As I recently pointed out the Obama presidency has shaped up to be a large disappointment.

Two recent examples:

1. One of the big complaints about the Bush administration was the grab of Executive power. Unchecked, unbalanced and preemptive. The Bush “doctrine” was indeed one of preemptive war. We also saw extraordinary renditions where people suspected of crimes where grabbed and moved out of US legal jurisdiction to be tortured elsewhere. Guilty until proven innocent. And if the US is wrong, too bad.

So clearly one of the big expectations was for Obama to get back on the track of the principles of the US Constitution and legal frameworks.

Turns out: Not such luck. Even while he gives pretty speeches Obama makes the case for arresting and indefinitely detaining people who might engage in terrorist activity. Not in the process, but people who are suspected…

Say what?

Preemptive arrest. Thought crime?

Obama is not only losing the left quickly, but also independents. Even liberal Rachel Maddow has had enough apparently:

2. The additional troop commitment in Afghanistan is flabbergasting to many of his supporters. Michael Moore had this to say:

“I simply can’t believe you’re about to do what they say you are going to do,” documentary filmmaker Michael Moore said in an open letter to Obama posted on his Web site. Moore warned that Obama would tarnish his legacy, turn away his supporters and effectively crown himself the new “war president” by escalating the war in Afghanistan.

“With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics,” Moore wrote. “Your potential decision to expand the war … will do more to set your legacy in stone than any of the great things you’ve said and done in your first year.

“For the sake of your presidency, hope, and the future of our nation, stop. For God’s sake, stop,” Moore wrote.

Stop is what many of his supporters will likely do when they are asked to donate again, or enter the voting booth the next time.

Despite all the public protestations of “containment”, I find actions speak louder than words:

The Sunday London Times newspaper was removed by authorities from shelves in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday amid intensive reporting of Dubai’s debt problems, an executive at the paper said.

The National Media Council ordered the paper blocked by distributors without providing a reason, an executive at the paper in Dubai told Zawya Dow Jones.

An instant classic:

A government official in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the U.A.E., said that the picture of Sheik Mohammed, which accompanied a story entitled: The sinking of Dubai’s dream, was “offensive.”

Under the U.A.E.’s media code, publications are prohibited from criticizing the sheikdom’s rulers.

The US has been in Afghanistan since 2001. Eight long years and no end in sight. President Obama has been pondering his next move for months now and is expected to announce a decision this week.

There appears to be a total lack of honesty in the public debate.

A brief history: The war, begun under the Bush administration following the September 11 attacks, was aimed at destroying Al-Qaeda. After a strange reluctance by the US to commit full forces at Tora Bora, Osama bin Laden and key followers managed to escape into Pakistan. Shortly thereafter President Bush withdrew special forces and redeployed them to Iraq. The war in Afghanistan was allowed to linger, with limited forces and billions spent on building a supposed democracy in one of the most backward countries on earth.

The lack of commitment allowed the Taliban to regroup and regain control of large portions of the country. US casualties have been increasing in recent months. Quite an amazing feat for the Taliban considering they have no air force, no missiles, no satellites, no tanks, etc. Yet this lack of resources did not prevent Afghan fighters from pushing out invading Soviet forces in the 80’s.

So here we are, running multi-trillion dollar deficits, hugely in debt and President Obama is likely announcing the commitment of additional troops.

Why?

What is the goal? According to Secretary Clinton it is to get rid of Al-Qaeda.

Consider me confused since US Generals have already stated that Al-Qaeda is virtually not present in Afghanistan.

“I want all the foreigners to leave our country” is what one Taliban fighter is quoted in the ABC report below, which gives a good overview of the situation on the ground:

And that is the problem isn’t it? Any time you have foreign troops engaged in a war on your soil resistance will thrive. Kids that were 8-10 years old at the beginning of this war are now of fighting age and have known nothing but foreign troops in their country. Prime recruiting material for the Taliban.

The US had a job to do in 2001, with specific goals and targets. The fact that this engagement has lasted longer than World War II speaks to the failure of the US effort.

Increasing spending for this war now seem preposterous. For one, we can’t afford it. Furthermore, what is the goal, what’s the endgame, how do we measure success? How many lives and dollars are we willing to commit to combat an enemy that has no desire or ability to invade US soil (the Taliban). All questions that should have been asked in 2001, but nobody bothered.

So what is the real motivator here?

Several possible factors to consider:

1. A proposed oil/gas pipeline to be build through Afghanistan to provide direct access to the Indian ocean.
2. Afghanistan is the world’s leading producer of opiates which are also needed for drug manufacturing.
3. US 2010 congressional elections. Democrats tend not to want to look weak on national defense. A retreat in Afghanistan would potentially give Republicans an opening in the upcoming elections.

I suspect those reasons will not be brought up by Obama this week, but rather the usual pablum such as “must finish the job”, “must fight terrorists”, etc..

And so the multi-billion dollar open ended drain continues. Those who voted for change must really be wondering what exactly they voted for….

Classic example of misleading and ultimate useless media headline:

“U.S. banks less exposed to Dubai than European rivals”

And then right underneath:

“U.S. banks are probably less exposed than European rivals to a potential debt default by Dubai World, but a lack of transparency and the interconnectedness of the modern financial system make it difficult to know which institutions are ultimately exposed, analysts said this week.”

In other words: In a world of derivative swaps we don’t have a clue who has what exposure. But let’s just say US banks have less exposure, even though we don’t know. But it makes it sound more positive and let’s calm people down, even though they may be completely exposed. Anyone notice how Goldman Sachs stock has traded in the past few days? That’s right. Down. Hard. Someone is concerned about something.

Useless as usual:

The United States late Saturday blocked approval of a U.N. Security Council statement calling for an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel and expressing concern at the escalation of violence between Israel and Hamas.

U.S. deputy ambassador Alejandro Wolff said the United States saw no prospect of Hamas abiding by last week’s council call for an immediate end to the violence. Therefore, he said, a new statement at this time “would not be adhered to and would have no underpinning for success, would not do credit to the council.”

France’s U.N. Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert, the current council president, announced that there was no agreement among members on a statement. But he said there were “strong convergences” among the 15 members to express serious concern about the deteriorating situation in Gaza and the need for “an immediate, permanent and fully respected cease-fire.”

And they squabble on….

This is one of those subjects nobody ever really wants to talk about. I understand why, what’s the point one could argue. But ignoring problems does not make them go away. One thing that kills me about creationists and deniers of evolution is that the vary basic events that drive evolution are easily observed. Take the flu virus. The world is confronted with a different strain almost every year. That’s why flu vaccines are to, a certain degree, crap shoots, because scientists can’t precisely predict the exact composition of the next strain. What studies have shown, however, is that just the “right” combination of changes can make the flu incredibly deadly:

A team of scientists from the US and Japan have identified a combination of three genes in the flu virus that was most likely responsible for making the 1918 flu strain so deadly that it caused the most devastating outbreak of infectious disease ever known to humankind, leaving tens of millions dead in its wake.

Autopsies of people killed by the 1918 flu epidemic show fluid-filled lungs badly damaged by massive hemorrhaging. Although it was clear that the virus had colonized lung tissue, exactly which genes gave the virus this deadly capacity and how was still somewhat of a mystery.

Using ferrets, because flu spreads in their bodies in a similar way as it does in humans, Kawaoka and his team were able to pinpoint a cluster of three flu virus genes that gave the 1918 flu virus the ability to reproduce in the victim’s lungs instead of being confined to the upper respiratory tract. Once the flu virus takes hold in the lungs then there is a greater chance of developing primary viral pneumonia, which together with secondary bacterial pneumonia killed between 20 and 50 million people in the 1918 outbreak.

How his information is reconcilable with an all loving, and compassionate God is beyond me, but so be it. The reality is that this planet, now filled with almost 7 billion people, is basically always a step away from total disaster. All it takes is one mutation of a virus and billions could die. With today’s interconnected world any virus could spread rapidly. In recent years there have been a number of scares such as the Bird flu virus, West Nile, and of course HIV. If HIV was airborne we’d be faced with long term extinction. Or take Ebola, it would likely reduce the world’s population by up to 90% were it airborne:

The virus, which is highly contagious via bodily fluids and causes severe vomiting, diarrhea and often internal and external bleeding, was first reported in the area on November 27.

There is no cure for Ebola, which kills 50 to 90 percent of its victims.

In 1995, a major Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, then known as Zaire, killed 250 of the 315 people known to have been infected, including health workers who touched infected blood

Why am I concerned? Because I believe in regression to the mean. Nature has a documented history. That history shows complete species extinction and balance of eco system. If the balance is interrupted the eco system will change. While humanity’s extistence on this planet has been relatively short lived so far, there can be no doubt the last hundred years have been nothing but ridiculous in terms of growth:

I ask: Does this look sustainable or even reasonable or desirable? Our best hope is that we give science all tools available to study disease and cures. The ban on stem cell research has been abominable. The Vatican’s stance against contraception and condoms has been irresponsible. But let’s not kid ourselves. There is no established record of such an imbalance in nature that was able to sustain itself in the long run. Maybe a quote from Jurassic Park the movie is in order: Nature always finds a way….

Remember this fishing vessel next time you order salt water fish for dinner at a restaurant. These guys work HARD!

Well, at least Bush managed to get consensus on one thing: He’s management of Iraq was an utter disaster. He is still not willing to acknowledge it, but American voters made that judgement, global political elites made the same judgement and so, apparently, do Iraqi political elites:

Former U.S.-installed Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has denounced the policies of President George W. Bush as an “utter failure” that gave rise to the sectarian venom that ravaged his country.

In an interview published on Saturday in the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, Allawi found fault with American management of Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 as well as the government of present Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Allawi ruled Iraq for almost a year after U.S. occupation officials handed power to him in 2004 as prime minister of an interim government. He was selected by a council hand-picked by Washington after the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

“Yes, Bush’s policies failed utterly,” said Allawi, describing the U.S. administration that once backed him. “Utter failure. Failure of U.S. domestic and foreign policy, including fighting terrorism and economic policy.”

“His insistence on names like ‘democracy’ and ‘open elections’, without giving attention to political stability, was a big mistake. It cast shadows on Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Egypt, and I believe this will be remembered in history as President Bush’s policy,” he said.

Maybe David Gregory can take some notes and ask Bush about his style…ure

Well, here we go again. Nuclear! As with the imaginary mushroom cloud the Bush administration paraded in front of the American public now we hear how Hamas rockets threaten Israel’s nuclear plant. Never mind that Hamas can’t shoot straight with their rockets and therefore the threat is completely bogus. Worse, the reality is, even if a rocket were to hit the plant directly, it wouldn’t cause a nuclear event, it may crumble some concrete. But hey, it sells copy right?

There were growing fears in Israel last night that Hamas missiles could threaten its top-secret nuclear facility at Dimona.

Rocket attacks from Gaza have forced Israelis to flee in ever greater numbers and military chiefs have been shaken by the size and sophistication of the militant group’s arsenal.

Bullshit at best, propaganda at worst.

Israel began phase 2 today and ground troops entered Gaza. As we posted previously no nice guys on either side, the situation seems unsolvable. If we view it from a purely military perspective we have to acknowledge the following: Peace will never be achieved until your enemy is utterly destroyed. That has been a plain fact of life for all of human history. That’s just the way it is. Is Israel prepared to go all the way? I don’t know. If their goal is to find all the Hamas rockets it seems they have to go house by house by house. That seems like a brutal task and one not likely solvable by January 20th when Obama will be sworn in as president. The reality is that Israel will increasingly come under pressure politically to stop, so they have to move fast. Anyone who wants to argue either side of this conflict should also get a clear view of what is happening on the ground. You will not see it in the main stream media, but we can show it here. Be warned though this footage is very graphic and it shows civilian casualties. It is not abstract it is real:

What would happen if a 300 mile asteroid collided with earth? Total extinction even courtesy the Discovery Channel. Make sure to watch in HD for full effect. Depressing, but it has some amazing visuals in it:

PS: If you think these things can’t happen watch Shoemaker-Levy hitting Jupiter

This is no Hollywood movie with easily identifiable good guys and bad guys. In this production they all suck. In the end Hamas got what it wanted: An Israeli strike and war. Arguably they got more this time than they bargained for. Yes, Israel cannot tolerate rockets flying into its territory every day. But where is the perspective? Hamas is obviously hapless as these rocket attacks  result in minimal casualties. Yes, you can argue any casualty is too much, but let’s be honest here: More Israelis die in car crashes than from Hamas rocket attacks. “Rocket attacks” sounds dramatic but in reality they haven’t produced much at all. So what’s the response? Shock and awe and over a thousand casualties in a matter of days, but hey we have an election to win. Sorry to be so cynical, but the basic truth that everyone in the world knows is this: These people are all incapable of solving their problems.

How many US presidents, conferences, peace treaties, UN resolutions, negotiations have produced exactly what? Nothing. The region is in the the same state since Jewish settlers declared Israel an independent state after spending decades of (initially) covertly buying land.

What’s so valuable about the land? Nothing really, but three major religions claim major roots here so on we go and go with no end in sight. Nobody seems to have a solution. Well I have one:

Since both Israelis and Palestinians act like children they need to be treated as such and the entire border dispute will need to be resolved by a UN mandate. Both parties should be disenfranchised from any decision authority. The UN should draw the map for a two state solution with a 5 year mandatory military enforcement commitment. If Israelis and Palestinians don’t like it, well tough. The world is sick of your crap.

Side notes:

1. Why did Israel attack now? Well for one Obama is not in power yet, but more importantly Congress approved the sale of bunker busting bombs to Israel in  September. Delivery just took place in early December. So let’s be clear whose bombs are killing Palestinians.

2. Despite Arab protests across the region a lot of the regional powers are actually pleased. Oil has jumped from $34 to $40 in a matter of two days. Little known problem: Saudi Arabia and Kuwait can’t meet their budgets of oil stays below $50 and $42 per barrel respectively.

3. After the military action is complete how long will it take for Hamas to reconstitute its military capabilities? 6 months? Will the recent Israeli action result in anything useful long term? Nope.

In order to have a political debate that produces actually positive results and improvements we need to acknowledge reality. What are we good at, what are we lacking in, where can we make progress. You cannot train for a race thinking you are the best when in reality you are not. You will fail with this approach. Sadly, we have too many people in this country believing that the United States is some sort of God chosen country that is a shining light on a hill. That sounds nice, but it is not. The simple truth is much blander. The United States does many things well, and excels in certain fields, but it is also a country that has made shockingly little progress in many areas, and worse, is falling behind the rest of the world in many others.

This post then is a beginning of a series aimed that showing factually how the Unites States compares to the rest of the world. This is not an attempt to slander or diminish, but rather to establish a baseline of reality. Only when you understand where you need to improve can you then make then an attempt to improve.

My goal is to continue to post as data becomes available. So readers please forward reliable and verifiable data to me.

So first up: Women in politics. Hillary didn’t make it. Palin (thank goodness in this case) didn’t either. Britian had Thatcher, Germany has Merkel, even Pakistan had a woman president once. She is of course dead now after her assassination recently. Where does the US rank compared to other countries with women in politics? See for yourself:

I received this email from a friend. It makes a very good point:

A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule.

A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping and continued to walk.

A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother hurried him along,  but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.

Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats average $100.

This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?

Amazing video of twisted logic expressed by President Bush. First he makes the argument that Iraq needed to be invaded since it has been a “major theater against Al-Qaeda”. When the reporter confronts him with the reality that it only became an Al-Qaeda theater after he invaded, Bush responds with: “So what?”.

How dumb does he think the American public is? Seriously.

The analogy would be to say:

” Hey we needed to operate to prevent an infection from spreading.”

“But there was no infection prior to the operation”

“So what?”

Footage from Greece, and apparently the Greek police is running out of tear gas.

Aspiring scientists from the Zurich School of Applied Sciences have built a video simulation that displays the flight path of every commercial flight in the world over a 24-hour period:

Media outlets are like drones that just repeat stories even though they are not true. Take this example: Apparently Playboy magazine got in trouble because they supposedly printed a cover with a nude Virgin Mary on the cover of its Mexican addition. The only problem is: She ain’t nude. At all.

But it gets repeated everywhere nonetheless.

Seriously, this is nude? I see more breast exposure going to the mall on Saturday. And that would be topless at best, but it’s not even that.

And what’s the controversy? The image itself, or where the image appears? From what I can tell the Virgin Mary is not all that picky in terms of where she appears. Heck, she has even appeared on a piece of toast.

Man, just scanning the headlines these days it’s hard not to get the sense that everything is rigged, corruption is rampant and the world is filled with hustlers. A quick scan:

Siemens to settle corruption charges

Hospital CEO pleads guilty in fraud

The Madoff scandal

The Blagojevich scandal

And now even chess players are doping!

But hey, at least we always have Michael Jackson!

Now this takes guts and conviction. Respect for this young man asking a very poignant question:

President Dmitry Medvedev was giving a speech to scientists and bureaucrats Friday marking Constitution Day when a young man stood up and started yelling.

TV footage showed the man yelling “Why are you listening to him?” and “He’s violated the rights and freedoms of people and citizens!” for a few seconds before security agents grabbed him.

Medvedev said to applause that “the purpose of the Constitution is to allow everyone to voice his opinion” before the man was taken away.

Yes, voice your opinion and face the consequences. What happened to him? I sure hope he is fine, but Google the death rate of Russian journalists and you get a frightening track record.

The Germans are out. As I wrote before, Merkel has been the odd European leader out. I had speculated that her beahvior reflected the divisions within her ruling coalition. Now the happy pretending is over. Germany is done with rescue efforts:

Germany’s finance minister accused other European Union states of “tossing around billions” before a summit on Thursday, deepening a rift over Berlin’s resistance to demands to spend more to revive the EU’s economy.

Leaders of the 27-nation bloc want to agree at a two-day summit on a €200-billion, or $260-billion, stimulus package to wrench the bloc out of recession, but Germany - the largest economy in Europe - says it will not contribute more.

Like Republicans in the US, Germany is now becoming the voice of “no more”. I understand the concerns. The reality is most of these people do not understand the details behind the complex rescue packages and are becoming squeamish about them. However, I’m not sure that they understand the consequence of inaction either. Let’s hope all of us don’t have to find out….

And again the US ends up killing innocent Afghans. At least it was not a wedding ceremony this time, but Afghan policemen in their police station. The Americans claim they came under fire, the local deputy police chief says they came under fire from Americans. Six dead, 17 wounded on the Afghan side, 0 on the US side. I wonder who had better odds here.

I would like to give our guys the benefit of the doubt, but after multiple tragedies in the past few months, the US military credibility is on weak footing. And strangely, it always ends up being Afghans who end up dying. They are getting tired of it I’m sure. With friends like these….

No war is perfect, but it would be a good start to go for at least a couple of months without causing tragedies.

“Coalition forces deeply regret the incident of mistaken fire,” said Colonel Jerry O’Hara, an American spokesman. “Initial reports indicate this was a tragic case of mistaken identity on both parts.”

What happens to the surviving spouses and children?

No silver lining in this report at all:

The world economy is on the brink of a rare global recession, the World Bank said in a forecast released Tuesday, with world trade projected to fall next year for the first time since 1982 and capital flows to developing countries forecast to plunge 50 percent.

The projections are among the most dire in a litany of recent gloomy prognostications for the world economy, and officials at the World Bank warned that if they proved accurate, the downturn could throw many developing countries into crisis and keep tens of millions of people in poverty.

Even more troubling, several economists said, there is no obvious locomotive to propel a recovery.

American consumers are unlikely to return to their old spending habits, even after the United States climbs out of its current financial crisis. With growth in China slowing sharply, consumers there are not about to pick up the slack from the Americans. The collapse in oil prices — a side-effect of the crisis — has knocked the wind out of consumers in oil-exporting countries.

“The financial crisis is likely to result in the most serious recession since the Great Depression,” said Justin Lin, the chief economist of the World Bank, summarizing the projections.

Slowly but surely scientists are uncovering some of the mysteries in the known universe. Increasingly we realize that the ingredients of life, as we know it, are not unique to our planet. In today’s announcement we hear that one particular ingredient to life has been found. Fascinating stuff:

A sugar molecule that’s linked to the origin of life has been detected in a region of our galaxy where habitable planets could exist. The sweet find is good news in the search for alien life, the researchers say.

Called glycolaldehyde, the sugar molecule is considered a life ingredient because it can react with a substance called propenal to form ribose, a central constituent of ribonucleic acid (RNA), which is similar to DNA and considered one of the central molecules in the origin of life.

An international team of scientists used the IRAM radio telescope in France to detect glycolaldehyde in a massive star-forming region of space, some 26,000 light-years from Earth. (One light-year is the distance light will travel in a year, or about 6 trillion miles, or 10 trillion km.)

More on how they did it here.

Don’t just blame smoking for it:

Cancer is on pace to supplant heart disease as the No. 1 cause of death worldwide in 2010, with a growing burden in poor countries thanks to more cigarette smoking and other factors, global health experts said on Tuesday.

Globally, an estimated 12.4 million people will be diagnosed with some form of cancer this year and 7.6 million people will die, the U.N. World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer said in a report.

“The global cancer burden doubled in the last 30 years of the 20th century, and it is estimated that this will double again between 2000 and 2020 and nearly triple by 2030,” according to the report.

By 2030, 26.4 million people a year may be diagnosed with cancer, with 17 million people dying from it, the report forecast.

In one word: Illuminating

Riots continue for a 4th day following the police shooting of a teenager

Craig Ewert faced a horrible fate. Diagnosed with motor neuron disease his bodily deteriorated rapidly threatening him with rapidly approaching total paralysis of his entire body. He could only survive temporarily through a feeding tube in his stomach and a respirator. He summed it up like this:

I am tired of the disease but I am not tired of living. I still enjoy life enough that I would like to continue but the thing is that I really cannot,” he said.

”If I opt for life then that is choosing to be tortured rather than end this journey and start the next one. I cannot take the risk. Let’s face it, when you’re completely paralysed and cannot talk, how do you let somebody know you are suffering? This could be a complete and utter hell.

”You can watch only so much of yourself drain away before you look at what is left and say ‘This is an empty shell’. Once I become completely paralysed then I am nothing more than a living tomb that takes in nutrients through a tube in the stomach - it’s painful.”

So he went to Switzerland and terminated his own life in a so called suicide clinic:

As his wife told him she loved him, he bit down on a timer to switch off his ventilator and then drank a lethal dose of sodium phenobarbital through a straw. He died 45 minutes later.

The choice was the most difficult anyone could face. Many people are opposed to assisted suicide. What makes this case even more controversial is that Carig Ewert had his suicide filmed and Sky in Britain is to broadcast it.

I wouldn’t be a general proponent of such broadcasts as we don’t really need or want “suicide” channels. The potential for the macabre is obvious. However, I believe if the purpose is to stir debate I think it is a good thing.

The reality is we treat our pets with more dignity than ourselves. Suicide is generally opposed. Why? For religious reasons? Many terminal illnesses result in a miserable death experience, drawn out, painful, agonizing. That experience is often prolonged by our medical treatment. I understand we want to prolong life, even though we can’t save it. And right now, the patient really has no say in that. You are forced to go through that process. You have to endure it. One dirty secret of course is that terminal patients in hospices are pumped full of morphine to help with the pain. In reality, they waste away in a drug induced stupor.

Nobody wants to talk about it, it is an unpleasant subject and makes us confront the inevitability of our own demise.

The truth is there is no human dignity in dying horridly of a body destroying disease. Anyone who has watched a loved one waste away of cancer knows what I am talking about.

Should then the dying not have the option to decide how their exit from this life proceeds? We give a dying dog mercy by “putting him down”. Why does a sentient human being not have the choice to exit life with some dignity?

I understand there are many concerns, but for one of the most important decisions in your life, you are prohibited from making a decision. You are forced to suffer. Where’s the compassion in that?

Offering dissenting voices within an established religion is never popular. All religions have their own rifts which often result in breakups or splinter groups. Certainly early Christianity was no exception. It was Constantine who ended up putting a stop to the debate and approve a unified message. It was not until Luther that Christianity split in the major forms we see it today. Muslims are split as well along the lines of Shiites and Sunnis as the major groups. But we know well from recent news stories about Danish cartoonists that any criticism or negative portrayal of the prophet Muhammad is a risky proposition.

One can then only imagine the furor that would erupt if someone claimed that Muhammad never existed in the first place. But that’s exactly what happened in Germany:

Muhammad Sven Kalisch, a Muslim convert and Germany’s first professor of Islamic theology, fasts during the Muslim holy month, doesn’t like to shake hands with Muslim women and has spent years studying Islamic scripture. Islam, he says, guides his life.

So it came as something of a surprise when Prof. Kalisch announced the fruit of his theological research. His conclusion: The Prophet Muhammad probably never existed.

Muslims, not surprisingly, are outraged. Even Danish cartoonists who triggered global protests a couple of years ago didn’t portray the Prophet as fictional. German police, worried about a violent backlash, told the professor to move his religious-studies center to more-secure premises.

Many scholars of Islam question the accuracy of ancient sources on Muhammad’s life. The earliest biography, of which no copies survive, dated from roughly a century after the generally accepted year of his death, 632, and is known only by references to it in much later texts. But only a few scholars have doubted Muhammad’s existence. Most say his life is better documented than that of Jesus.

He devoured works questioning the existence of Abraham, Moses and Jesus. Then “I said to myself: You’ve dealt with Christianity and Judaism but what about your own religion? Can you take it for granted that Muhammad existed?”

He had no doubts at first, but slowly they emerged. He was struck, he says, by the fact that the first coins bearing Muhammad’s name did not appear until the late 7th century — six decades after the religion did.

He traded ideas with some scholars in Saarbrücken who in recent years have been pushing the idea of Muhammad’s nonexistence. They claim that “Muhammad” wasn’t the name of a person but a title, and that Islam began as a Christian heresy.

Prof. Kalisch didn’t buy all of this. Contributing last year to a book on Islam, he weighed the odds and called Muhammad’s existence “more probable than not.” By early this year, though, his thinking had shifted. “The more I read, the historical person at the root of the whole thing became more and more improbable,” he says.

He has doubts, too, about the Quran. “God doesn’t write books,” Prof. Kalisch says.

The good news in all this, I suppose, is that he hasn’t directly been threatened with violence so far. However there appear to be other consequences:

Germany’s Muslim Coordinating Council withdrew from the advisory board of Prof. Kalisch’s center. Some Council members refused to address him by his adopted Muslim name, Muhammad, saying that he should now be known as Sven

Fascinating exchange here that aired on Abu Dhabi TV. The topic: Women’s rights and marriage. I highly recommend watching it:

The cleric loses the intellectual argument, but it does not matter. Religion dominates the social life in Saudi Arabia. Intellectual reasoning is not required. Religious law is all that matters. This is a prime example why religion cannot be allowed to dictate public policy.