Do you think that global corporations are evil? 

Wait till you hear this.

It used to be that if an American company invested in Canada and some disagreement arose between the US and the Canadian businesses, their disagreement would be adjudicated under Canadian law. In recent years transnational trade agreements provide for what is called “Investor-state arbitration.” Under such treaties, an arbitration panel staffed by lawyers, who also may be involved in international trade and in court cases concerning international trade, is empowered to resolve disagreements regardless of the laws in the country where the investment is made. These arbitration panel decisions override court decisions of the country where an, often North American, corporation has made investments. Arbitration panels of this kind can override national sovereignty and governments duly elected by the people of another country.

There are a number of cases where North American drug companies have appealed to these somewhat shadowy tribunals in order to prevent Canadian manufacturers of generic drugs from selling those in the US or even in Canada. In other cases North American chemical companies complained about the Canadian limitations on poisonous agricultural chemicals. They appealed to the arbitration panels for permission to sell their highly toxic agricultural chemicals even where Canadian law prohibited that.

The upshot is that before US investors will invest in a foreign country, the country first must sign a treaty with the US which limits the application of their legislation and their courts and their government sovereignty in the interest of allowing US companies to override local law and court decisions.

A particularly startling example of this kind of naked imperialism is the experience of Ecuador. Between 1964 and 1992 Texaco explored for and drilled for oil in the Amazonian jungle of Ecuador. During that time the company is accused of dumping more than 16 billion gallons of toxic water into streams and rivers used by the local, indigenous inhabitants.

The indigenous peoples sued in Ecuadorian and in US courts. After losing repeatedly over an 18 year period, the plaintiff's finally won in an Ecuadorian court and then in the appellate court. Chevron, who had bought the operation from Texaco, was ordered to pay $18 billion for cleanup and punitive damages to the indigenous Ecuadorian people.

But that did not settle anything at all. In February of this year one of the shadowy “investor – state” tribunals ordered the Ecuadorian government to stop enforcing the decree of their own courts. Chevron has still not done any cleanup. It has not paid any reparations. It has sought refuge under the greater power of the US government and the US economy to invade the decisions of a legitimate Ecuadorian government.

The investor-state tribunal can give orders to the government of another nation, a government that the citizens of that country elected. US corporations arrogate to themselves power over foreign government. They enforce those outrageous claims by threatening to withdraw investments from those other countries. Imperialism is alive and well.

Is it any wonder that foreign countries and their populations call us “bullies”?

Then and now.

The current economic crisis has been compared to the Great Depression of the 1930s. But there is one important difference between then and now. In the 1930s many working people banded together to organize an American labor movement that was powerful in the workplace and in national politics on until the 1980s. Today…?

Today people look to the government to create jobs, to create an economy that is more just. That is true even of those working people who have bought into the Tea Party line of smaller and smaller government. The tea party people are not proposing to abolish the government themselves. They are looking to Congress – one of the three parts of government – to abolish one of the other ones, the executive.

Yes, there are real parallels between then and now. But there also is this glaring difference. Then Americans were willing to roll up their shirt sleeves and build new organizations in order to protect working people. Today people are willing to blame, to point fingers, and to wait for somebody else to do the real work of change.

What does that tell us about ourselves? We still take credit for being a self determining, active nation. We still like to talk about pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. But I don't see a lot of evidence for any of that. In discussions I have with people about social and political problems, the first suggestion is always: “the government should…” I very rarely hear anyone say: “we should organize ourselves…”

No doubt there are many different explanations for this change. In the 30s many working people were leftist immigrants from Eastern Europe, or children of leftist immigrants. Today's immigrants are very different. They win a lottery for a visa and come to the US in order to participate the competitive struggle for wealth. Few among them are inclined towards organizing themselves to improve their ability to resist the pressures by employers.

Since the 1930s we have had 80 years of powerful executive programs. We have become accustomed to letting our government take care of us and then complaining if we don't get the sort of care we are looking for.

Since the end of World War II – 60 years ago – we have developed an astonishing consumer culture. Buying new things has become our recipe for happiness, even though everyone is ready to say that “money does not buy happiness.” What makes consumer goods so attractive is that they make life easier. Think of the washing machine, the vacuum cleaner, the automatic coffeemaker, the remote control of whatever electronic device you may think of. You know longer need to get out of your chair to turn on your television. You just click a button. Comfort and minimal effort have become important values.

The dark side of that search for ease and comfort is, of course, that people have to work incredibly hard to be able to afford all this luxury. Possibilities of earning money are precarious. So you need to be careful and not get the reputation of being a troublemaker. Seeking ease, struggling to keep up with mounting bills, insecure in the ability to earn a living, – those and other pressures have turned us into passive citizens. When a depression, clearly orchestrated by large banks and other large businesses, puts our livelihood in danger we are no longer able to fight back.

Add to that the fact that the depression was brought about by very complicated maneuverings and manipulations. It is not obvious how Goldman Sachs and their other banking cronies managed to enrich themselves and impoverish the rest of us. It is difficult to fight against an evil that is not at all transparent.

So we do the only thing that seems left to us. We complain.

 

Who deserves the blame?

When an American soldier went out to the nearest Afghan village and killed 16 people, a great deal of attention was focused on this one man. We heard about his family and his own history. The same happens with the grisly crimes that fill the daily paper. Teenage boys shooting their classmates. Young mothers killing their children. Angry husbands killing their wives and sometimes their children also. Young men shooting other young men.

In each case there are one or more individuals accused of the crime and the news focuses on them. A good deal of attention is then given to what sort of punishment this person should receive. Where a murder has been committed there is always mention of the possibility of the death penalty, even if the accused murderer is only 15 years old.

This intense focus on the individual murderer has always puzzled me.

When the Boston Red Sox win a pennant, half of Boston celebrates and gets drunk even though the celebrants made absolutely no contribution to the victory of the team – except perhaps paying large sums to sit in the bleachers. People are “proud to be Americans” even though their individual contribution to American economic or military power is miniscule or even completely nonexistent. We take credit for the good things that happen in our society even when we, actually, did not contribute to the good event. It gives us a sense of accomplishment. It makes us important and our lives worthwhile.

But the bad things that happen always get blamed on specific individuals. When the Red Sox failed to win a pennant because it's overpaid players were drinking beer in the clubhouse during the game, did any of us ask ourselves what our contribution was to this sort of culture of self indulgence and “more money for me.” Is it conceivable that these undisciplined players were simply living out the standard life in a consumerist society? And do all of us who participate in that society not bear some responsibility for keeping it going?

If our schools have students so angry and so disillusioned that they are willing to bring a gun to school and use it, does that not also have to do with us?

News reports say that Sgt. Bales, accused of killing 16 civilians in Afghanistan, served three tours in Iraq before he was sent to Afghanistan – clearly unwilling to go. I'm sure he is not the only one who has served that much time on the front lines. All the other soldiers who have done similar service have not gone out to shoot civilians. For sure, but should we not ask whether the military – and we – put excessive demands on this person?

Should we not ask whether Sgt. Bales should have been in Afghanistan at all? Is it possible that all of us who have been condemning those wars but have not been willing to protest loudly enough to be heard in Washington have some responsibility for the continuing damage we are doing to Afghanistan and to our own soldiers?

If you are “proud to be American” you should also be ashamed for American soldiers who kill civilians in Afghanistan.

Ethical capitalism?

The New Orleans' Saints have incurred the wrath of the National Football League for not acting like saints. They promised a bonus of $1500 dollars to any player who hit his opponent hard enough to put him in the hospital. If you hit the opponent hard enough to have him carried off the field, you only get $1000. The National Football League wants it to be known that it does not allow players to get paid for injuring other players.

Some people believe that the ruckus is silly. Football is a business and all businesses give bonuses to employees who perform exceptionally well. Only look at Goldman Sachs. But the supporters of the National Football League point out that businesses ought not to give bonuses to employees who act unethically. Yes, the point of business in a capitalist society is to make as much money as you can, and if your employees are particularly productive, it is a good practice to reward them– but only as long as their actions are ethically justified.

Having said that commentators think that they have said everything there is to be said: capitalism is just fine as long as it is ethical. They assume that ordinary capitalist practices are of course ethical. Who would question that?

It is interesting, in that context, to think of Jesus cleansing the temple of the moneylenders and to remember that for the last 5000 years many religions – Jews, Christians and Muslims – have been very critical of people who lend money for interest. They certainly would not have thought that charging 17% or more interest on a credit card debt is ethically justified.

Medieval governments made illegal certain standard capitalist practices because they regarded them as unethical. Buying goods from a farmer or a shoemaker before the producer could come to market and then selling the goods at a markup was unethical and illegal. Manipulating supply by buying up large quantities of a commodity in order to raise the price, was regarded as unethical and illegal. Raising prices when supply was short, the central practice in a so-called “free market”, was definitely regarded as wicked. When harvests were poor, the millers and the bakers raised their prices and the people would riot because they felt cheated. In medieval trade everyone was supposed to observe a 'fair price.' Charging what the market will bear was definitely immoral.

Well, you say, times have changed. We are definitely more enlightened, we have discovered the free market and its blessings. Our ethical ideas are different and who is to say that our ideas are wrong?

The interesting question is why our ethical ideas have changed. 

 

We have lived under capitalism for close to 200 years. The capitalists have given generously to churches, to schools and have been able to spread their message through the media which they own. For 200 years we have been told that it is ethical to buy cheap and sell dear, that it is perfectly alright to get as much labor out of your employees as possible with minimal expense. It is all right to compete and put other people out of business. The sorts of things capitalists do regularly – think of Romney and Bain Capital – are ethical.

Some people have swallowed that message so completely they think that the unregulated market will bring us the millennium. We don't even need the Messiah to come to save us if only the government will keep its hands off the marketplace. Most people however, know better: we need someone to make sure that the food the supermarket sells us is not tainted and will not make us sick. We need to make sure that the doctors who charge large amounts for their services are qualified, and that the same is true of the man who builds my house. Capitalists unsupervised may well sell us poisonous food or build houses that will fall down on top of us. That, many people think, it is surely not ethical. 

 

Poisoning people with the food you sell them or injuring them with poorly built houses or defective appliances injures the buyer and that is unethical. But about paying people so little money that they need to go on welfare although they're working? New employees at Walmart are told how to apply for food stamps and Medicaid because the wages they are about to get are clearly in adequate. Is that not unethical? The same is true when the big box store or chain hardware store comes into town and puts family-run stores out of business. A lot of people lose out. They also lose when their jobs migrate to Cambodia. Is that ethical?

Capitalist procedures cause a lot of pain. Some of those injuries are considered unethical and have been made illegal. Others are still accepted even though they too inflict serious injuries. We should not be so quick to believe that what capitalists do is ethical.

If it is unethical for football players to be rewarded for inflicting serious bodily injuries on the opponents, why is it legal to put a small grocer or small hardware store out of business just because you are much bigger and have more money in the bank? Are the injuries you do here not unethical? If the Saints are to be penalized for the bonuses they give, why should we not penalize Walmart for the poverty they inflict on their employees?

If you want to know whether capitalism is ethical, don't ask the capitalist.

Whatever happened to the Rule of Law?

About half the first ten Amendments to the Constitution have to do with the rights of persons suspected of having committed a crime. The 4th amendment protects against unreasonable search and seizure. If the police suspects you of a crime they cannot just burst into your house, search the place and take stuff. The 5th Amendment protects you against just being arrested without a proper indictment. It prohibits compelling you to incriminate yourself or being “deprived of life and liberty” without due process of law. If you are accused of a crime, the 6th Amendment says, you are entitled to a speedy and public trial by a jury. You have a right to know what you are accused of, meet your accusers, and have an attorney to help you defend yourself. The 7th amendment lists one’s rights in civil cases and excessive bail is prohibited by the 8th Amendment.

Since 9/11 all of these Amendments have been violated by the US government. All you need is the government to accuse you of being a terrorist and all bets are off; the Constitutional protections disappear. The US government has assassinated US citizens; others have just disappeared at Guantanamo. Congress has passed a law that allows the military to arrest you and hold you indefinitely if you are accused of terrorism.

The principle of the Amendments is that the government may not act upon an accusation unless it has satisfied a jury in court that its accusations are true. Arrests must be followed by an indictment and a speedy trial. Anything less is a violation of the victim’s constitutional rights.

But you say, “These people are are terrorists. They do not care about our rights. They just kill Americans where they can. This is 'war.' ” But that is the whole point of the amendments: a person accused of any crime, including terrorism, has the right to speedy trial and all the other protections until they are found guilty in court by a jury.

But you insist “These people do not care about our rights. Why should we care about theirs?" That's true enough but irrelevant. The person who steels your wallet, the hit and run driver who leaves you bleeding in the street, the gang that breaks into your house to steal your valuables also does not care for your rights to secure possession of your property or to bodily security. The arguments applied to terrorists apply just as well to ordinary thieves and cutthroats. But we bend over backward to make sure that they are not punished for what we cannot prove they really did. How are terrorists any different from common criminals in their disregard for their victims' rights?

What is the argument for treating persons accused of terrorism differently from others that attack and injure you? The only argument available to those who want to deny constitutional protections to persons accused of terrorism is to say that we and the terrorists are at war and that constitutional guarantees do not apply to combatants.

But if its a war, the accused terrorists are not alone. We are combatants also and like our enemies in war we are not entitled to constitutional protections. We do not march into battle protected by peace time human rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

If there is a war on terrorism all rights, not only theirs, are suspended. If we are willing to kill them or make them disappear without trial for indefinite periods in some military brig or another, we also give up our own rights.

That is obviously not a good bargain for us. The price of denying constitutional rights to others is to surrender our own.

9/11 brought great grief to many families in the US and elsewhere. But the graver effect of that attack was that we adopted the lawless ways of our attackers. We are turning our backs on the rule of law that we have developed over two hundred years and are returning to the savagery of earlier systems of crime and punishment that the Founders hoped to make a thing of the past.

Presidents Bush and Obama have turned their backs on that project of strengthening the Rule of Law. American citizens who support that are making a serious mistake.

One state for Palestinians and Israelis?

A conference at the Harvard Kennedy school last weekend considered a “one state solution” for the Israeli Palestinian stalemate. The idea is to have Israelis and Palestinians live in one state.

The conference, and the issue it examined, has provoked sharp criticism from some traditional Jewish organizations and individuals. The one state solution, they say, would spell the end of the Jewish state.

But what is a Jewish state? Originally described as “a homeland for all Jews” it suggested a place where Jews could find refuge from persecution they experience in many places around the globe. A Jewish state is often also described as a state where Judaism is the official religion. But for Jews like myself, whose family has been secular for a century or more, a religious Jewish state would not be a homeland because I would not be welcome there. Clearly a Jewish state cannot be characterized by any specific official religion.

A Jewish state is then often described as a nation state but one where Jews are in the majority. There is an American state, a German state, a French state and so on. In each, significant portions of the population are second-class citizens. America, even after the election of President Obama, is not very hospitable to persons of color, whether they be Black, Hispanic, or Arab. In Germany, until very recently, the German born children of Turkish or Greek immigrants were not German citizens. Similar discrimination against immigrants from North Africa exist in France.

Nation states, in theory, embrace different ethnic groups, but in practice few manage to avoid giving preferred status to some groups over others. Israel as a Jewish state is not even in theory hospitable to all the people living in Israel, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Arabs. In the Jewish state of Israel only Jews are full citizens, and, in fact, not even all Jews. Traditionally, the European Jews have had more power and status than, say, the Jews from North Africa, let alone those from Ethiopia.

Nations states do not make good homelands. Nation states provide homelands for some by making others homeless.

What is a homeland? The Jewish tradition talks frequently about welcoming strangers into your house and treating them as equals. A homeland is a place where you are civil and caring to people who are different. It is a place of trust, not of paranoia. It is a place where strangers are treated as equals and are welcomed. It is a place where an ethic of trust and welcoming of difference prevails. People living in a homeland follow a way of life not often observed by citizens of a national state. National states are violent and so are its citizens. By their distrust and paranoia, by their need to hate and to have enemies, they destroy their own nation as a homeland. Feeling always the threat from, mostly imaginary, enemies they cannot rest in their home, they cannot be at peace, they must root out their enemies.

In American terms: a homeland is a melting pot--a real melting pot--where everyone is accepted to make their contribution. It is not a place where we invent enemies, where we are filled with hate and fear. America is still wrestling with the question of what sort of homeland it is going to be. So, obviously is Israel.

So yes, let’s have a homeland for Jews. But let’s also have a homeland for Palestinians. They have, after all, lived in the same part of the world for a long time. A real homeland for Jews and Palestinians. A place of peace and mutual respect. Nothing less will do.

                         Religion in Politics

The First Amendment to our Constitution bids the government to “make no law

respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” It is pretty clear what that means. For many years British civil servants and politicians as well as professors at Oxford and Cambridge universities needed to be Anglicans. Those jobs were not open to members of other religious persuasions. In Germany until World War I, only Christians could be civil servants, including university professors. Jews could not have those jobs unless they converted to Christianity.

No one in the United States today, even folks who keep saying that ours is “a Christian nation,” proposes that we should demand of all government officials that they be Christians.

But surely the question of religion and politics goes beyond that. The Catholic Church is refusing to allow its members to have their birth control paid for by insurance companies. Members of various Christian denominations refuse to support equal marriage rights for gay people on the grounds that the Bible describes homosexuality as an abomination. Many people oppose abortion on similar religious grounds. Teachings of specific religions, they think, may be used as the justification of legislation. All of us, even those who do not share the religious belief in question, may be forbidden to practice what one or another religion condemns.

Underlying these controversies is a serious disagreement about religion. Implicit in the First Amendment is the belief that religion is a private matter. A Christian may believe very firmly that Jesus Christ was the promised Messiah and died for our sins. A Jew may praise Jesus as a notable prophet but insist that the Messiah's return is still in the future. But, because religion is a private matter, neither of them can impose their belief on the other.

When you enter grade school you learn to add and subtract. Your teacher teaches you that 2+2 = 4. If you don't want to accept that, you get punished with a bad grade. The belief that 2+2 = 4 is not a private matter. You have no choice in it; you must accept it because it is true.

Not so, for instance, your preferences in ice cream flavors. I like chocolate, you like vanilla. It would be totally bizarre if I forced you to eat chocolate because chocolate is, I think, “objectively” the best ice cream flavor. If I tried, you would point out to me that one's taste in ice cream is private, is subjective. Different people are entitled to their own tastes in food.

But most followers of one religion or another, whatever they may say, do not accept that religion is a private matter in precisely that sense that you may not impose your religious beliefs and the conduct these beliefs demand or forbid on anyone else who has different beliefs. The Pope does not believe that Catholic theology is something that you may accept or reject. For Jews the Law is a divine gift that we must follow. The beliefs of different religions are not merely subjective. They are not private.

When Mormons baptize people posthumously, they are telling us that Mormonism is the only true form of Christianity. Catholicism, different varieties of Protestantism are all idolatry. What is more they don't regard this as just some personal belief which others may share or not. They know that that is absolute truth. The Catholic Church – not necessarily its members – know for a fact that birth control is sinful. Evangelical churches know the same about gay sex. And all of them know for fact that Jews and Muslims are going to burn in hell.

The First Amendment demands that we treat all religious beliefs as purely personal and subjective. It makes no more sense, the First Amendment tells us, to force our religious beliefs on others than it would be to force on them our tastes in ice cream. But most religious people – except perhaps some Unitarians or Quakers – do not believe that about their religious beliefs. For many religious persons their religion is the bedrock on which their life rests. Make those beliefs subjective and, in some sense, arbitrary like tastes ice cream, and their lives would have no foundation. For that reason, religious persons hold on for dear life to the belief that their religion is the true and only one.

So when in the course of the current electoral campaigns, Catholic bishops fuss endlessly about birth control, and other candidates fulminate against abortion or gay marriage on religious grounds, they seriously challenge the First Amendment with its non-establishment clause. It makes us realize that our dedication to the First Amendment has always been conflicted. Some people are serious about regarding religious beliefs as private. Most religious people regard religious beliefs other than their own as private, subjective, and arbitrary – if not completely mistaken. But the First Amendment does not apply to their religion. It is literally God's truth. Their dedication to civil rights is clearly qualified.

This is not intended to be a condemnation of religion. But it is important to understand the Rick Santorum phenomenon: their religious faith--not that of others--is as true and as important as anything in the lives of seriously religious persons. The First Amendment holds for all religions--except their own.