STEM CELL LANGUAGE ERRORS

A lady recently wrote to the local paper arguing
that stem cell research involves killing a child.
This is a widely held view, with neither truth nor
logic in its corner. Clearly, a cluster of cells that
can be frozen for years and stored cryogenically
without harm is not a baby. You can't do that
with a baby. So they are not the same, by any
stretch of the wild imagination!

The confusion comes in using the word "human"
in different and misleading ways. It is often used
as an adjective to describe tissue as human. It
can also be used as a noun to refer to a person as
a human. Mixing the terms leads to this logical
error: an embryo is living; an embryo is human,
ergo an embryo is a living human being!

No, you could do the same thing with an appen-
dix, or any other human part. It's called the fal-
lacy of composition. Here's another example:
That dog is mine. That dog is a mother. Ergo:
that dog is my mother!

The reason you can freeze embryos is because
they don't breathe. They have no lungs, or heart,
or blood or brains. In fact, there's a lot of essen-
tial human stuff they don't have. So they aren't
fully humans! How could you be, without any of
that human stuff?

An embryo is a fragmented, or partial human:
the DNA part. Otherwise, it's a cluster of cells
with a lot of potential. What dies in stem-cell
research is that particular potential. But it gives
birth to further potential for saving other lives
that are already fully functioning, but without
the research will die. It's a trade-off, isn't it?
With no easy answers of simple definitions. Be-
ware of simplicities: they may lead us astray.

Note: I'm only defending the use for stem cell
research of embryos that would otherwise be
discarded and thrown away.

jgoodwin004@centurytel.net

PHONY "SOCIALIST" SCARE

We thought it was silly last fall when
candidates Mc Cain and Palen took up
the "socialist" claim against Obama. Now
it has gotten ridiculous, with senators,
congressmen, and assorted ditto heads
along with most of the nitwits at Fox Noise
parroting this nonsense. Michael Lind
writes (Salon 3/7/09): "Once upon a time
in the United States, public goods -- from
retirement security and energy research to
public roads -- were provided by the govern-
ment and paid for by taxes. As late as the
Nixon administration, the provision of
public goods by government was consid-
ered perfectly compatible with a robust
market economy by so-called Modern Re-
publicans like Eisenhower and Nixon as
well as New Deal Democrats like Roose-
velt, Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson. In
the intervening 40 years, however, free
market fundamentalists of the Chicago
School have managed to change the de-
bate, redefining "socialism" to mean not
only public ownership of the means of
production (the historical meaning), but
also public provision of public goods."

Which redefinition, of course, makes ex-
actly no sense at all. (Paul Krugman, James
K. Galbraith and George Soros are a few of
the foremost economists who have written
recent books soundly refuting the whole
free market liturgy, and Alan Greenspan
(long one of its most devout apostles), has
recently admitted that his faith was mis-
placed.

The truth is that our government has been
spending tax money to advance the public
good from our earliest days. In 1803 Tho-
mas Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase,
acquiring in one visionary stroke what is now
about one-third of our land. Abe Lincoln
not only gave away millions of acres of that
land through the Homestead Act, and mill-
ions more to the states for land-grant col-
leges, but also millions of acres to railroads
along with multi-million dollar loans to
build a transcontinental railroad. These
were all public programs that supported
private enterprises without the slightest
harm to capitalism. They used public funds
to promote the public good.

Also in the early days, the state of New York
built the 300 mile long Erie Canal to connect
the Great Lakes with New York City, making
the latter the biggest and richest city in the
country. Under Teddy Roosevelt, the U. S.
government built the Panama Canal, con-
necting the two great oceans. Previously,
corporations had attempted that difficult
feat, and failed. That is a great story, and
is told brilliantly in a new book by Felix Ro-
hatyn entitled: Bold Endeavors: How Our
Government Built America, and Why It
Must Rebuild Now. This book gives a fasci-
nating history of leadership required, and
the political obstacles overcome to get these
and other programs, like F. D. R.'s reforms
accomplished during the Great Depression.
I'll plan to go into these more later.

Jgoodwin004@centurytel.net

NO, HE'S STUCK

Can Obama Avoid a Quagmire in Afghani-
stan? That is the title of a good article in Time
(Mar. 5, '09) by Joe Klein. Joe doesn't say it in
so many words, but he lays out clearly many of
the reasons why the answer is "no." It's the law
of diminishing returns: the more violence, the
more resistance. An increase in our troops there
means an increase in violence, as in Vietnam.

This is not Iraq. Iraq is flat terrain, and acces-
sible from the sea. It has been conquered re-
peately over the centuries. Afghanistan is "the
graveyard of empires." Alexander the Great
gave up there without subduing the country.
Ditto for Genghis Khan. Both had been succes-
ful everywhere else. The British army at the
height of empire in the 19th century was badly
beaten there, and had to retreat in the dead
of winter. Of the 15,000 troops that left Kabul,
one soldier made it out alive to Islamabad. They
let him live to tell the sad tale.

We all know what happened to the Soviet army
there. They had 160,000 troops involved at the
end. We'll have 50,00 of ours there when the
additional 17,000 arrive. It's not nearly enough.
Will it ever be enough! The more wedding par-
ties our drones wipe out by mistake, the more
doors we bust down in the middle of the night
and drag men out and throw them in the pig-sty
at Bagram (Gitmo East), the more support grows
for the Taliban. At some point the people are
going to rise up and say "enough -- get out!"

The Afghanis don't like foreigners. Never have.
Especially when they are not Muslims. In fact,
their religion demands that they throw non-
Muslim invaders out. And they are very religious.
And excellent fighters. Some of the best in the
world. They enjoy it. And the terrain there is
the worst in the world to fight in. It heavily fa-
vors the home team.

Yes, it's a quagmire all right. And yes, Pres. O.
is stuck there, just like L. B. J. was in Viet Nam,
and for similar political reasons. Obama felt he
had to talk tough during the campaign in regard
to Afghanistan because he was getting out of Iraq.
He couldn't sound soft on terrorism. So now the
proper course there, distasteful as it is, is to make
some kind of deal. Something like Pakistan has
done in the Swat valley. But that isn't politically
feasible. So we'll soldier on. We can't be defeated
tactically. We already have been strategically. My
reason for saying that was given by Fareed Zaka-
ria recently in Newsweek (2/9/09): " If the pro-
blems with Pakistan cannot be solved, the war in
Afghanistan cannot be won." It's as simple as that.
And P. S.: Our problems with Pakistan cannot be
solved as long as we take India's side in the Kash-
mir dispute. India refuses to let a free vote in
Kashmir decide whether it's part of India or part
of Pakistan. We support India in that refusal.
Our position, of course, is a repudiation of the
democracy we piously preach all over the world.
And it's also a denial of basic justice for the Mus-
lim majority in Kashmir. So as long as we're
wrong there, we're wrong everywhere in the
Muslim world. And Pakistan's main enemy will
always be India. A Taliban victory in Afghani-
stan is in Pakistan's interest because it's against
India's. That's why we can't get the Pakistan
army excited about fighting the Taliban. They
(the P. army, that is) are basically independent
of any political control, anyway. They allowed
Benazir Bhutto to be murdered. They could have
protected her if they wanted to. But she would
have attempted civilian control of the army, had
she been elected. They didn't want that!

Joe Klein (in the article cited above) ably reviews
some of the outstanding complications in our re-
lationship with Pakistan. He writes: "Our pri-
mary goal has to be to shut down the al-Qaeda
and Taliban safe havens on the Pak. side of the
border. If that can be managed, then the insur-
gency in Afghanistan becomes manageable." (Em-
phasis mine) Well, it isn't and won't be. And, as
Fareed said, if that's the case, then the war in
Afghanistan can't be won. That's the sad truth.
Until the President understands and accepts
that, we'll continue kill and be killed for no good
purpose. We're stuck there.

Jgoodwin004@centurytel.net

THE PREDATOR STATE

To help understand what has happened to this
country over the past 30 years, I am drawing
extensively from an article in Mother Jones
(May, 2006) by James K. Galbraith (JKG),
titled "The Predator State." It states a thesis
that he developed and explained fully in a book
by the same name that appeared last year.
(Galbraith is a distinguished professor of eco-
nomics at the Univ. of Texas.) In the article he
writes about the free market religion: "The
doctrines of the 'law and economics" movement,
now ascendant in our courts, hold that if people
are rational, if markets can be 'contested,' if
memory is good and information adequate, then
firms will adhere on their own to norms of
honorable conduct. (Emphasis mine.) Any
public presence in the economy undermines this.
Even insurance -- whether deposit insurance or
Social Security -- is perverse, for it encourages
irresponsible risk taking. Banks will lend to bad
clients, workers will 'live for today,' companies
will speculate with their pension funds; the move-
ment has even argued that seat belts foster reck-
less driving. Insurance, in other words, creates a
'moral hazard' for which 'market discipline' is the
cure; all works for the best when thought and
planning do not interfere. It's a strange vision,
and if we weren't governed by people like John
Roberts and Sam Alito, who pretend to believe it,
it would scarcely be worth our attention."

"In the mixed-economy I grew up in" (continues
JKG a little further down), "there existed a post-
capitalist, post-Marxian vision of middle-class
identity. It consisted of shared assets and en-
titlements, of which the bedrock was public edu-
cation, access to college, good housing, full em-
ployment at living wages, Medicare, and Social
Security. These programs, publicly provided,
financed or guaranteed, had softened the rough
edges of Great Depression capitalism, rewarding
the sacrifices that won the Second World War.
They also showcased America, demonstrating to
those behind the Iron Curtain that regulated
capitalism could yield prosperity far beyond the
capacities of state planning. (This, and not the
arms race, ultimately brought down the Soviet
empire.) These middle-class institutions survive
in America today, but they are frayed and tat-
tered from constant attack. (Ital. mine) And
the division between those included and those
excluded is large and obvious to all."

"Today (still Galbraith), the signature of American
capitalism is neither benign competition, nor class
struggle, nor an inclusive middle-class utopia. In-
stead, predation has become the dominant feature
-- a system wherein the rich come to feast on de-
caying systems built for the middle-class. The
predatory class is not the whole of the wealthy;
it may be opposed by many others of similar
wealth. But it is the defining feature, the leading
force. And its agents are in full control of the
government under which we live." (Emph. mine.)

He continues: "Our rulers deliver favors to their
clients. These range from Native American casino
operators, to Appalachian coal companies, to Saipan
sweatshop operators, to the would-be oil field
operators of Iraq. They include the misanthropes
who led the campaign to abolish the estate tax;
Charles Schwab, who suggested the dividend tax
cut of 2003; the 'Benedict Arnold' companies who
move their taxable income offshore; and the finan-
cial institutions behind last year's bankruptcy bill.
Everywhere you look, public decisions yield gains
to specific private entities."

"For in a predatory regime, nothing is done for
public reasons. Indeed, the men in charge do not
recognize that 'public purposes' exist." (That's why
they let our infrastructure degrade, I comment.)
"They have friends, and enemies, and as for the
rest -- we're the prey. Hurricane Katrina illus-
trated this perfectly, as Halliburton scooped up
contracts (a la The Shock Doctrine by Naomi
Klein, me again.) And Bush hamstrung Kathleen
Blanco, the Democratic governor of Louisiana.
The population of New Orleans was, at best, an
afterthought; once dispersed, it was quickly
forgotten."

Professor Galbraith says further: "The predator-
prey model explains some things that other mo-
dels cannot: in particular, cycles of prosperity
and depression. Growth among the prey stimu-
lates predation. The two populations grow to-
gether at first, but when the balance of power
shifts toward the predators (through rising in-
terest rates, utility rates, oil prices, or embezzle-
ments), both can crash abruptly. When they do,
it takes a long time for either to recover."

Remember: JKG wrote this in Mother Jones
three years ago. It was predictive, as well as
descriptive. He continues: "The predatory model
can also help us understand why many rich people
have come to hate the Bush administration. For
predation is the enemy of honest business. (my
emph.)In a world where the winners are all
connected, it's not only the prey who lose out. It's
everyone who hasn't licked the appropriate boots.
Predatory regimes are like protection rackets:
powerful and feared, but neither loved nor respec-
ted. They do not enjoy a broad political base."
(That last was also predictive.)

"In a predatory economy, the rules imagined by
the law and economics (free mkt) crowd don't
apply. There's no market discipline. Predators
compete not by following the rules but by break-
ing them. They take the business-school view of
law: Rules are not designed to guide behaviour
but laid down to define the limits of unpunished
conduct. Once one gets close to the line, stepping
over it is easy. A predatory economy is crimino-
genic: it fosters and rewards criminal behaviour.
(Madoff and Stanford, Abramoff, Enron , etc.,etc.,
ad nauseum) Why don't markets provide the
discipline? Why don't 'reputation effects'
secure good behaviour? Economists have been
slow to answer these questions, but now we have
a full-blown theory in a book by my colleague
William K. Black, The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is
to Own One."

The subtitle for JKG's book is: "How Conservatives
Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals
Should Too." Obviously, it was written B. O. (be-
fore Obama.) We'll have to see whether O. sees
the problem or is prepared to deal with it. Some
of his appointments are not reassuring, because
a lot of them come from the Clinton crew, who
got very rich in the system. His closest econo-
mics people were trained in and enriched by,
the wall street and banking crowd that ran the
Ponzi scheme that has now crashed. These folks
are still pampering the banks and indulging their
whims with taxpayer's bucks. That isn't change
I can believe in! Small banks are being taken
over every day by the F. D. I. C. and either
liquidated, sold, or cleaned up and restored.
Paul Krugman calls the big banks "zombies,"
(dead men walking) and says the government
should treat them the say way as little banks.
Instead we are throwing good money after bad.
Insanity is repeating the same behaviour and
expecting a different result.

jgoodwin004@centurytel.net

THE GREAT DENIAL

Ronald Regan famously taught us that "gov-
ernment is the problem." He had it half
right: bad government is the problem, as we
have learned, to our grief, over the past eight
years! In the '30s we saw good government
build dams and bridges and put millions of
idle people to work on roads, woods, building,
and conservation.

Yes, I know: ignorant potato heads on TV are
parroting the old Republican mantra that F. D. R.'s
reforms "didn't work." They cite (correctly) the
fact that we didn't fully recover from the Great
Depression until WW II. 80% recovery doesn't
count for anything! It's all or nothing for those
clowns. And yes, they really are funny, arguing
this nonsense in the hallowed halls of congress!
Lying by omission, they leave out some impor-
tant facts: unemployment went from 25% of the
work force in 1933 (FDR's first year in office) to
13% in 1936. That's a huge improvement! In
1937 FDR listened to the budget hawks who
were alarmed by the deficit, and cut back on his
spending. It caused a recession. A short one.
He gave it full throttle again in '38 and we re-
sumed growth right away.

If you'll Google "the great depression," you'll
learn that while GNP fell a record 13.4% in 1932,
it grew by more than 8% in 1934, and kept im-
proving steadily from then on, except for 1937.
By 1936 national GDP exceeded the level in 1929
(the height of the boom) and went on up from
there. By the time of Pearl Harbor it was up 90%
from 1933. Don't tell me government programs
weren't working! That's hogwash.

Now we are hearing that government stimulus
of the economy "won't work" because it didn't
work for FDR! In other words, because his pro-
grams only cut unemployment in half, they were
worthless. Wouldn't be nice if we could cut un-
employment from, say 9%, to 4.5%? Wouldn't
that be good? In the first full year that FDR's
program kicked in (1934) the economy grew by
8% (according to Paul Krugman). If we could do
4%, wouldn't that be a great help? Because we
can't do everything is not an argument for doing
nothing! More tax cuts for the rich are worse
than nothing. They add to the deficit without
helping the economy. No reputable economist
says differently.

Our new treasury secretary says "governments
are terrible managers of bad assets." Well duh,
who isn't? Can you tell me who is a good mana-
ger of "bad assets"?

The new secretary, who is supposed to be a
genius (and I wish him well), said: "there's no
good history of governments doing that well."
Really? Is there "good history (or bad)" of any-
one else doing it better? How about the guys in
charge now: the ones who ran the train off the
track on a trestle. Should they still be in charge?
There is no history -- good or bad -- of anyone
managing "bad assets" well. It can't be done.
You pay 'em off, write 'em off, flush them or
whatever, and go on. And that's what we need
to do with the old mythology about FDR, market
infallibility, supply side economics, and the magic
of tax cuts. That false religion is what got us here!

jgoodwin004@centurytel.net

WHEN "COLLATERAL DAMAGE" MAY
DECIDE THE CASE AND DIPLOMACY
BE TONE DEAF, IF NOT FUTILE

We aren't winning in Afghanistan, and no one
claims we are. When fighting a highly moti-
vated, well led insurgency, if you aren't win-
ning, you are losing. And if you are alienating
ever more of the population the longer you
stay, as we did in Vietnam, you know the re-
sult. Two things that alienate the people in
Afghanistan: 1) the widespread corruption
that reaches high into the Karzai government
that we put in power and support. And 2)
our over-reliance on air power due to a short-
age of ground troops results in too many cas-
ualties among non-combatants. Our smart
bombs go where they are sent, but they can't
tell wedding parties from raiding parties. When
they confuse the two and 17 of the wrong people
are killed, which has happened several times in
the past year, it causes great, lasting anger and
alienation. Counterinsurgency becomes ex-
tremely difficult if not impossible when that
keeps happening.

We are sending more troops, but more troops
need more supplies, which must come through
Pakistan. There are now one and a half million
Muslims. Increasing numbers of them are be-
ing swayed toward Islamism, which seeks to
have religious rule in all Muslim countries. That
trend is gaining in Pakistan.

Now, not all Islamists are violent or jihadis, but
that number too is growing. Their principal
grievances, besides the non-clergy dictatorships
in Muslim countries, and the secular governments
(like Pakistan) in others, are related to two toxic
(for Muslims) policies of the U. S.: 1) Our un-
critical backing (and huge financial support) for
Israel and everything it does to the Palestinians.
2) Our long-time and continuing backing for India
in its refusal to hold and abide by a free election
in Kashmir to determine whether it belongs to
India or Pakistan. The Muslim majority, of
course, wants to be part of Pakistan. There are
terrorist groups in Pakistan, some connected to
ISI, Pakistani Intel, who are regularly attacking
Indians. Such was apparently the situation in
the recent bombing of Mumbai. (Where a Jewish
center was also attacked, you'll recall.) The U. S.
is a great champion of democracy and self-deter-
mination unless it relates to Israel/Palestine or
India and Kashmir. Then we see no evil, hear no
evil, etc. We are deaf, dumb and blind. And mor-
ally out to sea! (Adrift, that is.)


BOTTOM LINE: "If the problems with Paki-
stan cannot be solved, the war in Afghanistan
cannot be won." (I'm quoting Fareed Zakaria
in the 2/9/09 Newsweek, emphasis mine.) He's
right, of course. And it's unlikely that anything
will be resolved with Pakistan until and unless
the Palestinians get justice and their own country,
and the Kashmir issue is settled equitably and
democratically. Diplomacy that ignores these
facts is tone deaf and in fact, as futile as our
efforts in Afghanistan without the all-out help
of Pakistan.

jgoodwin004@centurytel.net

CONGRATULATIONS!

WE WON! We got rid of Saddam. Yea!
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! I don't know who
won, but I know who lost: the Iraqi people. Four
million lost their homes. Most of those folks will
be permanently displaced. More than a million
lost their lives. We burned the house to kill the
rats. Just like Viet-Nam. That's not just stupid.
It's immoral when it's not even your house!

And we destroyed their infrastructure. Kids
are continuing to die there from drinking dirty
water. The water is laced with feces because we
destroyed their sewage treatment and water
treatment plants. Why did we do that? Because
we went to war against the whole country and
its people, even though it was just Saddam and
and a few cronies who were truly evil. And the
people had no control over him, or ability to re-
sist him. It's what happens when we think of
people as enemies, instead of people.

Destroying their water and electric and all 17
bridges across the Tigris didn't help defeat
Saddam. He was beat from the start, practi-
cally, from day one. What it did was infuriate
the population and start feeding an insurrection
that was unnecessary and avoidable, had we
kept their army, police, institutions and infra-
structure intact. (Why we didn't is explained
fully by Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine.)

The insurgency killed a lot of Iraqis and close
to 5,000 of our people. We paid in blood for
depriving their kids of clean drinking water.
It did protect our homeland from attack. Why
would they bother and take the risk to try to
get here to kill Americans when it was easy to
do there? With our guard up, do you think
they could have sneaked enough people in here
to kill 5,000 more of us here at home? Well,
we won though, didn't we?

Let me know what you think!


jgoodwin004@centurytel.net

WAGES OF SIN

"Greed is good," we were told. (By the way,
that's a foundational belief for the market
idolatry that has now crashed.) "Greed drives
the world economy," we were told. Well, it
does. It drove it into the ditch because no one
was steering. We left that to Adam Smith's
imaginary "invisible hand." Smith, who pub-
lished The Wealth of Nations in 1776, was a
devout Presbyterian who understood full well
that greed is one of the seven deadly sins, and
breeds others, like fraud and deception.

Smith was not naive. He said of the captains of
industry: "They aren't together ten minutes be-
fore they are conspiring against the public good."
He advocated therefore a structure of laws and
public morality that required complete trans-
parency in business matters. This was part of
British patriotism in his day. A Brit's word was
his bond. Goods were delivered as represented.
And represented honestly and accurately. His
"invisible hand" in which the market efficiently
allocates labor, resources and rewards, assumed
British people dealing honestly with each other
for the public good. And that''s the only way it
works!

Fast forward to Bernie Madoff and his clones.
His Ponzi scheme worked so well for so long be-
cause it operated within a larger one, in a conta-
gious fever of greed and the atmosphere of a big
casino. It was a rudderless ship of fools, and
bound to smash up. Like the Titanic, it was de-
signed to be unsinkable. In that shipwreck, the
captain ordered full speed ahead when warned
of ice bergs in the area. He didn't know that the
builders had used thinner steel plates than called
for to protect the sides, and inferior rivets to
hold them on. That had been done to increase
profits. Greed and deception killed the captain
and his crew and all the male passengers!

Deception has been prominent and highly re-
warded in the current econ. meltdown. Fabulous
profits and bonuses in the $bns. have been col-
lected by purveyors of false security and false
securities. Now someone has to pay. Guess who?
Some of the crooks may go to jail. But most of
the paying will be done by the public that has
been gulled. The market worshippers are trying
to blame the gulled for the mess. They can't
blame the market! It can't err. The wages of
sin are widely dispersed, even when narrowly
earned.

P. S. If you want to learn more about the market
religion, its myths and methods, and what it has
done to government and our economy during
the past 30 years of its dominance, read the new
book by Thomas Frank: The Wrecking Crew.
He also wrote What's the Matter With Kansas?,
which I have recommended elsewhere. Also,
Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman
frequently addresses the errors and foibles of
the free-market crowd, in his op-ed columns in
the NYT. He's awsome! (I've never said that
before, about anyone, not even Obama, who of
course is also.)