Syria

President Obama is currently contemplating taking military measures against the Syrian government due to the horrifying chemical attacks on its own people. While I am sure that he is taking his time to consult  his military staff I can't help wondering is the President is also considering the ethical grounds for lobbing missiles into Syria. 

Military action is liable to kill many innocent bystanders. The only ethical defense for military action would be just war and it does not meet the major principle of proportionality: Is there likely less harm to innocents than doing nothing? Given the bloody history of American intervention, our good intentions usually end badly and with all the problems made considerably worse. American intervention comes across as being imperialistic and makes all sides hate us.

 Kant's Categorical Imperative asks us, "Could we will this course of action universally. in all like situations? If the answer is."No" then don't engage militarily.  If the answer is "Yes" then the next question is this: What is the real reason for military intervention? Is it truly for the the benefit of the Syrian people or is it some other, less noble reason, like oil or to help Israel's regional domination? If it is these latter reasons then more questions need answers: Can we really support Israel's hard line on all it's neighbors? Do we close our eyes and let Israel dictate our actions in the region? Those are but two of the many questions which need answers before we even THINK of taking military action in Syria. I believe that military action is rarely justified and for that reason, I oppose hurling missiles at Syria. 

* I realize that this short essay is very incomplete. My intent was not  do a complete ethical analysis but was meant to raise some of the questions which should be asked before taking the big leap into the abyss of  "helpful destruction". 

No Fast Track for TPP

Sen. Elizabeth Warren   

For three years, a group of some 600 multinational corporations and trade associations have been quietly negotiating a trade pact IN SECRET that could void American laws that protect workers, jobs, health, and the environment. During negotiations here last summer, news leaked of some of the provisions U.S. trade officials were prepared to approve, and a public outcry derailed the talks. Trade Representative Ron Kirk resigned. Now that Michael Froman has been confirmed as the new U.S. Trade Representative he is pushing to renew "fast track" authority so President Obama can sign the agreement first, and then force a quick vote in Congress without any public scrutiny, floor debate, or revisions. 

Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, one of just four U.S. Senators who voted against Froman's confirmation, said of TPP, “I have heard the argument that transparency would undermine the Trade Representative’s policy to complete the trade agreement because public opposition would be significant.” Warren explained, “In other words, if people knew what was going on, they would stop it. This argument is exactly backwards. If transparency would lead to widespread public opposition to a trade agreement, then that trade agreement should not be the policy of the United States.” 

The only TPP language made public was leaked in 2012 and shared by Public Citizen. Since then trade officials have kept a tight lid on the negotiations, only recently allowing members of Congress to view (not copy) the text, which remains "classified." Among the most disturbing revelations in last year's leaked TPP language, that seems to be mirrored in the Atlantic version as well: Foreign companies would have "preferred status" – granting them greater rights within our borders than our own companies enjoy. U.S. companies would have more incentives to offshore jobs, and foreign companies would not be bound by the minimum wage and could sue the U.S. if our health, safety, or environmental regulations interfered with their profits. Jurisdiction over such suits would rest not in the hands of elected officials or judges, but with an international business tribunal. Their decisions, which would be binding upon all member nations, would supersede our own laws – including our Constitution. 


That's why I signed a petition to The United States House of Representatives and The United States Senate, which says:

"The White House and the U.S. Trade Representative are urging Congress to abdicate some of its power over approval of trade agreements by renewing "fast track" authority. Fast track would allow the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership to leapfrog customary legislative protocol and be put to a rapid "up or down" vote without a public hearing, floor debate, or amendments. Forcing Congress to vote on an agreement this complex without adequate time for open hearings, review, and public scrutiny, sets a dangerous precedent. Congress, we urge you: just say NO to fast track!" 

Will you sign the petition too? Click here to add your name: 

http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/congress-dont-renew-fast?source=s.fwd&r_by=519408 


(From email sent from Senator Elizabeth Warren via MoveOn.org)

Just say, "NO" to the TPP

Right now, on the Asian side of the Pacific ocean, a trade deal is being negotiated. It is called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a deal between nations that border the Pacific ocean. By and large, this deal is being negotiated in secret. In fact, my congressman has been in Asia, supposedly to discuss the treatment of workers as well as working conditions. While this may be true, as far as it goes, it would seem that there is more to it. It is highly unlikely that working conditions is the only item on the congressman's agenda. More likely is that he is in the region to attend and participate in talks surrounding the TPP.

The mainstream media has been totally silent about this agreement which may "...undermine our own laws and increase the opportunity for corporate takeovers of public resources in the United States and abroad." (Wenonah Hauter, "The Un-American Way: On the Anti-Democratic 'Trans-Pacific Partnership'" in Common Dreams,org, August 22,2013)

The agreement would do many things, few of which would help most people in the United States nor in the other 10 countries. It would increase the export of natural gas and increase food imports. In the process, fracking will most assuredly increase. (ibid.)

It would also set up a framework whereby "...corporations would acquire an equal status to countries, allowing them to take legal action against governments both at the national and local levels." (ibid.) Laws protecting the public and to protect the environment could be stripped bare or even overturned completely. Laws governing the import of seafood, for example, could be rewritten or overturned. This would open the floodgates to seafood from overseas, from countries without the high standards our government currently requires. (ibid)
"The TPP would potentially give companies the power to sue local governments, granting them their own permission to exploit natural resources and undermine local laws. Treaties like the TPP undermine important efforts by grassroots movements and governments to protect people and the environment against the dangers of infecting our food system with increased use of antibiotics and hormones or the risks associated with fracking for natural gas." (ibid.)
There is, obviously, much more to this so-called "Partnership", but
our history with other trade agreements makes it almost certain that American jobs will be affected in a negative fashion, ala NAFTA.

Given the secretive nature of TPP I have to say that I am more than a little distressed that my own congressman sees fit to mislead his constituents about the nature of his journey to Asia. Why all the secrecy? Could it be because the respective governments and trade partners (corporations) want it that way in order to prevent the people of the United States to become vocal in opposition?  If so, too bad because we absolutely need to be very vocal in our contact with our legislators and the White House. As Ms. Hauter points out, "Undermining laws that U.S. citizens voted to put in place isn’t the American way." (ibid)  I wish Rep. Levin would realize that fact.

Just say "No!" to TPP.

The Dangers of Acting Ethically

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning

When I was a child I was told to "do what's right" and to tell the truth. Though I have developed a somewhat more sophisticated system of ethics and sense of morality, these two exhortations remain moral mainstays. Granted, doing what's right isn't always crystal clear and telling the truth sometimes steps on people's toes. The tasks are thus to determine what is the morally right action and how best to tell the truth.

I imagine these considerations, or something like them, raged in Army Pfc. Bradley Manning's mind when he saw what was happening in the U.S. military. Rape, torture, indiscriminate killing of civilians (to name but a few) were all there to see in his role in the US Army. He was expected to see it and keep his "mouth shut". The question must have surfaced in his mind,
"At what point is following orders outweighed by higher moral principle?"

Evidently, his decision was that doing the right thing involved telling the truth about what was happening inside the US military. The higher good was exposing wrongdoing so that it could be corrected. The higher good was truth telling. But the military doesn't see it this way. To them, following orders is the ultimate "right thing". Apparently, it does not matter that the orders are morally wrong in most minds. It just matters that the orders were given.

Bradley Manning knew what he was doing and probably knew the consequences but elected to release the details of military wrong doing anyway. His mistake was in expecting that anything would really change inside the military which has stayed busy trying to cover the left and right flank. Wrong was done but their only response was to portray Manning as a traitor to his country. Instead of investigating the torture, the killings and other misdeeds the mainstream media in this country followed the lead of military command like cows being led around by the nose. The media have fallen for the classic misdirect. While what Manning released demonstrated terrible misdeeds by the military, the military command tried (somewhat successfully) to distract by making Manning the evildoer. In fact, Bradley Manning simply told the truth or, more accurately, let the truth tell itself.

We are in deep trouble as a society. Telling the truth about evil should be expected not punished. The military, major corporations and politicians all want the truth to go away when, as it often is, inconvenient for them. They will make sure it goes away one way or another. Bradley Manning's fate was sealed the moment he made the moral decision. In this world, acting ethically is a very dangerous thing to do. We need more like Bradley Manning.

As Irrelevant as the Unemployed

Four and a half years ago, I was laid off from a major drug store chain where I had been employed for almost six years; first as a cashier  then as a shift supervisor and assistant store manager. The reason for the dismissal of many salaried assistant managers had more to do with the chain's financial difficulties than it did with the quality of work we produced. Indeed, many of us were steady, middle aged employees. The problem had to do with the company buying another drug store chain. The stock went from $7 per share prior to the transaction to less than .25 per share. The company found itself 6 BILLION dollars in debt. Suddenly, they chose to take salaried positions and make them hourly. This meant fewer employees to do more work with fewer hours and for less money and fewer benefits. Older workers were especially targeted, hence, I was laid off.

Unfortunately for me, this was 2009 and the height of the Great Recession. I never had much difficulty finding another job in the past so I wasn't overly worried until six months had passed with few interviews and no employment. The months dragged on into a year and unemployment benefits ran out. I had long since lost health insurance coverage. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me that I couldn't find a job. I had been working since I was in high school so it wasn't a case where I had little or no working experience. It took some time but I started running across articles which pointed to age discrimination AND discrimination against the unemployed as chief factors in the long term unemployment of older job applicants. Finally, I knew I was not alone but that did not help my situation much. I became very depressed and found myself needing professional psychological help because of how serious the depression had become. In my case, the illness was my salvation. I received the help I needed but was classified disabled because of my diagnoses of Bi-Polar Disorder, Autism and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This was enough for me to be able to tap into my earned Social Security benefits and Medicaid. Without the severe financial stress, my life became more stable but still without employment.

Once again, I discovered that I am far from alone. Though the recession is supposedly behind us, many, many long-term unemployed remain. According to Dean Baker and Kevin Hassett  ( "The Human Disaster", New York Times, May 13, 2012):

In 2007, before the Great Recession, people who were looking for work for more than six months — the definition of long-term unemployment — accounted for just 0.8 percent of the labor force. The recession has radically changed this picture. In 2010, the long-term unemployed accounted for 4.2 percent of the work force. That figure would be 50 percent higher if we added the people who gave up looking for work.

A disproportionate of the long-term unemployed are older workers (over 50) and the prospects for employment are fairly dismal.

A worker between ages 50 and 61 who has been unemployed for 17 months has only about a 9 percent chance of finding a new job in the next three months. A worker who is 62 or older and in the same situation has only about a 6 percent chance. As unemployment increases in duration, these slim chances drop steadily (ibid).

With dimming job prospects, the long-term unemployed face increased emotional, financial and even health crises. While the emotional and financial crises may be somewhat predictable, if awful, the effects of unemployment on a persons health is less self-evident. According to Baker and Hassett, however, the life expectancy for a male long-term unemployed person drops by a year and a half. Reasons for this include suicide:

 A recent study found that a 10 percent increase in the unemployment rate (say from 8 to 8.8 percent) would increase the suicide rate for males by 1.47 percent. This is not a small effect. Assuming a link of that scale, the increase in unemployment would lead to an additional 128 suicides per month in the United States. The picture for the long-term unemployed is especially disturbing. The duration of unemployment is the dominant force in the relationship between joblessness and the risk of suicide (ibid).

This fact alone is reason for the government to intervene to create jobs but there is more. There are causal links between long-term unemployment and cancer, heart disease and psychiatric problems. There are also negative effects on the immediate family. Divorce is much more likely as is negative achievement of children in school (ibid). What this demonstrates is that unemployment of six months or longer is a crisis, not only for the worker but for family and for society as a whole. This crisis ought to have been addressed long ago but it has largely gone unnoticed by the governmental bodies able to assist. Congress has done nothing. The White House has ignored us with no mention of the long-term unemployed in months, if not years. It is as if we no longer exist. We are invisible. We are, seemingly, irrelevant.

Dear GOP

What do you want of me? I am poor and unemployed and disabled. I have been unemployed since 2009, have been unable to find a job and the stress from this, my finances, my mother's health and the loss of my own access to health care finally took their toll. I crashed emotionally and became very depressed and suicidal.  I did not have insurance so I was afraid to seek help but I did anyway. I was referred to Easter Seals where I received help applying for Social Security and Medicaid/SNAP. When these were approved, I had my diagnoses and appropriate treatment begun, my life started to even out. I now know that I am Bi-Polar, suffer from major-depression and have a mild form of autism. It was the autism which caused my problems in work environments but I didn't know that for most of my life. Now that I do, my life makes far more sense and I know what I can and cannot do. Most work settings are NOT appropriate for me.

Just as I got my life in order, I started hearing things like, "GOP seeks to cut Social Security", "GOP seeks cuts to SNAP" "Michigan GOP blocks Medicaid Expansion".  Exactly what do you want from people like me? You have no problem continuing tax breaks for the wealthiest 1% but people like me are expected to fall through the now tattered and torn social "safety net." While the wealthy live high on the hog, the poor, the elderly and the disabled are expected to just go away.  Each and every day you make it more difficult for us to get help. You seem to prefer if 1 out of every 6 people in this country go hungry. Somehow you think it wrong that the unemployed receive the benefits we need to survive. You seem to prefer if 45 million Americans go without health insurance. It is better, in your minds, that the poor, elderly and disabled face hunger, hopelessness and homelessness than the wealthy be asked to pay one more cent in taxes. The logic and morality of that stance eludes me. It certainly isn't consistent with the preaching and life of the Jesus you all seem fond of in the abstract. Jesus healed the sick and fed the hungry. He overturned the tables of the moneychangers in the temple. He told the rich young man to give away everything in order to be able to follow him. The Jesus of the Bible doesn't seem to be the Jesus of the GOP or Tea Party.

None of what you say or do about those in need makes any sense to me. If the unemployed receive what we need to survive then money would go back into the economy and more jobs would be created. If the poor receive SNAP, once again, not only do we eat (and therefore do not get sick and create pressure on the health system) but we also buy food and help to create jobs and help the economy. If  45 million Americans have health insurance then we will not need to use the more expensive emergency rooms for routine illnesses. These alternatives make far more sense but who am I to question your ability or motives?

I am a citizen who votes, one who participates in the electoral process. I am not like your corporate handlers who buy their way to power. But your wealthy friends and you do not represent America.  The United States is better than your limited vision.  America can stretch further than you can see. We can take care of one another and we will, in spite of you and without your narrow point of view.

USA: Police State

photo by Abby Martin, Disinformation

The mainstream media has done a good job of not making this known but the United States is rapidly becoming a police state. They have NOT covered the NYC policy of Stop-and-Frisk, where police officers are actually ordered to stop and cite citizens on the basis of racial profiling. The video listed here - "The Hunted and the Hated"  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rWtDMPaRD8 -  is one the most disturbing I have ever seen but proves, without doubt, the existence of the POLICY. It is not just a few rogue cops - it is standard behavior for the entire police force. It is true that the US Appeals Court has determined that the policy is unconstitutional but the likelihood is that it will wind it's way to the US Supreme Court. Once there, given the make-up of the high court, the policy could well be upheld.

Also troubling has been the response by police departments across the nation to the Occupy movement which is almost entirely peaceful in it's protests. In spite of such peaceful expression of First Amendment rights, police departments in NYC, Oakland, California and elsewhere have responded by hounding, corralling, arresting and savagely beating protestors. Pictures abound of bloodied protestors who have done nothing more than march and chant. Pictures proliferate of police in riot gear, in formation, suppressing such peaceful marches. These are highly militarized police departments who have the weapons of war at their disposal for putting down legitimate and peaceful expression of dissent. The people of this country are already finding ourselves suppressed and oppressed by the 1% who issue the orders to the mayors and police departments. It is only getting worse and with the support of the Department of Homeland Security (itself a name straight from the bowels of Apartheid and the pages of 1984).

The latest is the "revelation" by Eric Snowden that the NSA has the capability to collect and store the private information of millions of Americans electronic communications. Not only that, they regularly monitor said communications. While not a total surprise to many of us, it is beyond disturbing that they do not seem to be apologetic in the least. The only response by the United States government has been to press for the arrest of the one responsible for telling the truth: Eric Snowden. This has become a profoundly disturbing pattern: arresting and prosecuting whistle blowers, those who have pointed out illegal and immoral behavior. People trying to do the right thing are called treasonous when it is the military or the NSA and other agencies who are guilty of unconscionable and unconstitutional behavior. No wonder Eric Snowden elected to flee: the truth is no longer welcome in the United States. Certainly the mainstream media no longer tries to broadcast or print anything the least bit critical of the 1% or the government. It is up to us to keep standing up to tell the truth because the United States IS a police state.

The NSA v. Liberty

I am concerned and angry that the NSA has gone far beyond constitutional limits in gathering and storing information about American citizens. The NDAA and FISA and the Patriot Act itself have allowed the government to intrude on citizens privacy supposedly in the name of security. As has been pointed out in a quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin, "Those who sacrifice essential liberty for a little security deserve neither."

More and more we are learning the extent to which our right to privacy has been violated by the very government which is entrusted to uphold our civil rights. It is not only ethically wrong it is also wrong-headed to assume that the little security gained justifies this expensive and expansive intrusion into the lives of American citizens. At this point, the government  becomes no better than the terrorists we so fear. Or of the countries we condemn for their security state mentality.

It is often argued that if you do nothing wrong that you have nothing to fear. This misses the point that the collection of personal and private information is unconstitutional (as interpreted by the United States Supreme Court in multiple cases such as Pierce v. Society of Sisters, Roe v Wade, etc). The High Court has repeatedly found that there is an inherent right to privacy as has Article 12 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights:

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Those who have done nothing wrong ought to be offended most gravely. If I have done nothing wrong then the collection of my private information is a form of stealing. Even if I HAVE done something wrong my information can only be taken via a warrant.

The current methods of the NSA violate the Constitution, the UN Declaration of Human Rights and commonly held morality. All such agencies should be under regular scrutiny by Congress to ensure the propriety of their actions and policies. The NSA, FBI, CIA and other alphabet agencies MUST be held accountable.  Congress should promptly investigate the actions of the NSA and exercise oversight.