Review: Where Have All the Soldiers Gone?

I do hope to get more reading done in 2013 than in 2012. The best way to do this would be to stop wasting time on the Internet, of course: so here's a book review on the Internet.

Last night, a few hours before the end of 2012, I finished reading Where Have All the Soldiers Gone?: The Transformation of Modern Europe by James J. Sheehan. Sheehan looks at the disappearance of armies and soldiers from the lives of Europeans, and wonders where they all went. Indeed an important and intriguing question, along with its cousin: are other nations following suit? Is Europe, in other words, a harbinger or an outlier?

Unfortunately, the book demonstrates all too well the reasons historians need to stay away from journalism. Their tools need perspective to work correctly, and without it they (we) are little better than journalists but without the flair for vivid descriptions. His book is divided inot three sections: 19th century until 1914; the interwar period, and post 1945. The first is easily the best.

Sheehan's thesis in the first section of his book is that the modern nation-state was based on the military. Some nations were forged in war, quite simply, but even those that weren't had strong military strains embedded in their basic structure, from the ubiquitious memorial to the fallen soldiers in the center of each town or village, to the enormous expenditure neccessary for the upkeep of an army, to the logistical, administrative and legal structures developed by society to be able to field their military machines. These capabilities were what made a modern nation state.

Yet parallel to the rise of the militarized nation, there was also a rise of political pacifism. This did not include the relations to imperially-controlled colonial populations, but within the polite society of Europe pacifism was a growing trend around the turn of the century; the Hague Conventions are a creation of this seemingly universal wish for peace.

The pacifism didn't survive the beginning of war in 1914 - if it had lasted even until then, given the series of skirmishes which preceeded the Great War.

My main reflection upon reading this section was that even then it was a mostly European phenomenon. Europeans of the time speaking different languages, indeed, but sharing Christianity and a broad cultural similarity. A farmer in Ohio and a farmer in Afghanistan have precious little in common; Europeans of the early 20th century, for all their differences, had quite a bit. Unremarked, perhaps, the pacifism was already then predicated on a broad cultural and political and religious commonality.

The second section deals with two world wars, though in brief - about 60 pages in total. Not enough to learn much about the wars, and rather a bit too long for to say that the wars were ghastly, the first much so, the second very much so.

At the begining of the third section Sheehan makes an interesting point. Post-war Europe was divided between the domination of two external systems, Soviet inspired (and often directed and ruled) Eastern Europe, and American subsidised West Europe. Improbably perhaps, the European nation states, having been intermittanly at war since their inception, were now unable to wage war or even to prepare for it in an independant way. So they unlearned the art and let the super-powers get on with it; the super-powers, however, now having both acquired the capability of destroying the world, eventually began to unlearn the habit themselves.

Personally I had expected to read more about European exhaustion after the 20th century's 30-Year-War, and perhaps how it has played out in other spheres of life, too. Yet as I said, this section lacks a broad perspective, and instead focuses on specific negotiations within the EU, which resulted in documents which may be held to highest esteeem in 500 years, and may be forgotten forever by next week. It's too soon to know.

Inevitably, I won't finish this review without mentioning Israel (which seems never to be mentoned in the book). Sheehan shows how first Western Europeans relinquished their colonial empires because they were no longer worth the hassle, and then later the Soviets did the same. Which suggested to me how very odd, then, in the eyes of such populaces, must the warring societies of the Middle East seem, and how totally outlandish; this said in a derisory tone, not in curiosity, say. Arabs are one thing, not ever having been part of the European world; but the Jews? What do they possibly think they're doing, what with all that determination to use force to defend goals. Such old-fashioned behavior, don't you think? No self respecting European would behave that way.

Update: then again, maybe I'm being churlish about the Europeans.

How not to Stop Genocide

A few years back Samantha Power wrote an excellent book titled A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. A quick summary of the book would go like this. After WW2 Rephael Lemkin managed to convince the brand new United Nations to define Genocide, and to commit to take action against it. Ironically, the result was not an international willingness to stop genocide, but rather the opposite: a firm international determination never to recognize an event as genocide, not matter how horrible, since such recognition would require intervention, and no-one wants to intervene when faraway folks are being massacred (unless of course there's an obvious and immediate set of interests that do recommend intervention, but in that case the intervention is because of the interests, not the slaughter). Having set up the framework, Power then preceded to show how whichever American administration happened to be in power at the time of a genocide did everything in its power, including bending over backwards, not to recognize it as a genocide, so as not to have to intervene.

And the Americans, as a general rule, were better than anyone else, because they sometimes sort of did eventually do something, as in the Balkans in 1999 after years of European inaction. No-one ever intervened in the Congo, of course, which has had the worst slaughter anywhere in the world since the 1940s. No one had enough interests to care.

David Rieff has a thoughtful (if rather sardonic) article about a new American attempt to think through the issue of genocide prevention. He focuses on the United States Institute for Peace’s task force on genocide, chaired by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Secretary of Defense William Cohen - two people, incidentally, who have track records of failing to deal with genocide in real time, in the days when they were powerful. Although a bit long, the article is worth the time it takes to read. The central insight I came away with is that there's a lot of chatter about multinational efforts, international law, and other fine words, but that the dynamic Samantha Power described is still with us and not about to change anytime soon. (I expect Rieff and Power may not be in the same political camp in American politics, but they're saying similar things).

Jackson Diehl, over at the Washington Post, asks why the Obama administration isn't doing much and certainly isn't being effective as governing Libyans kill civilians in the hundreds. Whats happening in Libya (at least so far) is not genocide, but it is mass murder. Diehl seems to understand the cynical aspects of intervention, which is why he asks what are the American interests that are informing the administration's policy, if any.

Seen from the perspective of a Jew, born after the Holocaust, and an Israeli, this all need not be a moral issue. Foreign countries generally don't intervene when large-scale violence happens, and only rarely do they do anything effective. This isn't because of an innate hatred of Libyans, Bosnians, Congolese, Cambodians and so on. It's because all those folks and many others are, well, ultimately not worth the effort. That's the way of the world. Only those who can take care of themselves will be taken care of.

Which is one reason among many why the endless international chatter and preaching about how Israel (or anyone else) must do this that or the other because the chatterers say so, must be resolutely shut out, not listened to, and never ever taken seriously.

"Europe is Worried about Israel"

Yesterday, February 22nd, some European diplomats published an announcement telling how worried they are by Israel's deteriorating democracy:

According to the statement, issued yesterday in Brussels after the meetings with Lieberman, the EU said it “recalls the importance of a vibrant NGO sector and civil society in general and the vital role they play in open and democratic societies.”
The statement also called on Israel to “promote its active NGO sector and to refrain from actions which may significantly curtail its freedoms. In this context, the EU is concerned about the proposed parliamentary inquiry committee to investigate NGO funding and the draft law on recipients of financial support from foreign political entities,” the statement said.
The EU statement touched on another issue Lieberman has focused on: Israel’s attitude toward its Arab citizens.
“The EU encourages Israel to increase efforts to address the economic and social situation of the Arab minority, to enhance their integration in Israeli society and protect their rights,” it read.

Let's see. The parliamentary investigation into NGOs, which indeed was a bad idea, was killed the day before the EU announcement was made, and this was widely publicized.

The idea that "the active NGO sector in Israel" needs "promoting" is quaint, seeing as there are more than 32,000 NGOs in Israel. (Yup. That's thirty two thousand, in a country with fewer than 8 million people.)

There is indeed need to address the economic and social conditions of Israel's Arab citizens, though their conditions are certainly better than those of the Roma in most European countries, and probably better than that of many of the 2nd generation immigrants, too. There isn't much need to protect their rights, however, as they enjoy the same ones as all Israeli citizens.

There seems to be intense European funding of a very tiny number of Israeli NGOs, many of which have in common that they represent a certain sort of political agenda which the Israeli electorate consistently democratically rejects. It's not clear why democratic Europe can't respect democratic Israel.

Of course, unelected EU bureaucrats in Brussels aren't actually important, but even knowing that no-one much listens to their verbiage, it's regrettable they feel the need to preach to us.

Calling the United Nations

Imagine a hypothetical world in which everyone had decided to revoke the use of violence and refrain from war, preferring instead to live by universally accepted rules. Even in such a world there might sometimes be rogue elements who cheated, but in the rare cases of potentially violent mischief making, any side which felt itself put-upon would send a complaint to the world referees, who would call out the culprits, admonish them, and everything would go back to normal. Obviously, in such a world it would not be legitimate for anyone to retaliate with force, even when they felt attacked, since the world body would resolve the matter for them like an efficient nursery school teacher.

If, in exceedingly rare cases, some group insisted upon being unreasonable and aggressive, the world body could, at least conceivably, take action itself. This would be highly regrettable, but at least it would be clearly moral.

The odd thing is that there are people who sincerely believe this mumbo-jumbo, or at least pretend to. The Archbishop of Canterbury, for example, and others, too. For their benefit, here's a letter sent recently by a representative of the Israeli government.

Links Without Much Comment

If this was what Amnesty International spent most of their time and effort on, as originally intended back when they were founded, they'd be a very important organization.

The NIF seems to be reconsidering some of their policies, and may be a bit more careful about whom they support. Good. The Guardian, meanwhile, has no second thoughts, and continues to spread hatred of Israel with a gusto.

Noah Pollak says it's time for the US to leave the UN Human Rights Council; meanwhile, in a story worth following, the UN notes that Hamas is not cooperating with the followup of the Goldstone Report, while Israel is. Time will tell what this means. Also in the realm of diplomacy,Gal Beckerman says that Michael Oren seems finally to be learning his job. Most jobs take a while to learn. Even journalism.

Finally, over in the reflective corner, pascal Bruckner ruminates about Europe's guilty conscience, and Yoram Hazony describes how this makes the Europeans dislike Israel (there has always been some reason, these past millennia since the Europeans climbed down from their trees).

International Matters

Two items which have been lying around on my desk for a while.

First: what constitutes a sovereign state? How many countries are there in the world? The answer, it turns out, is not at all simple. More than 200, fewer than 300, depending on whom you ask (and when).

Second: Can international law morph into something less seemly? Read this description, about how the ICC is being manipulated by various Kenyan parties, and tell me if there's any discernible difference between this and standard politics, any faint resemblance between the process and, say, justice. Except the hi-falutin grandstanding, of course.

Human Rights Watch Watch, next Installment

Jeffrey Goldberg from center left, and Noah Pollak from sort of right, both warmly recommend Benjamin Birnbaum's long piece in The New Republic about Human Rights Watch and Israel.

Someday perhaps a historian will set out to unravel the sorry tale of Human Rights Watch and Israel. He or she will gain access to the organization's archive and will peruse all the reports, but also the story behind them. Who was put on which stories and with which intentions. What was said at which meeting. Which funds were solicited, and with which strings attached (there are always strings attached, make no mistake). She'll figure out what external players were important, why, and she'll track their paper trail (well, digital paper trail). Her study will probably be mildly devastating, and thereafter it will be cited in the footnotes of three separate books on the history of antisemitism in the early 21st century. Then the matter will sink into the oblivion it probably deserves. Israeli high-school students of the mid-22nd century will not have heard of HRW.

Birnbaum's report isn't that research. He's a journalist, not a researcher. His effort, however, is available now, not in that distant then, and it's important reading if you're of the opinion that HRW is a significant actor in the war of words against the Jewish state.

A short synopsis, if you lack the time or inclination to read the report:
1. The HRW folks who focus on Israel really really don't like us.
2. They scrupulously refuse to deal with the context of Israel's actions. This means, they are structurally dishonest.
3. The HRW folks have extremely thin skins - they can't stand criticism - which they guard by doing their best to shut out anyone who might offer any criticism.

You'd think that last point would be odd coming from people who's entire undertaking is the dishing out of criticism - but only if you've not been paying attention to any of them. If you have been paying attention, it's a banal observation. Of course they've got thin skins. They are holier than the rest of us, and aspersions on holy people are heretic.

James Traub Reads the Goldstone Report

James Traub at Current Affairs has read the Goldstone report. He deals mostly with the questions of how a democracy defends itself against an enemy accepts no rules, and is even willing - fleetingly - to consider if the rules as they currently stand may not be unreasonable. My reading was far more critical than his, but if his were the accepted wisdom, I could live with it.

Oops! Fixed the link, I hope, and thank you to Silke for noticing.

Never Use Violence Except When You Should

Mohamed elBaradei has been in the international public eye for many years, as the boss of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). In that capacity he has always been a moderating voice, sometimes perhaps even too moderate for the successful securing of international interests.

Now he's seeking a new job, president of Egypt, and he's singing a new tune:

Former IAEA Chief Mohamed ElBaradei, who is considering contending in Egypt's presidential elections next year, expressed his support for the "Palestinian resistance" while slamming Israel. In a report published Tuesday, the experienced diplomat said that Palestinian violence was the only path open to the Palestinian people, because "the Israeli occupation only understands the language of violence."

Nice.

Update: Elder of Ziyon followed the sources of this story and thinks it's not true. Some Palestinian source simply invented it, out of thin air.

Arrest Me if You Dare

The London Times speculates that Tzipi Livni is mulling a trip to the UK to provoke her arrest on war crimes charges.

How long would she sit in the clinker - a day? 6 hours? Her popularity would go stratospheric (due disclosure: I voted for her), the UK leaders presiding over the war in Aghanistan in which civilians are tragically being killed would be shamed to change their silly rules, Netanyahu would be forced to praise her (hee hee), and she'd still be home before Shabbat.

Sounds like a fine publicity stunt to me.

HRW Attacks Israel (Gasp)

A commenter linked to Noah Pollak's post yesterday, wherein Human Rights Watch castigates Israel for being mean to the NIF. You should read Noah's post, which is short but entertaining; if you're in that sort of mood, you can also read the HRW press release.

"What we're seeing in Israel is a greater official intolerance of dissent," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "One of Israel's outstanding strengths has been its vibrant civil society and its flourishing public debate, so these developments are particularly worrying."

This is, how to put it, cattle secretion. Note how Whitson suddenly compliments us for having had such spirited public debate... now that it's slipping away. No indication that perhaps what's happening is precisely what she admits is positive about Israel: that we're engaging in a public debate. In Whitson's book, public debate means law professors and 20-something self described anarchists castigating Israeli policies and actions. Bus drivers, bank clerks or students kvetching about the law professors and anarchists: that's proof of Israel's disappearing democracy and freedom.

Why is it the business of HRW to have an opinion on the matter at all, I cannot tell you. Even more mystifying, they've gone to the effort of posting a Hebrew language version of their press release. Bets, anyone, on who did the translation for them?

The Return of Sovereignty

As we slowly gain perspective (we don't have it yet), it may one day become clear that the 1990s were the apogee of the multilateral moment. The end of the Cold War gave the EU a tremendous boost. International institutions and internationalist concepts forged in a radically different post-war context in the late 1940s seemed poised to acquire Utopian goals such as the end of particularism, or the ascendancy of universal values such as human rights over such outdated concepts such as national sovereignty. In our own small corner of the world, those were the days when people such as myself earnestly explained to incredulous folks with lesser education that what with sovereignty on its way to the dustbin of history, we could afford to relinquish parts of it in order to achieve peace with our Palestinian neighbors. (Yossie Beilin and Shlomo Ben Ami, being prominent politicians and also interesting intellectuals, were the top two purveyors of this line of reasoning).

Part of the fury directed at George Bush had to do, I have no doubt, with how he seemed to be harking back to an earlier age, one that should have been on its way out were it not for his obstructionism. Some of the acrimony surrounding the definition of the enemy facing humanity after 9/11 had to do with the degree people were willing to admit that the emerging new world order was perhaps not realistic after all.

Last November, when I added the "multilateral sovereignty" tag to this blog, it was in response to the audacity of the Goldstone Report in admonishing Israel for minor issue with no bearing on its mandate, and the insistence of a law professor that yes, the Report is fortunately the face of the future.

Probably not. A major weakness of the entire philosophical edifice is that it's based on Europe - the rich but declining former center of the world - and assumes everyone else is interested in following. What if they aren't, all the rest? What if lots of people are actually enjoying their national sovereignty, and have no intention of whittling it away anytime soon? What if this camp is headed by the rising power: China?

In Brussels it is hard to overestimate the shock caused by the EU’s failure to achieve its goals at December’s climate-change summit in Copenhagen. In the EU hard problems are fixed like this: call a summit of leaders, set out public goals for action, declare a final deadline and then thrash out a compromise behind closed doors. Deals are done with a judicious blend of appeals to principle, arm-twisting and redistribution towards less wealthy nations. That model failed utterly in Copenhagen...
China was amazingly rude at Copenhagen, sending a deputy minister to shout at with Mr Obama, for instance. Such assertiveness punctures happy Euro-dreams of a multipolar world. It turns out that the only thing that alarms Europeans more than a swaggering American president is one who seems weak. And Copenhagen popped yet another bubble—the idea that leading by example can be used to coerce others. Europe’s strategy was to press others to match its own concessions on carbon emissions. But the EU barely existed at the talks.

Much that China does is regrettable; many of the particular values of the post-sovereignty brigade are appealing. That's life; that's human history. It's not about to change. Live with it.

(PS. If they'd ever get their act together, the real rising power could be India, which would be a more appealing proposition; and the US isn't going anywhere, and will likely stay at the top for this century, at least - so democracy and its fine attributes aren't on their way out. But that's a matter for another day).

US Administration: Politics, not Lawfare

The Obama administration, just like the Bush administration before it, isn't interested in allowing a damages case against the Palestinian Authority for the murder of an American citizen, Esh Kodesh Gilmore, in 2000. Of course, the government shouldn't be the one to decide that sort of thing, you'd think, but the reality is that it does, even in the United States.

There's also the ironic twist, not mentioned in the news item, that Gilmore was murdered by Palestinians while guarding the East Jerusalem office of Bituach Leumi, the Israeli equivalent of Social Security - i.e, the place that pays large sums of money to Palestinians in East Jerusalem who aren't even Israeli citizens, as has been mentioned here in the past. Makes you wonder who the Palestinian murderer thought he was attacking.

Personally, I support the administration's position. Gilmore's murder was part of a political struggle, not a bank robbery, and the trial is intended to impinge upon a political process. The American government - a political entity through and through, by definition - wishes to keep the lawfare part out of the politics part. So long as they do so consistently, they're right. It would be pleasant for once to see our enemies squirming on the lawfare defendant's bench, but it wouldn't make the world a better place. Lawfare is a bad thing, no matter which side is doing it.

The Primacy of Politics

I honestly appreciate the many thoughtful comments people have been writing here the past few days, including over the weekend where I disappeared from the blogosphere. Thanks for the interesting perspectives.

I see the time has come to write a few basic posts about long-term matters such as what my position is on the potential outcome of peace negotiations, Jerusalem, settlements and such matters, so that readers can understand if they agree with me or not at all. I take pride in the fact that not all of you will agree: this blog has a mildly eclectic readership

OK, I've noted the need.

In the meantime, one fundamental position which seemingly wasn't clear enough in my post about human rights in Hebron. Although there's much about the matter I still need to study, for the time being my position is that politics are superior both to international law and to human rights. I expect some of you may cringe, and there are millions of folks out there who'll never read this blog who would respond with abysmal derision, but that's life. As JRR Tokien once wrote, I don't expect I'd much like what they write, either.

Human rights and international law are not the same thing, though people who unthinkingly bandy the terms around as magic charms to ward off reality don't always recognize this. That post I just mentioned wasn't very well written, I see, but its point was to say that since human rights are separate from matters of international law, you'd expect its champions to be able to recognize that the current desolateness that is central Hebron is better - from the narrow perspective of human rights - than its preceding alternatives in which lots of people were dying. Yet they can't recognize that, and one of the reasons they can't is that they aren't truly champions of human rights. They're bearing the mantle of human rights in vain, while actually talking politics.

The reason they engage in this charade isn't hard to understand. Human rights are noble (really!), and we'd all like them to exist, and be respected, on a higher plane than mundane and unseemly politics. Moreover, using the terminology of human rights in a political discussion is like playing poker with only the strongest cards: the other side can't win. If one side is noble and the other is mundane and the best it can offer is the cynicism of politics, clearly the noble side wins automatically. My point was to poke a hole in the intellectual pretension. B'tselem and their like are framing their view of human rights in Hebron (and everywhere else) in the terms of their political position, not in terms of some universal context as they ought in order to be intellectually consistent.

The other point I made, but mostly in order to set up the main argument, was that international law and human rights aren't the same, and at times can even contradict each other. It may be that international law frowns on Jews living in Hebron (which is a reason to have reservations about international law), but human rights can't have an opinion on the matter. A champion of international law may feel comfortable in saying there should be no Jews in Hebron; a champion of human rights must say the international law is irrelevant for the matter of the rights of the Jews who are there, irrespective of how they got there.

Having hopefully clarified that, let me add that in my humble opinion, politics trumps them all, human rights and international law. Yes, at first glance politics is messy, cynical, full of backhanded deals between tired and jaded negotiators with all matter of hidden agendas, while international law and human rights, both, profess to be clean systems of orderly thinking and finest principles. How nice, and what is there not to like.

Politics, like them or not, are the space where societies work out how they're going to get things done, and then change their mind when reality intervenes; they're also the space where different societies work out how to live with each other, or fight with each other, or fight and live. A society which is contained within one political unit will hopefully have a healthy balance of law, rights, needs, agenda and so on, and its political discussion may take place within the limits of its accepted consensus. Separate societies which don't share a basic set of assumptions, don't. Pretending they do won't change that. Suggesting they ought to is.... politics. It's legitimate, but as part of the political discussion, not as some divine set of aces which over-ride the political process.

Coming down from the heavenly spheres, this means that Israelis and their neighbors need to find accommodations that work. Human rights, international law, emotional drives, history, economics, clashing religions, global warming, hummus and tabuleh, American politics, European politics, South American politics, swine flu, military power, water tables, and zillions of other things are all relevant if they are. It all gets worked out - resolved, or unresolved - in the space where societies work these things out.

Politics.

PS. In democracies, at least, politics are where the will of the people expresses itself. Can't get any nobler than that, can you?

Lawfare vs. Diplomacy

There's a loophole in the British legal system that allows Palestinians in the UK to have local courts order the arrest of Israeli politicians for imaginary violations of international law according to their very peculiar interpretation of it. The most recent case was of Tzipi Livni. The problem for the law-warriors is that Israel, being a sovereign state, plays on the field of sovereign states, or diplomacy in normal parlance. Diplomacy is a fine art of many delicate balances, and it doesn't like rude interferences.

This is to explain why it seems the British government is now scrambling to find a solution. If they don't, no Israeli politicians, statesmen of diplomats will visit London anymore, and the British will be cut out of the diplomatic scene of the Mideast - an unpleasant thought for British diplomats...

A Court Rules About A Country - Or Not

Kossovo is a strange place. It's an independent country, or not, depending on whom you ask; and whomever you ask will give you a reason that has much to do with power politics of one sort or another, and little to do with international law. So now, when someone has decided to break the impasse by going to the International Court of Justice, the general feeling seems to be that the court won't rule clearly one way or the other - because the court itself is political, and its decisions are political, not legal. Assuming there's such a thing as a purely legal decision, which of course there isn't, never was and never can be. Just as no legal system ever operates beyond the cultural, moral or political context in which its legislation was enacted.

Still, it's an interesting story, which I'll be following as it unfolds.

Legality of a War

The Guardian is unhappy that a commission appointed by its own government to look into how the UK went to war in Iraq (the Chilcot inquiry) may not look carefully enough at the legal aspects.

There have been repeated calls from influential legal and judicial figures for an investigation into whether the invasion of Iraq was illegal, including the former senior law lord Lord Bingham, who last year reiterated that it was "a serious violation of international law".

International law, you see, is above the sovereign decisions of a democratically elected government.

"Some of the debates around the legality of the war are quite sophisticated – it is not all clear-cut," the senior legal figure said. "It's going to be very difficult to deal with someone like Blair without a panel experienced in cross-examination."

And the legal experts know better than the citizens and their elected representatives.

Multilateral Sovereignty

Ten days ago, after I posted my reflections on the Goldstone Report, I found myself deep in an interesting e-mail correspondence with a law professor from Tel Aviv University who is a vocal supporter of abolishing national sovereignty and replacing it with an international human rights brigade. I'm not certain he would have chosen those precise words, but he was quite clear about the underlying principles. Actually, it was even worse, because his definition of what goes under "human rights" is breathtakingly wide, far beyond anything ever conceived of back in the late 1940s, when this fad got seriously underway.

He also rebuked me for not agreeing with him, given how by training I'm an historian of Nazism; I, of all people, should be better informed, he said.

Well. Maybe that explains why I've changed career tracks, I suppose.

Anyway, while I've been aware of this subject for quite a while, this correspondence, along with my reading of the Goldstone Report which preceded it, has alerted me to the seriousness of the issue. There really are many millions of people out there who are eager to whittle away democracy, i.e the responsibility of the electorate to make decisions, so as to replace it with teams of unelected specialists who are confident in their ability to know better what needs to be done, and what is unacceptable. The professor even called my type of democracy, the outmoded type, "technical democracy", while the type he advocates he called "fundamental democracy" or some such term (democratia mahutit).

So I've inaugurated a new tag (see below), called multilateral sovereignty, which I'll use to mark posts about this. Perhaps some day I'll write a book about it, who knows. If you're not interested in this newish interest of mine, feel free to skip those posts, or if I'm really annoying you, you may cancel your subscription.

The Economist last week had a thoughtful column on the fiscal aspects of this subject and their hazards.

Israel's Supreme Court just this week gave a dramatic demonstration, too. Five years after the Knesset passed a law enabling the careful privatization of prisons, the justices threw out the law. Haaretz has the story here, and two columns about it, one in favor of the decision, one critical.

I'm not convinced one way or the other myself. I'm uncomfortable with the ability of five unelected judges to throw out a law. I think it's ridiulous it took them five years, years in which the private businessmen spent a very large sum to build a prison and hire and train its staff. The fact that American, British and French legislators have passed similar laws, which haven't been struck down, indicates to me that it's not obvious that privately-run prisons must obviously be transgressors against the human rights of prisoners. On the other hand, I like the ability of Israel to decide for itself, irrespective of what others decide: that's the very essence of sovereignty. As for the prison itself, it seems the prisoners in the privately-run prison might actually have been treated better than those in the state run one - highly ironic, that - but on the other hand, I can see the sense of contending that the state must preserve it's monopoly of the use of force.

It's complicated. All the more reason not to take it out of the hands of the elected legislators, no?