah instructor was on board the ferry and gave the diver a last-minute refresher course.

At best you have a Palestinian Authority (PA), or at least its navy, completely riddled with Hezbollah/Hamas types, to the extent that they can write a check to buy a ship. At worst, of course, Arafat himself was caught with his pants down. Maybe I have "best" and "worst" reversed here, or more to the point, they're equally bad. It's hard to envision this submarine-cargo method working without the connivance and cooperation of high-to-highest level PA naval personnel. As described, the operation seems to imply that using PA boats to pick up a few cylinders at a time is the most efficient way of breaking a pretty effective Israeli blockade. Not for long, I would guess; look for a lot fewer PA boats that float over the next few days. Interesting that one of the two attackers who killed four IDF soldiers today (partly for "the piracy of capturing the ship"! now that's chutzpah) was himself a PA naval police officer. posted by Thomas Nephew at 3:03:00 PM -- |    

 

Opening the Somalia campaign?
The BBC reports "Ethiopian troops 'deploy' in Somalia", stating that its sources indicate about 300 troops have deployed in the city of Garowe in northern Somalia. The Ethiopian government denies the report, but has been supporting opposition forces in Somalia for some time.

The Munich newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung's Nairobi correspondent, Michael Bitala, speculates that this is part of the US anti-terror campaign, noting that Ethiopian forces attacked "Al-Ittihad al Islamiya" terrorist camps in Somalia in 1996; the group is considered an ally of Al Qaeda, and may have helped assemble the bomb used in the bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi.

Meanwhile, the German newspaper Die Welt reports that a German naval units will pass the Straits of Gibraltar today on its way to the Horn of Africa, where they will patrol the coasts of Somalia, Yemen, and the Sudan on lookout for ships carrying weapons. Correspondent Diethart Goos reports that the three frigates and five cutters ("Schnellboote" transported separately in special cargo ships) can fire across the bow of ships fleeing inspection, and then fire directly on such ships -- not surprising, one would think, but given a "this is for real" headline: "German navy off Somalia may use live ammunition". A somewhat disturbing note: the German naval units are apparently commanded by a newly formed Potsdam leadership group near Berlin, rather than the officers stationed in the Glücksburg naval headquarters; this may complicate or delay quick decisions in crisis situations.

Finally, Die Welt also reports that a 50-man German ABC (anti-atomic, -biological, -chemical weapons) unit will deploy to Kuwait in the next few days, to prepare for the rest of the 250 soldiers to be deployed there. Kuwait has accepted that 20 to 25 "Fuchs" reconnaissance tanks will be deployed. Despite being within the "Arabian peninsula" zone accepted by the Bundestag, the news has prompted concern that this signals a fight with Iraq:

FDP [opposition party] military expert Jürgen Koppelin demanded that the parliament be exactly informed, if a "new Iraq focus" is developing. "We should already know in advance, if there is a request by the Americans or from Kuwait," said the FDP politician.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 6:08:00 PM -- |    

 

I think this is called "displacement"
CNN.com (via lgf): Earth escapes brush with killer asteroid. From a photo caption:

The space rock 2001 YB5, identified by the arrow, could have wiped out France, according to a scientist in Britain.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:56:00 AM -- |    

 

Reproductive cloning: a temporary moratorium is not enough
Since I've written about reproductive cloning before (most recently on 12/18/2001), I was interested to see Tim Blair's note that Jason Soon had written about the topic. Mr. Soon's post was prompted by the news that the sheep clone named Dolly may have premature arthritis. He notes correctly that the arthritis may not be due to cloning, but also notes correctly that there are plausible grounds to think it is: the adult somatic cell used to create the Dolly clone may not have "forgotten" how old it is, and that may affect the onset of arthritis. Mr. Soon draws a responsible conclusion, but with an important qualification:

Even if it turns out that Dolly's premature arthritis didn't have anything to do with her cloning, the point is that until the technology has been improved and refined beyond some reasonable point it may lead to abnormalities which severely reduce the quality of life of the clone.This isn't an argument for permanent regulation, mind you, just a cooling off period until more research has been done to iron out the bugs in the process.

Soon cites an article by Ron Bailey, science correspondent for Reason (the libertarian journal): "Twin Freaks: Should Human Cloning be Banned? Maybe." that suggests:

It would be far better for research to continue on cloning other species until scientists understand why the abnormalities occur and can reliably correct them. For example, it might be possible one day to test a whole suite of pre-embryos and then implant only the ones with the proper imprinting. A good benchmark for deciding to proceed with human reproductive cloning would be when researchers are reasonably sure that clones would suffer no more likelihood of birth defects (about 2 percent) than do children produced by sexual reproduction, either in vitro or by conventional means. It's too early now.

Attempting to clone a human being now can be thought of as behaving so negligently that one has a high likelihood of maiming a person. It is appropriate to protect people from very negligent behaviors. However, bans unfortunately have a way of becoming permanent. How about a ban limited to five years during which research on cloning other mammals proceeds? One of the worst things that could happen to the hopes of infertile people who look to reproductive cloning as way of having kids, would be for today's hasty cloning efforts to produce defective children. Public revulsion at such an occurrence could set back reproductive cloning for decades.

Mr. Soon may be right to consider this as reasonable and cautious a discussion of the issues by a libertarian as one might hope for. If so, this may simply be an issue where libertarian analysis fails. I would hope not; I would hope that libertarians would argue against medical experiments -- no matter how intriguing -- on nonconsenting human beings, particularly when the treatment effects are both life itself and all its burdens, and the subjects can never be withdrawn from the experiment. But perhaps the right to untrammelled -- or at most, delayed -- research and actions of any sort, no matter the consequences, is the hallmark of libertarian philosophy. While I applaud their caution, I think both Mr. Soon and Mr. Bailey are still too concerned with the survival of a research program, and still not concerned enough about that program's subjects.

Let's stipulate that Mr. Bailey's 2% natural birth defect rate is correct, and is the appropriate target; why even one additional birth defect should be created when it could have been avoided is actually a legitimate objection, but we'll skip that discussion here. Let's instead just reflect on the five year moratorium Mr. Bailey calls for, and assume that during that time, smart, hard-working researchers learn all there is to know about cloning sheep, mice, monkeys, pigs, etc. with a high success rate. They cross-reference this knowledge with everything known about how these test organisms differ from humans, and use this wealth of knowledge to plot out in advance which signs of trouble to look for in that first group of experimental human clone fetuses. Before I go on, let me be clear where I agree with Soon and Bailey: I would have nothing against a clone, and would not have any apprehensions or concerns about the vague difficulties he or she may have reflecting on individuality, parentage, spirituality, or what have you. Being human, they would have every human right I do.

At any rate, the five year moratorium is up; game plan in hand, the human reproductive cloning process begins; one by one, fetuses are aborted as telltale signs of trouble are observed. Unlike some, I'm relieved: maybe they'll all be aborted before personhood can reasonably be inferred; as I've noted before, I have no particular qualms about very early stage embryos. At some point, though, no more signs of trouble are detected, no more test fetuses are aborted, and abortion itself becomes immoral; I'll gloss over at what point I would no longer hope for termination, and begin crossing my fingers that their lives are long and prosperous. Whatever stage you choose, and surely prior to birth, that's when the real and irreversible experiment on these human beings begins. No matter how thoroughly prepared the researchers are, they will have prepared with nonhuman organisms, and their data, while suggestive, can not be used to predict a 2%, 50%, 0% or any other likelihood of human birth defects gross or subtle: that's what this clinical trial is for. The soonest Mr. Bailey's target of 2% or less likelihood of human birth defects can be fairly adduced is after fifty human clones are brought to term and observed for a lifetime.

Those fifty children would be a reproach to us all, even if all fifty ultimately had long and happy lives; the experiment itself is wrong. I imagine some might argue it's the prerogative of the parents. I dispute that: it is no more the prerogative of parents to do this than it would be to subject their five year old to medieval trial by ordeal. The doctors and scientists engaging in the research would be even less deserving of praise or pardon: avoidable human experimentation without the possibility of withdrawal or consent is wrong.

It's not the outcome; it's the process. It's not human reproductive cloning per se, it's the first experimental trials that would be unethical. Unfortunately for reproductive cloning proponents, that should amount to the same thing. posted by Thomas Nephew at 7:12:00 PM -- |