Toothless International Human Rights: Genocide in Gaza

It strains credulity to believe that vengeance against the Palestinian residents of Gaza was not among the motives of the Israeli government’s ministers in retaliating for the Hamas attack against occupation on October 7, 2023. Within days, Israel’s president publicly accused every Palestinian in Gaza of being guilty. Because it cannot be assumed that every resident of Gaza who had voted Hamas into office was in favor of the attack, and the residents who had voted for the PLO could even less be assumed to be supportive of Hamas, the Israeli notion of collective justice is ethically flawed. Deficient as a subterfuge for the very human instinctual urge to inflict disproportionate vengeance, the espoused justification did not hold South Africa off from charging Israel with genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). At the time, both South Africa and Israel were parties to the Genocide Convention. Because the ICJ was at the time the principal judicial body of the United Nations, the UN’s lack of enforcement power—notorious even on resolutions passed by the Security Council—meant that even a conviction could send the message that a national government can get away with even genocide.

The full essay is at "Crimes Against Humanity: Israeli Genocide"

President Obama's Proposal to Rescue States: Unattended Problems in American Federalism and Human Sustenance

In 2011, President Obama proposed "to ride to the rescue of states" that had borrowed billions of dollars from the federal government to continue to pay unemployment benefits during the economic downturn. His plan was to "give the states a two-year breather before automatic tax increases would hit employers, and before states would have to start paying interest on the loans." Many of the states had begun the recession with "too little money in their unemployment trust funds'" Those states "quickly ran through what little they had as unemployment rose and remained stubbornly high month after month. With their own trust funds depleted, 30 states borrowed $42 billion from the federal government to continue paying unemployment benefits." These states were facing an estimated $1.3 billion in interest payments to Washington due in the fall of 2011. The President’s proposal also included raising the minimum taxable wage base from $7,000 to $15,000 in 2014. "The rate of the federal portion of the unemployment taxes would then be lowered, so the proposal would not raise federal taxes on states that do not owe the federal government money. But it would speed the rate at which states that do owe money repay the federal government, and allow states to collect more unemployment taxes to rebuild their trust funds if they do not lower their tax rates." By February, 2011, eighteen states had already raised their minimum taxable wage base to $15,000 or more, according to the National Association of State Workforce Agencies. Iris Lav, an adviser at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said that the unemployment system was “a constellation of problems" that needed to be solved." She added that the near-term problem was the economy, and "both the interest payments and the principal repayments are [were] cutting into employers, and it [made] great sense to postpone them." The larger question was how to "get states to solvency.”[1]

Analysis of the proposal is at "Proposal to Rescue States."

1. Michael Cooper and Sheryl Stolberg, "Obama Plans to Rescue States with Debt Burdens," The New York Times, February 8, 2011.

Lessons Learned from the Arab Spring

"When a leader's only means of staying in power is to use mass violence against his own people, he has lost the legitimacy to rule and needs to do what is right for his country by leaving now." The White House issued this written statement five days after Qaddafi had turned in violence on his own people who were protesting unarmed in the street. Nearly three weeks after the first day that Qaddafi had lost legitimacy, President Obama tried to raise the pressure on the Libyan dictator further by talking about “a range of potential options, including potential military options."  Yet by then the politics of such intervention were getting more complicated by the day, according to the New York Times. The paper reported that critics were contending that the White House was too much concerned about perceptions, and that the administration was too squeamish on the military options on account of the preceding administration's invasion of Iraq based on a claim of danger to the United States from Saddam's access to WMD.

Even the critics acknowledged that the best outcome militarily would be for the United States to join other nations or international organizations rather than go it alone. About a week after the president's hint of military options, the E.U. decided not to impose a No Fly Zone. A few days later, the Arab League, which, according to the Huffington Post, had already barred Libya's government from taking part in League meetings, issued a statement that Qaddafi's government had "lost its sovereignty." The League decided to establish contacts with the rebels' interim government, the National Libyan Council, and to call on the Security Council of the U.N. to impose a No Fly Zone on Libya. 

In a statement, the Arab League asked the "United Nations to shoulder its responsibility ... to impose a no-fly zone over the movement of Libyan military planes and to create safe zones in the places vulnerable to airstrikes." It would not be until March 18th, nearly a month after Qaddafi had first had weapons used against the protesters, that the Security Council would act. According to The New York Times, "After days of often acrimonious debate, played out against a desperate clock, as Colonel Qaddafi’s troops advanced to within 100 miles of the rebel capital of Benghazi, Libya, the Security Council authorized member nations to take “all necessary measures” to protect civilians, diplomatic code words calling for military action." Within days, according to the New York Times, "American and European forces began a broad campaign of strikes against the government of . . . Qaddafi, unleashing warplanes and missiles in the first round of the largest international military intervention in the Arab world since the invasion of Iraq.

The analysis is at "Lessons Learned from the Arab Spring."

Sustenance: A Human Right in America?

In the fall of 2010, the following was said on Fox News: “The government should spend more on the war in Afghanistan in order to fight terrorism. The problem is that the government has gotten into entitlements.”  The latter presumably includes food stamps, public housing, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.  To say that government ought to be engaged in defense and not in supplying needy citizens with food, shelter and health-care is distinct from saying that the federal government should concentrate on foreign policy and defense, while entitlements are formulated and funded by the state governments as their domestic programs. In other words, advocacy for a certain priority in government and for less government is distinct from advocacy for restoring balanced federalism. Most Europeans in the E.U. undoubtedly view the redistributive right for sustenance resources as founded on human rights and thus as a legitimate part of government.  In contrast, Americans do not typically apply a human rights justification to entitlements for other Americans even as foreign aid may be justified in part on this basis.

The full essay is at "Sustenance: A Human Right in America?"

Israel vs. Gaza: Why Does the World Tolerate Unfair Fights within Countries?

In the very nature of occupation and in particular its attribute of a near-monopoly on military force within a given territory, the superior power is essentially inert to any normative constraints, whether from within or abroad. Such power can be drunk with anger, blatantly ignoring what even allies recognize as blatantly unfair actions. That such power may actually perceive the unfairness as fair to the innocent victims demonstrates just how much cognitive dissonance a human brain consumed with its will to power can muster, let alone tolerate, as a mental shield hiding the naked aggression. To be sure, it takes two to get tangled in a fight, so rarely is either party "the bad guy." Yet major dimensions of a conflict can be sliced and put under the proverbial microscope for close examination. Tolerance for an unfair fight, whether involving a rapist, a school-yard bully, or an occupying state, is problematic in not only the predominant aggressor but also any bystanders. In the case of Israel and Gaza in July 2014, the lopsidedness of the death-tolls stands out, as does the tacit refusal of the international community to step in and stop the fight as a result. 

The full essay is at “Israel vs. Gaza”

Business, Government, and Society: Making Humans Less Humane?

Richard Rinaldi, an innovative photographer in New York City, devised an interesting photo series, titled "Touching Strangers." It provides an answer to the following question: If brought together literally through touch, will two people who have never met begin, after some initial discomfort, to feel comfort, even a feeling of caring for the other person? Richard traversed the streets of Manhattan looking for pairs to put together. Seeing one person, and then another, who together would make an interesting picture, he would ask them simply to stand together. The  resulting picture would depict any initial reluctance. Then, he would arrange the two so they are touching each other in a friendly way.

A curious thing came out in the resulting pictures: a feeling of caring. Astonished, the subjects invariably reported that merely from the touching they actually had actually begun to care about a stranger! Reflecting on this feedback, Richard said in an interview that his “experiment” reveals humanity that lies within us, that we wish there were more of in the world, and that existed in the past. By “the past,” the photographer was referring to the photo shoots.

                                                            Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)  Source: Wikimedia Commons 

If we are willing to go a bit farther back in our reflection, say to the state of nature, whether mythic or historical, we can profit from the theory of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which can explain why we do not feel more caring and compassion as we inhabit great edifices of modern business, government, and society. Indeed, it may be that those tremendous artifacts within which we work, argue, and live may have gradually changed human nature itself—and not for the better.
 

Essay Applying Rousseau: Inequality and Warfare in Business, Government & Society

Paper Tigers: Firewalls Forestalling Institutional Conflicts of Interest

Structural, or institutional, conflicts of interest are of great significance in applied ethics, even though they often play second fiddle to the conflicts centered on a person’s particular interests. An organizational or institutional conflict of interest, whether within one organization or in the arrangements between organizations, is not any less unethical than a personal conflict of interest.  Therefore, when we take the claims of vested organizational interests that their internal firewalls are more than just paper tigers at face value, our foolhardiness can really be at our detriment. I present a few cases to suggest that “firewalls” in an organization to prevent it from a conflict of interest are, in general, insufficient and thus ought not be relied on. Instead, the public (or government regulatory agencies) should insist that one of the two interests in an institutional conflict of interest be given up.

The full essay is at Institutional Conflicts of Interest, available at Amazon. 

Federalism Facilitating Self-Preservation

The rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of property (Locke) or happiness (Jefferson) can all fit within a federal system that enables its two systems of government—that of the federation itself and the republics  or (member) states—to check and balance each other. The alternative, at least for a federal empire, may be a return to the state of nature.

The complete essay is at Essays on Two Federal Empires, available at Amazon.