Friday, May 05, 2006
On stand, Lay paints an unusual picture - Print Version - International Herald Tribune
On stand, Lay paints an unusual picture - Print Version - International Herald Tribune: "He could not recall numerous meetings described by Enron directors and executives, in which a variety of concerns were raised about Enron's problems."
On stand, Lay paints an unusual picture
Floyd Norris International Herald Tribune
FRIDAY, MAY 5, 2006
The bad old days were back in Houston as Kenneth Lay, the man who presided over the growth and collapse of Enron, tried to persuade a jury that he does not belong in prison.
This was a witness who still thinks that the funny numbers Enron used were perfectly reasonable and, indeed, show just how healthy the company was.
"Aggressive accounting," Lay believes, is one of the things that made America great.
Reading the testimony is like a trip to the 1990s, when those who complained about corporate manipulation of earnings numbers were seen as cranks.
Whether or not Lay was convincing is for the jury to decide, but he certainly appeared sincere.
Here is what he said to prove that he had no reason in October 2001 to lie to Enron's auditors, and thus avert a large asset write-down that the prosecutor suggested might have caused the company to implode then, rather than a few months later:
"I felt that Enron was incredibly strong," he testified.
"We were getting ready to announce the strongest quarter in our operating business that we'd ever had in the history of the company, as well as a lot of other really positive indicators that we were, in fact, going to continue to grow at a very rapid rate and do very well through the rest of that year and well into the next year."
That was the message of the metrics Enron urged investors to analyze. By those measures, this is a company that went bankrupt without ever reporting a bad quarter.
Did Lay learn that such metrics can mislead? He did not.
He seemed incredulous that anyone would object to his selling $70 million of stock back to Enron in 2001, sales he did not have to report until the next year.
That the reports Lay did file showed him owning 1.7 million more shares than he actually had - while he was telling others to buy the stock - simply reflected decisions made by Enron lawyers, not by him.
Lay took umbrage when the prosecutor, John Hueston, suggested that "one of the most substantive and disturbing allegations" raised by Enron employees was that the company used aggressive accounting.
"Aggressive accounting," he told the prosecutor, "helped a lot of entrepreneurials, including female and African-American entrepreneurials, start businesses that otherwise could not have been created."
Did he really mean to say that the only way to create jobs is to come up with clever ways to make numbers look better? There was no follow-up question.
Lay had trouble remembering things big and small.
He could not recall numerous meetings described by Enron directors and executives, in which a variety of concerns were raised about Enron's problems.
Nor could he recall the name of the yacht that he rented for $200,000 to help celebrate his wife's birthday in 2001. It was the Amnesia.
Was he lying, or is this a man who simply does not see the truth, in the manner of a wife who resolutely ignores evidence that convinces others that her husband is having an affair?
That latter explanation may have merit.
Denials of warnings, some contained in documents he cannot recall, may help his defense against charges that he misled investors, but he could just as easily have said he did not believe the warnings.
His view is that all was well until Enron suffered a loss of market confidence brought on by Wall Street Journal articles and by short-sellers.
Does he bear any responsibility for what happened at Enron in late 2001?
"I did everything I could humanly do during this period of time," he testified.
"Did I make mistakes? I'm sure I did, Mr. Hueston."
When pressed, however, he named just one mistake: "approving the hiring of Andrew Fastow and, of course, promoting him to chief financial officer."
Fastow ran partnerships that made him rich while hiding Enron losses from investors. He was a prosecution witness.
Guilty or not, Lay presided over a company whose collapse led to the biggest change in U.S. securities laws since the Great Depression. It is to be hoped that other executives learned more than he did from the experience.
Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs
April 11, 2006
Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs: "SPEAKING FREELY
Sweet deals: Behind the Iran 'crisis'
By Chris Cook
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing.
On reading the recent wave of stories concerning US readiness to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age unless it gives up efforts to produce nuclear weapons, my first reaction was to be 'shocked and awed'. But then a realization sank in."
[UrukNet] - [Daily Information from Occupied Iraq] - [newsletter 04 May 2006]
| uruknet.info |
www.uruknet.info: a site gathering daily information concerning occupied Iraq: news, analysis, documents and texts of iraqi resistance available in Italian and English.
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[september_eleven_vreeland] Digest Number 1349
There are 5 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Hear audio of Rumsfeld Exposed as a Liar By Recently Ret.CIA Agent
From: ranger116@webtv.net
2. Bush 'janitor' back to mop up
From: "norgesen" <norgesen@yahoo.com>
3. We deserve to know the Truth about 9/11
From: "John Berkowitz" <john@spontinuity.com>
4. 60 years after Nuremberg � how much have we learned?
From: "norgesen" <norgesen@yahoo.com>
5. Edvard Munch: The Modern Life of the Soul
From: "norgesen" <norgesen@yahoo.com>
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 1
Date: Thu, 4 May 2006 16:59:05 -0400
From: ranger116@webtv.net
Subject: Hear audio of Rumsfeld Exposed as a Liar By Recently Ret.CIA Agent
Hear audio of Rumsfeld Exposed as a Liar By Recently Ret.CIA Agent
The Ed Schultz Show
Address:http://wegoted.com/
Audio:http://audio.wegoted.com/dailyaudio/5306Rumsfeld.mp3
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Senate Passes Bill for another 108.9 BILLION DOLLARS for The WAR While
the Federal Reserve prints two TRILLION Dollars and Distributes
them which devalues any and all money you may have saved.and stops
reporting for the first time in U.S. history what the U.S. money supply
figures are ?
��Also Who do you think the U.S. govt. will distribute the two
Trillion dollars to ?
Poor people in New Orleans or Oil Co. and Banking executives.
Address:http://today.reuters.com/investing/financeArticle.aspx?type=bondsNews&storyID=2006-05-04T162639Z_01_WBT005300_RTRIDST_0_SECURITY-CONGRESS-FUNDING-URGENT.XML
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Bill Fails to Deport immigrant prisoners
Enough Said !
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illegal aliens will be arrested and prosecuted for "Conspiracy to
Smuggle Themselves !" (Sounds Good to ME !)
Phoenix posse targets illegal immigrants - Crime & Punishment -
MSNBC.com
Address:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12631015/
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Join the - Stop the Invasion Billboard Campaign GrassFire.org - Real
Impact Online.
Address:http://www.grassfire.org/7042/offer.asp?RID=10860167&Ref_ID=741
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Sign H.R. 614, the House Simple Resolution to Bring the Minimum Wage
Bill to a Vote!
Address:http://liberty.horneforcongress.com/petitions/pnum270.php
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More on why Flight 93 never crashed - At least Not with Passengers on
it.
WCPO.com - The Web site of WCPO-TV in Cincinnati, Ohio
Address:http://web.archive.org/web/20021109040132/http:/wcpo.com/specials/2001/americaattacked/news_local/story14.html
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What's wrong with Europeans?
Once more unto the breach
The current 'crisis' regarding Iran's nuclear ambitions is nothing more
than a
facilitator for war.
Scott Ritter
May 2, 2006 12:46 PM | Printer Friendly Version The International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) has just released a report concerning
Iran's nuclear programme, in which it notes that Iran has failed to
comply with the
UN security council's demands to cease its nuclear enrichment
programmes. The IAEA
report finds that Iran has, in defiance of the security council, in fact
carried out
a successful test to enrich uranium to the low levels needed in the
production of
nuclear energy. The IAEA also found that Iran had failed to provide a
level of
cooperation and transparency necessary for the IAEA to exclude the
possibility of an
Iranian nuclear weapons programme being carried out under the guise of
civilian
nuclear energy activities.
While the IAEA's report has underscored Iran's disturbing disregard for
responding
to the concerns of both the IAEA and the UN security council, it does
not certify
Iran as a clear and present danger, requiring a strong and immediate
response from
the international community. And yet the IAEA report has generated
rhetoric from
both the United States and Europe that seems well beyond that which the
content of
the report seems to merit. The British foreign secretary, Jack Straw,
has joined US
officials in condemning the Iranian government for its failure to halt
its nuclear
enrichment efforts, and has called for the UN security council to
"increase the
pressure on Iran". Many officials in Europe have echoed the UK position,
believing,
it seems, that such action represents a manifestation of President
George Bush's
stated objective of resolving the Iranian matter "diplomatically and
peacefully".
Just how naive can Europe be? While public sentiment against the US-led
invasion
(and ongoing occupation) of Iraq remains high, manifesting itself in the
reduction
of the original "coalition of the willing" to pathetic levels, Europe
("old" and
"new") continues to behave as if the current conflict with Iraq and the
potential of
future conflict with Iran remain two separate and distinct issues. It is
shocking to see European officials, skilled in the heavily nuanced world
of EU
diplomacy, accept without question the sophomoric equivocation by the US
secretary
of state, Condoleezza Rice that "Iran is not Iraq". This phrase has been
used
repeatedly by Rice to deflect any query as to whether or not there are
any parallels
between the current US "diplomatic" stance on Iran and the "diplomacy"
undertaken in
the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, which has widely been acknowledged
as representing little more than a smokescreen behind which the Bush
administration
prepared for a war already decided upon. Iran may not be Iraq, but these
two nations are inextricably linked through the
Machiavellian machinations of a US national security strategy that not
only embraces
the legitimacy of pre-emptive war, but also the notion of America's
inherent right
to pursue a policy of "regional transformation" in the Middle East, a
policy that
has as its core operational thematic pre-emptive military action to
remove the
regimes of so-called "failed" and "rogue" states. In the 2006 version of
this
national security strategy, Iran is named 16 times as the leading threat
to the
national security of the United States. I would hope every European
diplomat has
read this document, and takes its contents to heart. The national
security strategy
of the United States, circa 2006, can leave no doubt as to what the true
intent of
the Bush administration is regarding Iran: regime change. The current
"crisis"
regarding Iran's nuclear ambitions represents nothing more than an
emotionally-charged facilitator for war. Europe continues to act as if
the American policy objective of regime change is
nothing more than the irresponsible blathering of rightwing media
pundits. The
self-delusion that encompasses this way of thinking holds that Europe's
stance
vis-�-vis Iran serves more as a brake toward conflict, than the
accelerant it
actually is. As such, the European nations taking the lead on the
Iranian issue -
the UK, France and Germany - will meet on May 2 in Paris with
representatives from
Russia, China and the United States as a precursor for a meeting of the
security
council on May 3. The United States has already made clear its intent to
introduce a
draft resolution under Chapter VII of the UN charter, elevating Iran's
obstinacy to
the level of a clear and present danger to international peace and
security, and
paving the way for the imposition of stringent economic sanctions
against Iran. The
United States will be lobbying quite hard for such a resolution, and is
looking to a
meeting of the foreign ministers of the Paris group in New York on May 9
as the time
and place for bringing this issue to a head. While such measures appear
on the surface to represent sound, measured diplomatic
responses, the reality is that once the United States introduces a
Chapter VII
resolution, even in draft form, war with Iran is all but assured. Russia
and China,
both permanent members of the security council with veto powers, have
made clear
their collective objection to any Chapter VII action against Iran.
However, by
endorsing the transfer of the Iranian issue from the International
Atomic Energy
Agency to the security council, as well as the original security council
"warning"
against Iran, both Russia and China have played into the hands of US
policy-makers,
who have and will continue to use these actions as a clear endorsement
of their
position that Iran and its nuclear programme represents a threat to
international
security.
If the Russians and Chinese balk over the imposition of Chapter
VII-linked measures
against Iran, as they have indicated they will, then the Bush
administration will
simply declare that the security council has become impotent and
irrelevant in
dealing with threats that it has itself declared to exist, and, as such,
the United
States, not wanting to have its own national security interests so
hijacked, will
have no choice but to move forward void of any security council
endorsement or
authorisation. This model of action directly parallels that undertaken
by the US and
UK regarding Iraq, and has been strongly alluded to in recent statements
made by
Vice-President Cheney, the US ambassador to the United Nations, John
Bolton, and
Rice.
The United States has positioned itself masterfully in this regard. But
the sense of
urgency being pushed by the Bush administration does not match the
reality painted
by its own director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, who
recently testified before the US Congress that Iran was, at best, 10
years away from having a
nuclear weapons capability. As such, there is no need for the security
council to
pursue this matter under the guise of a Chapter VII resolution. In fact,
there is no
need for the security council to be engaged on this issue at all, at
least at this
time.
The one real hope of side-stepping this mad rush towards war with Iran
lays in a
statement made by the Iranian government, offering to deal openly and
transparently
with the concerns listed in the IAEA's report within a matter of weeks,
if the
Iranian nuclear issue is transferred away from the security council and
back to the
International Atomic Energy Agency. The best thing the Europeans could
do at this
time would be to join ranks with the Russians and Chinese to take up the
Iranian
offer, defusing a very tense and dangerous situation that, as it
currently stands,
seems to be spinning close toward yet another needless war in the Middle
East.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 2
Date: Thu, 4 May 2006 14:46:36 -0400
From: "norgesen" <norgesen@yahoo.com>
Subject: Bush 'janitor' back to mop up
Bush 'janitor' back to mop up
By Tom Baldwin
April 25, 2006 The Times
The US President is relying on his father's key ally to find a way out of the Iraq war
THE Bush family�s faithful fixer is, with little fanfare, slipping back into the key role of finding a �way forward� � if not a way out � for America in Iraq.
When James Baker last month became co-chairman of a congressional task force known as the Iraq Study Group, the news was buried beneath an avalanche of headlines about the invasion�s third anniversary and the deepening troubles of the Administration.
But slowly Washington is waking up to just how significant the re-emergence of this 75-year-old statesman may be.
Although Mr Baker�s appointment is understood to have been made with the blessing of the White House, he will forever be associated more with the first President Bush than the second.
As such, he is not only representative of a different era of foreign policy, but he is also a target of the neoconservatives, who held sway in Washington until recently. For them he embodies the cautious pragmatism of the 41st President, not the bold approach of the 43rd.
Well-placed sources told The Times that Mr Bush had lately been consulting his father more often. This has coincided with a return to a multilateral approach to foreign policy. Mr Baker was Secretary of State at the time of the Gulf War, when he argued forcefully that it would be �ridiculous from a practical standpoint� for US troops to march on to Baghdad and oust Saddam Hussein.
Such a course would �play into the hands of the mullahs of Iran� and lead to civil war, the loss of international support for the US and the fragmentation of Iraq, he said. He has told friends that he now feels vindicated.
Although Mr Baker has avoided direct criticism of the President he did, just before the invasion, say: �This is a war of choice, more so, perhaps, than a war of necessity.�
This was a formulation often used by covert critics of Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Mr Bush, who claimed that the invasion was a crucial step towards defeating terrorism. To the chagrin of hawks in Washington, Mr Baker � with Tony Blair and others from the first Bush Administration � helped to persuade the White House to seek backing from the United Nations for the invasion.
�We should try our best not to have to go it alone and the President should reject the advice of those who counsel doing so,� he wrote in The New York Times in August 2002.
The Iraq Study Group is intended as a bipartisan attempt to inject some realism into the bitter political debate on Iraq. Mr Baker�s co-chairman is Lee Hamilton, a former Democrat congressman, who says that the group is not seeking to revisit past arguments about the case for war. �We will leave that to historians,� he has said.
Other members include Rudolph Giuliani, the former Mayor of New York, Robert Gates, a former CIA director, and two key members of Bill Clinton�s Administration, Leon Panetta and William Perry.
No time frame will be set for results, Mr Baker said. �We have no illusion whatsoever about the difficulty of this task.� Asked whether the White House was being supportive, he replied: �The Administration, as we understand it, will welcome the effort.�
Karen Hughes, a member of the President�s beleaguered inner circle, recently gushed: �I know how grateful [he] is for Secretary Baker�s current work on Iraq.�
A source close to the group told The New York Times that it would be a mistake to believe that Mr Baker was seeking the �silver bullet� to kill the issue and extricate the US from Iraq. But the source compared Mr Baker�s role with that of Dean Acheson, brought in by President Johnson in 1968 to provide advice on Vietnam. Mr Johnson subsequently halted the bombing of North Vietnam and announced that he would not seek re-election.
Mr Baker has been described as �janitor� to the Bush family because he cleans up whenever they leave a mess. He is said to have fallen out with the younger Mr Bush in 1992 when he refused to take over his father�s faltering re-election campaign until too late.
But in the Florida recount eight years later, his political and legal acumen helped to ensure that a second Bush entered the White House.
BAKER'S VIEWS
�We believed . . . that marching on Baghdad was ridiculous from a practical standpoint�
The Politics of Democracy, 1995
�Diplomatically, pressing on to Baghdad would have caused not just a rift but an earthquake within the coalition. Had we opted for this approach, we would never have been in a position to create a meaningful peace process because we would have lost the Arab members of the coalition�
The Politics of Democracy, 1995
�We should try our best not to have to go it alone, and the President should reject the advice of those who counsel doing so�
The New York Times, August 2002
�Any appearance of a permanent occupation will . . . play directly into the hands of those in the Middle East who suspect us of imperial design�
On the Iraq occupation, January 2005
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2150305,00.html
~~~~
Commentary:
"The US President is relying on his father's key ally to find a way out of the Iraq war. The Bush family�s faithful fixer is, with little fanfare, slipping back into the key role of finding a �way forward� � if not a way out � for America in Iraq. When James Baker last month became co-chairman of a congressional task force known as the Iraq Study Group, the news was buried beneath an avalanche of headlines about the invasion�s third anniversary and the deepening troubles of the Administration. But slowly Washington is waking up to just how significant the re-emergence of this 75-year-old statesman may be."
"Although Mr Baker�s appointment is understood to have been made with the blessing of the White House, he will forever be associated more with the first President Bush than the second. As such, he is not only representative of a different era of foreign policy, but he is also a target of the neoconservatives, who held sway in Washington until recently. For them he embodies the cautious pragmatism of the 41st President, not the bold approach of the 43rd."
You can ignore this paragraph, for James Baker is thoroughly Illuminist. He is listed as CFR by the "Who's Who of the Elite" (Page 95). For his entire life of public service, James Baker has served the Illuminati well. He has been called upon to try to shore up President Bush's image and poll numbers. Might he also provide the way out of Iraq?
"Well-placed sources told The Times that Mr Bush had lately been consulting his father more often. This has coincided with a return to a multilateral approach to foreign policy. Mr Baker was Secretary of State at the time of the Gulf War, when he argued forcefully that it would be �ridiculous from a practical standpoint� for US troops to march on to Baghdad and oust Saddam Hussein. Such a course would 'play into the hands of the mullahs of Iran' and lead to civil war, the loss of international support for the US and the fragmentation of Iraq, he said. He has told friends that he now feels vindicated."
We just might see the advent of James Baker on the world scene as an excuse to now change direction and begin a withdrawal from Iraq. Listen to what Baker thinks of this Iraq war.
"Although Mr Baker has avoided direct criticism of the President he did, just before the invasion, say: 'This is a war of choice, more so, perhaps, than a war of necessity'.� (Ibid.)
This statement comes as close as you may get from James Baker to criticizing President Bush for his decision to invade Iraq, a decision undergirded with lies and massive deceptions, as all of America now has come to realize. However, remember that President Bush was simply following the Plan after 9/11 when he invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. But, now perhaps the time has come for the plan to turn another corner, down a track which might thoroughly discredit the President, and "force" him to withdraw in defeat.
James Baker may be a critical part of that plan. We shall just have to wait to see how it all turns out. Toward this end, this last paragraph makes sense.
"A source close to the group told The New York Times that it would be a mistake to believe that Mr Baker was seeking the �silver bullet� to kill the issue and extricate the US from Iraq. But the source compared Mr Baker�s role with that of Dean Acheson, brought in by President Johnson in 1968 to provide advice on Vietnam. Mr Johnson subsequently halted the bombing of North Vietnam and announced that he would not seek re-election." (Ibid.)
[This message contained attachments]
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Message: 3
Date: Thu, 04 May 2006 17:09:26 -0000
From: "John Berkowitz" <john@spontinuity.com>
Subject: We deserve to know the Truth about 9/11
We know we've been lied to by the Bush Administration: WMDs . . .
the connection between Iraq and 9/11 . . . John Kerry's military
record . . . the outing of Valerie Plame . . . voting irregularities
in Ohio and elsewhere . . . money laundering . . . and on and on.
We know the truth has been buried, withheld, covered up, altered,
and blatantly denied. You've seen the proof for yourself.
If they've lied about these things � all things which have advanced
their agenda � why believe their explanation (the "official
account") of the events of 9/11? Upon even cursory inspection, the
facts fail to add up. Steel frame structures don't collapse due to
fire. Passports don't survive explosions that vaporize 600 ton
airplanes. On-call F-16's can scramble and be anywhere in U.S.
airspace within 10 minutes, yet no planes responded on 9/11 until
over an hour after airlines were known to have been hijacked and off-
course. The Secret Service did not hustle the President to safety
even after two airplanes had struck the WTC, leaving him (and a
school full of children) fully exposed while two more hijacked
planes continued off-course and while his location was well-
publicized.
It does not dishonor the victims to ask questions.
Join the debate. Join "Truth About 9/11."
Groups.yahoo.com/group/truthabout911
The purpose of this group is to engage in sober and intelligent
debate about the growing abundance of evidence which suggests that
the events of September 11, 2001 occurred with some level of
official complicity on the part of the White House, the Pentagon,
the CIA, the FBI, and other powerful U.S. agencies.
This is not a forum for "Bush Bashing" for the sake of bashing, but
we will not shy away from any news, information, evidence, or
supportable theories which paint the President and/or his
administration as incompetent, grossly negligent, complicitous, or
even intentionally obstructive.
We are also intensely interested in any verifiable evidence that
supports the official account of the events of 9/11 or that
effectively counters the arguments of those that oppose the official
account.
Ultimately it is the Truth which we are seeking and which we hope to
share with as many individuals as we can through this and other
venues.
Flaming will not be tolerated. Offending members will be warned and,
if unrepentant, banned. All opinions and views -- pro or con,
liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, religious or
atheistic -- are welcome.
John Berkowitz
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 4
Date: Thu, 4 May 2006 18:10:08 -0400
From: "norgesen" <norgesen@yahoo.com>
Subject: 60 years after Nuremberg � how much have we learned?
60 years after Nuremberg � how much have we learned?
By Cason Cheely
Tuesday, 10 January 2006
The trial of German doctors who used prisoners for ghastly experiments during World War II is still relevant today.
Sixty years ago, 23 German doctors and medical staff sat in the dock in the city of Nuremberg, charged with crimes against humanity. In his eloquent opening address, the American prosecutor, Telford Taylor, said that the world must not forget their atrocities:
"These defendants did not kill in hot blood, nor for personal enrichment... Most of them are trained physicians and some of them are distinguished scientists. Yet these defendants, all of whom were fully able to comprehend the nature of their acts, and most of whom were exceptionally qualified to form a moral and professional judgment in this respect, are responsible for wholesale murder and unspeakably cruel tortures. It is our deep obligation to all peoples of the world to show why and how these things happened... The perverse thoughts and distorted concepts which brought about these savageries are not dead. They cannot be killed by force of arms. They must not become a spreading cancer in the breast of humanity."
The anniversary is a good opportunity to ask whether medical ethicists and scientists have really learned the lessons of this dark chapter of 20th century history. As Taylor argued, the temptation to pervert legitimate scientific and medical research will always be with us -- today no less than in the time of the Nazis. Six decades have seen much progress in science and technology -- but can we really say that progress in ethics has been commensurate?
According to the indictments in the trial proceedings, these physicians, acting in concert with one another and under the direction of the Nazi regime, carried out experiments without the consent of the subjects. These included high-altitude and freezing experiments, malaria experiments, mustard gas and sulphanilamide experiments, bone, muscle and nerve regeneration and bone transplantation experiments, epidemic jaundice and spotted fever experiments, and sterilisation experiments. Additionally, 112 Jews were selected, measured for anthropological and scientific purposes, and then killed for the purpose of completing a skeleton collection for the Reich University of Strasbourg.
In the �euthanasia� program of the German Reich, the indictments state, these physicians secretly and systematically murdered hundreds of thousands of the aged, mentally ill, terminally ill, handicapped children, and other persons, �by gas, lethal injections, and diverse other means in nursing homes, hospitals, and asylums�. According to the indictments, these euthanased persons were considered �useless eaters� and a burden to the German war machine.
After a 140-day trial involving 85 witnesses and almost 1,500 documents, 16 of the physicians were found guilty. Seven of these were executed, and the rest served substantial prison sentences.
The outcome of the Doctors Trials was the Nuremberg Code, a set of internationally-adopted directives for human experimentation. The terrors of the Holocaust made it clear that the fundamental dignity and bodily integrity of each human person, norms of a higher law, could no longer be taken for granted. As a human community, we reaffirmed these natural rights and obligations in the Nuremberg Code.
The Code states: �The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, over-reaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision.� It also requires that human experimentation be aimed at yielding fruitful results for the good of society, unprocurable by other methods or means of study. Further, it states that experiments should be conducted as to avoid all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury. No experiment should be conducted where there is an a priori reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur.
Revisiting Nuremberg
Today�s destructive research on embryonic human persons explicitly violates the Nuremberg Code. Embryos may not look like adult human beings, but they are what all human beings look like at an embryonic stage of development. They are not, as the Nazis termed the the mentally ill, the feebleminded, and retarded and deformed children, lebensunwertes Leben, �life unworthy of life�. Today, in the name of scientific and medical progress, embryos are killed to extract stem cells for research. As during the Holocaust, this experimentation is conducted on human beings by physicians in search of cures for human diseases and technological enhancements. During the Holocaust the diseases to be cured were malaria, jaundice and spotted fever; today they are Alzheimer�s and Parkinson�s. Enhancements sought in the Holocaust were bone transplantation and nerve regeneration, similar to the improvements in human quality of life promised by stem cell researchers today.
The comparison between current embryo researchers and Nazi doctors may seem unfair or overstated to the modern reader, since we tend to view Nazi doctors as sadistic monsters. However, as several commentators state, the men were �unassuming�, �good fathers�, and �kind to animals�. And regardless of any differences in the motivations of the Nazis and today�s researchers, their object�and the effect�of killing for purposes of scientific experimentation is the same.
Embryos destroyed do not have the legal capacity to consent, so they are not a class of permissible research subjects under the Nuremberg Code. And in violation of the precise letter of the Nuremberg Code, today�s scientists know that their research is always lethal yet continue to conduct the experiments.
Embryonic stem cells never have been successful in a clinical setting and give less and less assurance that they ever will be, and embryo destruction is not the only means of conducting this type of research, so they should not be used in scientific experiments according to the Code. Adult stem cell research, which requires no killing or injury but only extraction from child or adult brains, bone marrow, skin and fat, already has been surprisingly successful in a clinical setting.
In light of all these facts, it comes as no surprise that Germany�s current embryo research laws are arguably the most restrictive in any secular Western nation.
Meanwhile, in the United States, where embryo research is funded by federal, state and private sources, at least one doctor at a leading medical university advocates the end of informed consent in medical experimentation. Professor Rosamund Rhodes, of Mount Sinai School of Medicine, argues that sharing one�s body with science is a moral obligation for the good of society, and she falls just short of prescribing conscription as a means to increase the number of subjects for human experimentation. Her system involves moral pressure, where authorities and members of the community continually remind one another of the fundamental obligation to participate in research. Taking away a person�s ability to freely choose�without duress�whether or not to share his or her body with science is a violation of his or her fundamental bodily dignity, as recognised by the Nuremberg Code.
Involuntary euthanasia, considered a war crime during the Holocaust, has regained popularity in Western nations. Forms of voluntary euthanasia currently are legal in Belgium, the Netherlands, and the American state of Oregon. And when the law allows people to choose euthanasia for themselves, assisted by medical professionals, the medical profession must back away from its commitment to �do no harm� and its aim to cure and to heal. When killing the handicapped is acceptable, some doctors come to view the unconsented taking of burdensome life as a professional or moral duty for the well-being of the handicapped individual and for the good of society. This was illustrated in the recent United States controversy over the removal of a feeding tube for the purpose of starving to death brain-damaged Terri Schiavo. Neither the state nor the doctors entrusted with Ms Schiavo�s life guarded her from death by starvation, despite legally deficient evidence of her desire to die.
Along the same lines, involuntary euthanasia by abortion of handicapped children is common today, as was the euthanasia of handicapped children under program of the German Reich. Statistics indicate that around eighty percent of unborn babies diagnosed with Down�s syndrome in the United States are killed in the womb by doctors, and thousands more unborn children are killed when they are diagnosed with other disabilities before birth.
During the Nuremberg Trials, doctors were convicted and executed for these crimes. Today, they retain their medical licenses and continue their �medical� practice.
Sixty years ago, with the horror and sorrow of the Holocaust still fresh, we determined as a human family never again to dishonour our fellow humans through euthanasia and unconsented, destructive research in the name of scientific progress. We even codified as experimental directives these fundamental truths at the intersection of human dignity and medical science. But two generations seem to have distanced us enough from that memory that we can destroy the most vulnerable among us for research purposes, we can ponder the end of informed consent as a novel intellectual idea, and we can view euthanasia an act of mercy and a moral duty to rid society of its burdens.
Cason Cheely is a student at Notre Dame Law School and executive article editor for the Notre Dame Law School Journal of Law, Ethics and Public Policy.
http://www.mercatornet.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=210
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Message: 5
Date: Thu, 4 May 2006 18:22:06 -0400
From: "norgesen" <norgesen@yahoo.com>
Subject: Edvard Munch: The Modern Life of the Soul
The torment of Norway's greatest artist
By Elizabeth Heil
Monday, 17 April 2006
A MOMA exhibit of Edvard Munch spans the life's work of an artist whose grim vision was an emblem of the modern soul.
Edvard Munch: The Modern Life of the Soul
February 19 � May 8, 2006
Museum of Modern Art, New York
On my first visit to the Edvard Munch exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art I was overwhelmed by the number of people swarming through the galleries. There must have been 60 in each room at any one time. It was impossible to concentrate on the works which have been presented as The Modern Life of the Soul. To understand the meaning of "soul" in this context required a second visit, at a quieter time -- an effort that was repaid with a certain sympathy for an artist who both experienced and graphically depicted the anguish underlying the scientific and social changes of the late modern age.
What is drawing so many people to see the Munch retrospective? Probably few would know the Norwegian artist at all except for his famous 1893 picture, The Scream -- and yet that image alone is powerful enough to make one want to know more. What kind of experience produced such a tormented vision? Is it something we can look on with mere curiosity, as belonging to another era, or does it shine a light into the deeper layers of today's glossy and individualistic culture? Perhaps the greatest revelation that Munch has to offer us post-moderns is that, under the surface we cultivate so assiduously, we actually have a soul which may be screaming for attention.
The phenomenal show currently on view at the MOMA is the first to be held in America in almost three decades. It takes a complete look at Edvard Munch�s diverse and stylistically rich artistic career from the 1880s to 1944. The exhibition includes 87 paintings and 50 works on paper grappling with the fundamental truths of human existence: birth, life and death.
The exhibition is organised chronologically. In the first gallery, the viewer is introduced to a young Munch who is beginning to find his own voice as he struggles with the pain of ageing, family death, and thwarted love. The immense second gallery is somewhat daunting with its enormous number of paintings, drawings and woodcuts separated into sub-sections. The final gallery, also sub-partitioned, focuses on late works -- mainly studio paintings, naturalistic explorations and self-portraits.
Munch remains a product of his age and country. He was born in 1863 outside the small Norwegian town of Kristiania. Early in life, he lost his mother and his beloved sister Sophie, traumas which deeply influenced his later works. He associated with the bohemian community in his home town, and later developed his style in avant garde communities in Paris and Berlin. In 1909, he returned permanently to Norway after years of travel and time in sanatoriums dealing with illness. He died in 1944 after living his final days in semi-seclusion. His overarching desire was, he wrote, to use his art to �understand the meaning of life [and] help others gain an understanding of their lives�.
Munch�s stylistic development reflects his biography. In the 1880s and early 1890s there is a youthful innocence and na�ve depiction of people and naturalistic settings that follow an academic rigor and planned symmetry, such as in Girl Kindling a Stove (1883) or Karl Johan Street in Rain (1891). But in 1891, his style changed dramatically, as one can see in the painting Evening on Karl Johan Street (1892). He begins to depict the interior state of the soul with haunting faces gliding down the street framed by lonely, unwelcoming buildings.
Over the next decade he became more and more introspective. The Frieze of Life (a series developed during the 1890s and displayed in 1902 in Berlin) examines aspects of human love and its development. The key painting of this period is The Dance of Life (1899-1900). In his words, it embodies �the awakening of love, the dance of life, love at its peak, the fading of love, and finally death�. The dancing figures are metaphors for the passing years and different stages of love: the woman in white on the left embodies innocence, the red-gowned woman in the centre personifies lust, while the woman in black on the right is an emblem of death and old age. The 1892 painting Despair foreshadows his most famous work, The Scream.
As his popularity increased in the early 1900s, he reverted to more conventional portraits, landscapes and studio pictures, like a middle-age adult who has sown his wild oats. Some of the major pieces of this period are The Avenue in Snow (1906) and Black Man Wearing Green Striped Scarf (1916�17).
Late in Munch�s life, his work reflected a concern with his mortality. A self-portrait, Between the Clock and the Bed (1940-42), epitomises his sense of resignation. This is one of his most haunting images of the exhibition because of its lack of hope and joy. Is this the message of �Modern Life of the Soul� -- that when there is no hope in an afterlife or in a transcendent meaning, life and death are experiences of great loneliness and anxiety?
After studying art history at Stanford University, Elizabeth Heil spent over six years working at the Vatican Museums. She is currently completing a Masters Degree in Arts Administration at Columbia University in Manhattan.
http://www.mercatornet.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=257
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