IMovedOn.org

There has been much said about Obama’s attempt to force religious organization (and religious people) to violate their religious tenets by forcing them to offer contraceptive and abortion services as part of insurance programs given to their employees. Note that nobody in this discussion is saying anything about whether such medical services should be made illegal or inaccessible to people – only whether or not religious organization and people should be forcibly required to support such services.

On the central point of whether or not it is appropriate for the our government to force me to violate central elements of my religious life, it seems most probable that the courts will rule that the answer is “no”. In the past, attempts have been made at outlawing the kosher processing of animals, there has been a recent attempt in California to outlaw ritual circumcision of male babies – so far these attempts have failed in court. The question I pose here is “why?”.

Yes, I could write here all about principles of “church and state”…I could repeat the 1st amendment to the U.S. Constitution…these would all be “cop-outs” because ultimately the question has to be asked “why is the 1st amendment there in the first place? What is it about the separation of church and state that make it important to bring into the discussion.”

The ultimate answer is to include a piece written by Moshe Feiglin where he falls back on an unusual piece of source material “The Little Prince”….

From Moshe Feiglin

As a result of my attempts to halt the Oslo collapse, I was put on trial for “sedition.” I asked the judges to allow me to read a short piece from a book that I had brought with me. The judges agreed, and to their surprise, I removed “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint Exupיry from my briefcase:

“Sire–over what do you rule?”

“Over everything,” said the king, with magnificent simplicity.

“Over everything?”

The king made a gesture, which took in his planet, the other planets, and all the stars.

“Over all that?” asked the little prince.

“Over all that,” the king answered.

For his rule was not only absolute: it was also universal.

“And the stars obey you?”

“Certainly they do,” the king said. “They obey instantly. I do not permit insubordination.”

“I should like to see a sunset . . . Do me that kindness . . . Order the sun to set . . .”

“If I ordered a general to fly from one flower to another like a butterfly, or to write a tragic drama, or to change himself into a sea bird, and if the general did not carry out the order that he had received, which one of us would be in the wrong?” the king demanded. “The general, or myself?”

“You,” said the little prince firmly.

“Exactly. One must require from each one the duty which each one can perform,” the king went on. “Accepted authority rests first of all on reason. If you ordered your people to go and throw themselves into the sea, they would rise up in revolution.  I have the right to require obedience because my orders are reasonable” (The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint Exupיry, Chapter 10).

It is a mistake to think that the state works within the boundaries of laws. The public does not obey laws.  It obeys rules within the boundaries of a triangle, the first side of which is the law. But the triangle has two other sides: common sense and ethicality.

What if the Knesset would pass a law requiring drivers to drive in reverse all winter? That would counter the logic side of the triangle. The public’s subsequent refusal would be the fault of the government, not of the public. In other words, the fact that we obey the law is not because of the law itself, but because it is logical enough to warrant our adherence.

The third side of the triangle is ethicality. If the government would order us to drive our elderly and infirm out onto the frozen tundra, as per Eskimo custom, we may agree that it would logically enhance the economy. But nobody would obey, because it would be patently immoral. The party at fault for the insubordination would be the government that enacted the law and not the citizens who refused to obey.

How are the boundaries of this triangle determined?

The law is obviously determined by the government. A government has unlimited power to enact and enforce laws. The government, with its Knesset majority, can enact a law that would postpone elections for fifty years. Why doesn’t it do so? For only one reason. Because it knows that the public would not accept it and the government would subsequently lose its credibility. In other words, just like Exupיry’s king, the government enacts laws within the boundaries that it assumes the public will accept, both logically and ethically.

Power always strives for more power and the government will always attempt to test the boundaries of common sense and ethicality. But fortunately, it is not the government that determines these boundaries, but the public. How does the public accomplish this? By using its right and sometimes, its duty – to refuse to obey the law. That is how the logical and ethical platform for the healthy functioning of society is created.

In order to increase its power, the government tries to convince us that insubordination will cause the state to collapse. But that is completely false. The greatest crimes in human history were perpetrated when citizens ignored their duty to delineate logical and ethical boundaries for the rule of law. The societies in which this took place by and large collapsed.

“Good men must not obey the laws too well” Ralph Waldo Emerson”

While I don’t agree often with Moshe Feiglin, his words are good council in these times of social strife. Obama needs to read “Le Petite Prince” to understand why his “rule” is not being respected.

I bid you all to read the article at the NYPost and particularly watch the video of the violence which resulted.

I also suggest that all concerned read the United States Constitution’s 1st amendment which reads, in full:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The constitution, being the covenant which binds our society is very explicit…. people have the right to peaceably assemble and petition their government for a redress of grievances.    It does not say that people have the right to take over private or public spaces – forcing all other legitimate activities to go elsewhere – it does not give people the right to quash other people’s ability to speak (which is what was happening at CUNY) – the Occupy folks were keeping others who had registered to speak – from exercising their constitutional right to speak to their grievances.

It appears as if nobody was telling the Occupy folks that they couldn’t address the board… but they had to “speak” and were not going to be allowed to muzzle the other people who also had a right to speak.

To that end, CUNY and the NYPD were absolutely within their rights to clear the disruption from their midst so that they could undertake the conversation that they had planned.  It is unfortunate that the demonstrators had to resort to violence to the point where the police had to make arrests.

The Occupy movement needs to understand that if they weaponize their “free speech” and use it to muzzle others… that they have fallen out of the 1st amendment’s protection…and will be asked to shut up or go elsewhere.

President Obama recently made the observation that America has become lazy in how America has competed in the world markets.  A lot of criticism has been thrown his way by his opponents for making this statement claiming that it shows disrespect for the American work ethic.

Those who have read my views about Obama know that I am not one of his admirers but on this account, I can say that I agree with Obama – America has become lazy.

Now before you accuse me of criticizing the American worker, please read my analysis.

Imagine that you had an employee who spent 50% of his working hours watching Simpson’s reruns on youtube during their workday.  Four out of every eight hours was spent not being productive.  I suspect that you would come to the conclusion that the worker in question was lazy and would eventually fire him.

Now examine the following graph… America’s workforce has shifted to the point where 50% of the working hours expended in the U.S. is expended in the government workforce.

I will not claim that government workers are akin to the non-productive hours of a lazy worker watching youtube videos – but the concept can be applied in part.  Some government is always necessary to grease the wheels of a productive society… some government is necessary to insure that the rules of the game are observed by all the players… some government is required to make sure that foreign aggression is kept at bay so that our economy can flourish… some government is required to make sure that safety nets are in place for those members of our American family who cannot contribute… some government is required to insure that the next generation is developed to be productive and contributing members of our society.

The point I’m trying to make is that “some government” is a far cry from where we are today…where government has become an industry of it’s own.  We now employ huge numbers of people in government jobs who simply do not contribute to the productivity of America – and worse – are actively making it harder for the rest of the society to produce the goods and services which ultimately are the only things which produce our standard of living today.

Americans are not lazy.

…but, yes, I agree with President Obama – America has become lazy – we spend a huge chunk of our working hours doing non-productive…even anti-productive things.  If that isn’t the definition of “lazy” – I’m not sure what is.

Sally Kohn has penned a fantastic column on FoxNews’ website – it should be read by everyone because it sheds real light on the Occupy movement…. as much as a “breakthrough moment” might happen in your therapist’s office.

Her basic premise is that what is fueling the Occupy folks is the incredible disparity in income between the so-called top 1% and the so-called “99%”.   Her point is that this is not “class-envy” per-se but a outcry that the very disparity in incomes is an “injustice” that needs to be rectified.  She does complain about “crony capitalism” (without defining it) and in that sentiment, I agree with her and she would find great resonance with the TEA party folks…..but what was really revealing was her statement:

“Sure, bank executives may work a lot harder than you and me or a mother of three doing checkout at a grocery store. Maybe the bankers work ten times harder. Maybe even a hundred times harder. But they’re compensated a thousand times more.  The question is not how Occupy Wall Street protesters can find that gross discrepancy immoral. The question is why every one of us isn’t protesting with them.“

I will try to answer her question.

In the interest of “full disclosure”, I will begin by saying that I applaud the Occupy folks protest against corporate interests writing our legislation and controlling our politicians to the betterment of their own financial position and at the expense of the public’s.  I think in this “grievance”, the Occupy and TEA party folks are in total agreement.

What I find with Kohn’s statement is a deafening level of ignorance of what capitalism is all about.   I will illustrate this with a joke.

There was once a manager of a power plant who had a large turbine generator which was experiencing excessive vibrations.  He called a famous MIT dynamics professor to help him solve the vibration problem.  The professor came in, listened to the vibration and then stroked his beard… he called his assistant over and said “please bring me a ladder and a piece of chalk.  The assistent dutifully brought the items to the professor and the professor climed the ladder up to a single blade of this huge turbine generator.  He drew an “X” with his chalk on the blade.  The professor turned to the manager and said “weld a 5 pound piece of steel at the X”.  The professor gently climbed down and went back to MIT.    A week later, the manager of the power plant called the professor  and exclaimed – “Professor, you are a genius…it worked!!  Please send me a bill for your services!”.  The bill arrived…it said “Consulting services $1,000,000.50″   The manager was shocked – he wrote back to the professor “Could you please itemize your bill for us?”… The professor sent a new bill:  ” Chalk…..$0.50,    Knowing where to draw the “X”:  $1,000,000″

What Sally Kohn doesn’t understand is that people get paid money not for how “hard they work”…but because their work is valuable to the person paying the money.  The people paying the money find that the large sums of money they are paying to these people is really a bargain – they are making even more money than it is costing them paying these large fees.

Granted, I am not going so far as to say that fees paid as bribes, graft and corruption should be tolerated – even though those bribes are “worth it” to those paying the bribes – bribes are bribes are bribes and should be rooted out at all levels…. but to cite a ratio of “highest-to-lowest” compensation as some kind of morality-metric is simply stupid.

What the Occupy folks should be asking themselves is ‘what can they do that is more valuable to the person paying them than the compensation they get for doing a particular job”.  If what they are doing can be done by a person in India or China for 1/10th the salary – their job is in jeopardy of disappearing overseas.

The answer to that question is scary and the youth today should in fact be scared – but to sit on Wall Street and scream about and tearing down “the rich” because they do things that other people find valuable is not only unfair and imoral – it is self destructive…. for it is the “rich” who are paying the bulk of the taxes and give the bulk of the charity and employ the bulk of the population.

Although I’m not entirely a “Mitt supporter”, I admire any politician when they speak the truth.  It was quite revealing…. the little tit-for-tat that occurred in Iowa.  The hecklers were convinced that corporations are “not people” and the Democratic National Committee chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Shultz used this to explain herself…

“Mitt Romney’s comment today that ‘corporations are people’ is one more indication that Romney and the Republicans on the campaign trail and in Washington have misplaced priorities,” she said in a statement, calling the comment a “shocking admission.”

Just on the face of it, Mitt Romney is correct, the money a corporation makes is spent on labor, management, suppliers & vendors who are all “people”…corporations build buildings – built by “people”. Even when these corporations save money and put it in the bank – the bank then lends that money out to other “people” to build homes as well as lend it to other corporations to fund their activities.

So what is the argument between the the liberals who heckled Mitt Romney claiming that corporations aren’t “people”? These people chant “soak the corporations” – they want to tax the corporations more and take that money to fund the government.

What are these people really saying?

Simply put, they are saying is that they want the money that is fueling the corporations to be used to fuel government programs.

Let’s just examine this for a minute. Every dollar spent in a corporation is evaluated as to how spending that dollar will affect the current or future profitability of the corporation. That dollar, even though it is spent ultimately on people, is not spent unless it can be justified to increase the corporation’s current or future profitability.

What these liberals are arguing is for that dollar to be taken from the corporation, a big chunk of that dollar being consumed by bureaucrats and then the rest of the dollar being given as entitlements to unemployed, poor, elderly or sick individuals. In short, they want the dollar to be taken from the portion of society who produce wealth and given to that portion of society who consume wealth.

Before anyone starts shouting how important it is that a humane society protect and support their most vulnerable members, I am not advocating that safety nets should be removed for that segment of society – indeed it is crucial that the poor, elderly or sick individuals be supported.

What I would like to point out is that government is now a “special interest group”.  Have you noticed that when budgets are tight it is the teachers, the police & firemen, food to the poor, throwing momma into the streets that get put before voters?

It’s always – vote for this tax increase or we will fire 20% of your teachers, police and firefighters.

It’s never – vote for this tax increase or we will have to fire the Co-Assistant Vice Secretary Coordinator to the Under Secretary of Public Management of ….  Please tell me why Michelle Obama needs a 33% bigger staff than her predecessor and not 50% less in this time of budgetary constraints?

Why doesn’t the public ever see the argument:  “if you don’t vote for higher taxes, we will have to cut the mayor’s salary by 20% and then we won’t be able to attract good people to fill the slot?”   When a corporation finds it has to cut budgets, front line people do get cut, but so do middle managers and executives – because the bottom line is how can we produce more for less.

So what these people who scream “soak the corporations” are really saying is that they want to take money from people who try at every turn to build wealth with every dollar they have and give it to the people who are protecting their cushy bureaucrat job by threatening to withhold safety nets from truly needy people.

So Mitt Romney is right – corporations are people too – corporations are people who are bailing the leaky boat as fast as they can – corporations are the people are building wealth where others just want to sit around and spend the wealth – worse yet, corporations are  people  bailing the boat when others want to tie their hands (with more regulations) and poke holes in the buckets they are using (taxes) – corporations are people who are bailing the boat when others want to invite more and more people into the boat (illegal immigrants)….corporations are  people who are bailing the boat when others want to devote more time and effort to those who aren’t bailing the boat (entitlements).

It is natural for people in a lifeboat to argue over resources – but it is pointless to point the finger at people who work and own “corporations” when we have this over-bloated bureaucracy employing huge numbers of people who aren’t really providing enough value to the mission of keeping the boat afloat.

…oh….I forgot… lest you start screaming at how “corporation people” are spending their money making goods and services overseas… please check over the items you purchase at Home Depot, Best Buy or even at your local grocery store…I hope you are not spending any of your money buying anything made in China, Japan, Mexico, Malaysia… because then …

…you’d be doing…

…exactly-the-same-thing.

Here it comes.

Barbaric as it was, the Norway nut who slaughtered innocents was indeed deranged in (at least) one significant dimension – that the “ends justify the means” – he was, like Timothy McVeigh, convinced of his mission and that how he undertook his battle didn’t matter.  This led to a tragic end.

The Norway nut was convinced of one truth (that Islam is an existential threat to civilization) and was willing to sacrifice another truth (thou shalt not murder).

Now the NYTimes is leading the charge on the truth-tellers.  Because this nut job read JihadWatch.org or watched the videos on MEMRI – these sites are being labeled “incitement sites”.

Geert Wilders, a Dutch member of parliament, just won his court case where he was charged with incitement because he dared to create a documentary which contained ONLY quotes from the Koran and videos of Islamic Imams preaching from the pulpit….no commentary or over dubs, no announcer, no nothing – just fact – just truth.  Yes, he won his case but not until after a multi year, multi-million dollar legal battle.

As barbaric and as tragic as the events in Norway were and my heart bleeds for the victims and their families….If trying to tell the truth and motivating others to hear the truth is considered “incitement” – we are all in very, very deep trouble.

That is why the freedom of speech is so important – if you have free speech – the truth will be spoken – at least by some.

But unfortunately: The first victim of a war is “truth”.

The Norway nut, terrorist Anders Behring, felt that the young campers he butchered were somehow heirs to their parent’s leftist views. Yes, their parents and possibly the children were ignorant of the truth, chose to ignore the truth, to make excuses for the truth – but you don’t murder the ignorant, the stupid people of this world – you educate them.

…and this is the important part that we can all make use of: if you can’t educate them, if you can’t convince them of the truth, you don’t harm them – you ignore them.

Much has been written about the causes which led to the “housing bubble” which led to a near financial meltdown.  Chief among these “causes” was the advent of the “Collateralized Debt Obligations” or CDOs.  If you are a glutton for punishment, you may read up on CDO’s here.   Suffice it to say, the short course in CDOs is that they are esoteric investment vehicles invented primarily by “financial engineers” to reap profits.  A great article in the MIT-Press gives a glimpse and what was happening as things started to melt down.

We all know what happened…. the melt down, the collapse of Bear-Sterns, Lehman Brothers, the bailout, the stimulus etc.

What is not apparent is the “real cost” to the economy.  To understand the “real cost” – you have to understand something about stocks and bonds trading.  In any trade, someone buys a security and someone sells a security.  Ultimately, someone may gain by the trade (ie: make money) and someone somewhere will loose money.   The truth is that while someone made money – no wealth was created.

The amount of money gained is exactly equal to the amount of money lost by others who traded in the security – it was a zero-sum game.   In its simplest form, the trading is like in a poker game, there is only so much money among all the players and no matter who wins or looses, there is only only so much value “in the game”… no matter how long the game is played, there is a fixed amount of “wealth”.

In an economy, wealth is created, traded and sometimes it is destroyed.  Wealth is created when someone makes something that has more value than what it took to make the thing in the first place.   So if I can create something (a good or a service) and people are willing to pay $10.00 for it and it only took $8.00 to make it – then you’ve created $2.00 of wealth.

The real tragic part of the housing bubble is that the financial services industry consumed the best and brightest from places like MIT for a decade or longer and utilized those “financial engineers” to invent trading platforms and esoteric financial instruments to make money for their employers – but with every gainer – there was an equal looser and no wealth was created.

Those really smart MIT engineers could have been doing something else with their efforts.   In the past, the best MIT talent was involved in building startups to create new computing platforms, new networking systems, new processors, new software technologies – they built new companies that literally changed the way we work and allowed us to produce more with less – these really smart MIT engineers did something wonderful – they created wealth.

Then in the 90′s many of these really smart engineers started to be sucked into the financial industry to build trading systems for hedge funds and other allowed the creation of these esoteric financial products such as CDOs.

Now granted, engineers (even really smart engineers) were still starting companies and building great technologies – but all those financial engineers who went into the financial industry did nothing to create new wealth – they simply were involved in transfering wealth (hopefully) to their employers.

That was the real cost of the financial crisis – each of those really smart financial engineers could have been utilized to create real wealth instead of just transferring existing wealth.

How many more Googles, Intels, Apples, Facebooks, Segways, ZipCars would have been created had those really smart MIT financial engineers spent their time doing more “wealth creating” projects?

Granted, we will never know…. and there should be no such thing as legislating that engineers work for this or that industry based on some central planner’s view of “goodness”… but if we are ever to get ourselves out of this mess we’ve created for ourselves, we had better start working to create real wealth and not just zero-sum “profits” for some.

Most people think of “free markets” as the unfettered flow of goods and services from producers to consumers…. yes, free markets allow you to purchase your socks from whomever you wish, yes it allows the manufacturer to purchase their materials from whomever it wishes – these are all attributes of “free markets”.  It allows the producers to manufacture the best product for the lowest cost and make it available to the widest audience at the lowest price.

End of Economics 1.01

When President Barack Obama blames the advent of ATM machines (and machines in general) for the fact that unemployment is still staggeringly high, it shows that he hasn’t mastered even this level of understanding of economics.   Yes, Mr. Obama made this comment “off teleprompter” and he might be excused for what could be brushed aside as a gaffe or an attempt at sarcasm – but let’s look at a another, more calculated, action of his administration to see if we can understand Obama’s thinking.

Boeing has done just what Obama has been trying to promote – it has expanded it’s production facilities by building its new 787 Dreamliner plant in South Carolina.  Alas, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is trying to get the plant declared illegal.   The NLRB is populated mostly by Democrats and includes one former union lawyer so partisan that the Senate refused to approve his appointment – Obama just ignored this and forced him on the board via a recess appointment.  Why is the NLRB going against Boeing? Because by choosing right-to-work South Carolina, Boeing is being accused of retaliating against its unionized Washington state workers who  struck in n 1977,  1989,  1995,  2005, and 2008 to force Boeing into greater concessions.

The NLRB seems to ignore the fact that Boeing has added 2000 jobs to its Washington State operations even while expanding into “right to work” South Carolina.   By their actions, it is clear the NLRB feels that Boeing should have constructed their new plant in Washington State and employed unionized labor.

The suit against Boeing presented to the NLRB is quite convincing – the premise behind the suit is the most damning part of the suit.  Why shouldn’t Boeing be able to move their operations to a “right to work” state – for any reason?  Clearly Boeing felt that it made business sense to locate in South Carolina and Boeing is an international corporation with manufacturing operations in dozens of locations around the world – why shouldn’t it be able to open a plant in South Carolina?

Wisconsin has tried to trim it’s budget and become more competitive – it has tried to shift more of the financial burden of providing healthcare and retirement benefits onto its unionized employees and has tried to restore balance in labor negotiations by removing the ability of unions to strike against the public – for while an individual business can hire other employees to staff its factories, the public cannot go out and hire new police, firefighters, public works departments whenever those groups decide they want a pay increase.

Obama threw his support behind the unions who have opposed the Wisconsin move so vociferously.    While I oppose the methods that the union supporters used to voice their discontent with the Wisconsin legislation – I support them in their attempt to educate the public on the merits of their views.

In Wisconsin, the new government recognized a reality that has been missed by Obama – but is being learned by every unemployed person in the United States – that government itself is a “commodity” – government provides services and we (individuals & businesses) pay our taxes to purchase these services.  This reality has also been learned by the people of South Carolina when they voted to make South Carolina a “right to work state”.

In this era of globalization, it matters less and less where a particular manufacturing facility is located – if goods and services can be provided freely across borders – it matters little where you locate your call center, your credit card processing center – or your 787 Dreamliner assembly plant.

What Obama seems deaf to is that if a government is less efficient in providing needed services (ie: it costs more for the same services) then businesses will invest elsewhere where the governments are more efficient in providing those services.

Obama also seems to be deaf to the reality that with government, perception and reality may be one and the same – being viewed as “anti-business” is as damaging as actually being “anti-business”.  Being viewed as being fiscally irresponsible is as bad as actually being fiscally irresponsible.

So when government starts funding treadmills for shrimp and Jello-O wrestling in Antarctica – businesses start questioning whether their tax dollars are being well spent for the goods and services they are getting.  When trillion dollar health care laws get passed adding additional burdens onto business, these business people start re-thinking where they are going to locate their manufacturing facilities.

Now granted, governments are not “just” suppliers – they as multi-facited as the people they represent – but if you blur your vision slightly and don’t look too deeply at the details…to a global business, governments are “suppliers” – they provide goods and services in exchange for tax dollars.  What voters forgot in the last election and what they are learning in the unemployment lines is how important it is for their government to be the supplier of choice for global businesses.

At a more local level, the voters in Wisconsin and South Carolina wanted to make their government and labor more competitive so that businesses will choose their state to locate their operations.  As businesses move from Massachusetts (7.6% unemployed) to New Hampshire (4.8% unemployed) they are voting with their “feet” also.

For the Obama administration to avoid getting a failing grade in “Economics 1.01″ they will have to think a bit harder about whether or not ATM machines are the reason behind businesses not wanting to employ Americans in America.   The answer is not that complicated – become a more efficient supplier of governmental services to businesses.  Yes, as in any business, the “devil is in the details” – just how do you do that?

For any business, this starts by sticking to your knitting – do the stuff you’re supposed to do cheaper and better and avoid distractions.  This means provide security, enable the smooth flow of goods and services, enforce the law and provide basic safety nets to those in need.

Everything else, to a first approximation, is “optional”.

Historians will most undoubtedly take note of Justice Goldstone’s  attempt, as he said, to… begin a new era of evenhandedness at the U.N. Human Rights Council, whose history of bias against Israel cannot be doubted. Throwing off the principle of “innocent until proven guilty”, Judge Goldstone ignored Israel’s storied history of going to great lengths to protect innocent civilians in a time of war and presided over a witch-hunt.

Goldstone states “I continue to believe in the cause of establishing and applying international law to protracted and deadly conflicts”….yet the ultimate victim of Goldstone’s approach was the very principles that Goldstone was trying to defend….for “international law” has taken a beating in the entire process as it has shown to trample the most sacred of goals in any judicial process – the truth.

Much has been written about the how Goldstone and his “panel” each had a long history of bias against Israel.  Israel knew the backgrounds of these individuals and wisely or unwisely was not going to become involved in a charade that would ultimately come to falsely indict and convict Israel for crimes it did not commit.  As a sovereign nation, Israel chose not to participate in what would most assuredly become a farce.

In defense of Goldstone…. he was “set up”.  His task was doomed from the start because he was bound to follow the precepts of International Law (with respect to the rules of armed conflict) which is deficient from both a moral  as well as from a logical perspective.

The rules of war were conceived in the age of armies battling armies and concerned itself with the military’s obligations towards the civilian populations that may inadvertently find themselves in the field of battle.  These rules have not been updated to speak to the case of non-uniformed combatants taking up arms and purposefully hiding within civilian populations.  Moreover, where the rules of war deal with the rights of civilian populations caught up in an armed conflict, it does not deal with the culpability of the civilian population if they actively promote and incite the commission of war crimes.

For example, it is accepted that munitions and armament factories are valid military targets during a time of war – for these factories create the machinery of war.  Goldstone writes, “The laws of armed conflict apply no less to non-state actors such as Hamas than they do to national armies”. What are “non-state” actors? Clearly the people who set up the uncontrollable rockets which were designed to land “somewhere” in areas populated by civilians – these are non-state actors. But what of the people who allowed them to set up the rockets on their land, what of the people who indoctrinated them to think that it was acceptable and laudable to kill innocent civilians sleeping in their beds – to fire anti-tank missiles at school buses full of children? Those non-state actors were brainwashed by countless institutions in the wider society over the course of their childhood. If these war criminals were “lone-wolves”, that would be one scenario…but these people are far from that.  These terrorists  were “developed” by entire community institutions which actively work to incite their populations to commit these war crimes.

Simply put, International Law has not been developed to the point where it can deal with entire societies built on the “nobility” of committing war crimes.

When a school puts on a play lauding the suicide bomber who purposefully blows up civilians in pizza parlors and shopping centers – do these schools then take on the character of a factory creating munitions?   When a society names town squares and soccer stadiums after people who butcher families in their homes – does that society forfeit some of the protections afforded under international law of being purely “civilian” or can they be seen as one of the very institutions who create war in the first place?

When it comes to commission of war crimes, does the society which incites its members to commit these war crimes loose a level of protection under International Law when it comes to the effects of the inevitable armed conflict which is a direct result of the incitement to war crimes?

What Judge Goldstone failed to take into consideration is that individuals and communities have both rights as well as responsibilities.  When it comes to war crimes, the responsibilities for the war crimes go much wider than just the people who set off the rockets directed at innocent civilian populations – those who incite the war crimes are co-perpetrators.   Moreover those who stood by and passively supported those who incited others to war crimes should also loose a measure of their protection under International Law.   All members of such a society which is steeped in incitement to commit crimes against humanity bear a measure of guilt and thus should be afforded less protection under International Law.

Judge Goldstone was “set up” because he was tasked to evaluate the extent to which the civilians of Gaza may have had their rights violated due to perceived “war crimes” by the Israelis but he was unable to discuss the extent to which the people who were claiming “victimhood” had lost some of their basic rights to protection due to their complicity in obvious war crimes against innocent Israeli population centers.

This is the challenge that International Law will have to overcome if it is to be anything other than moot in the age of non-state actors in failed societies governed by barbaric leaders who incite their “flocks” to commit the most heinous acts of barbarism.  International Law will have to define not only the rights of civilians but the obligations of civilians in a society to eradicate the incitement to war crimes as well as the crimes themselves.  If members of a society fail this obligation, then they, and the society that they participate in, may indeed loose some of the protection that the International Law affords them in times of the inevitable war.

As for Israel… it took its lumps when it essentially stonewalled the Goldstone commission.  International Law experts will point out that International Law is premised on the notion of comity…the principal of mutual respect that nations pay to one another’s jurisdictions.   Clearly, Israel has suffered from ignoring the “international community” and thinking that the Goldstones of this world will just “go away”.   What the International Community must learn is that “comity” assumes mutual respect…. [emphasis on the word "mutual"]…  when International Law proceedings time after time fail what I shall crassly call “the laugh test” when it comes to criticizing Israel.  It is hard to muster “respect” when Israel sets the standard for attempting to protect non-combatants – and those same International bodies remain silent in situations of unmitigated barbarity and blatant war crimes.

It must be said that this is the stature that International Law has sunk to when it comes to Israel.  At some point, you have to scream “the emperor has no clothes” and take the consequences….which clearly Israel has done so.  Israel deserves our utmost respect for biting the bullet and standing up and stating the obvious.  As a way forward, Israel should not waste effort trying to get the UN to withdraw the Goldstone Report.  Instead, it should publish a  book which includes both the original Goldstone Report as well as an annotated analysis of the facts of the case.  In short, Israel should let the UN be hoisted by their own petard – ridiculed by the facts.

While history may well note the debacle that became “The Goldstone Report” there may be a silver lining if the international community can recognize that the source of the failure of Goldstone’s initiative was the very international law governing armed conflict – the definition of a “combatant” and the obligations and responsibilities of the societies that are parties to the conflict.