Wednesday, December 16, 2020
Can Human Rights Be Rescued From Human Rights Activists’ Overreach?
Human Rights Day is celebrated annually on Dec. 10 in recognition of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has served as the foundation of the international human rights system for some seven decades, but it’s threatened by its very success, as activists use it to assert an ever-growing list of “rights” that undermine the inalienable rights and fundamental freedoms it was designed to promote and protect.
Former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt served as chairwoman of the committee that drafted the declaration, which included representatives from diverse countries, political systems, cultures, languages, and religions.
It recognized “the inherent dignity” and “the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family” as “the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world.”
Forging consensus among the experts contributing to the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was a singular achievement. Securing support for it among the world’s nations was a triumph.
Over the ensuing decades, however, the remarkable consensus has been challenged by a powerful new movement of sovereign and non-sovereign entities, including lawyers, academics, nongovernmental organizations, activists, and U.N. officials, who seek to “improve” on what was accomplished in 1948.
In order to meet perceived new challenges, this movement asserts new rights and new interpretations of legally recognized rights. As noted by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the original 30 rights in the declaration have proliferated into 1,377 rights provisions in 64 agreements.
This effort to promote the “evolution” of human rights threatens to undermine the great and noble project in fundamental ways.
These rights are often in tension—and sometimes in outright conflict. Unlike more traditional rights, which seek to protect the individual from infringements on their freedoms by government, new rights typically seek to guarantee benefits to individuals from governments or to assert rights to categories of people or to a specific community.
High-minded assertions of rights to broadband, a clean environment, or development cannot magically be realized. They require regulations, allocation of resources, and financial transfers by government.
Too often, enforcing new rights requires restrictions on the more traditional rights. For instance, calls for addressing “hate speech”—which advocates support as a means for combating what they see as intolerance and racism—nearly always involve restrictions, prohibitions, or punishments that infringe on the freedom of speech or freedom of religion and belief.
Confusion and controversy over what human rights mean diminish prospects for greater enforcement. Governments use the proliferation of rights to deflect from their violations by pointing to protection of other “rights.”
This long-standing problem dates back decades to communist countries asserting their fidelity to economic, social, and cultural rights—such as the right to a job or a right to health care—as a way to obscure their denial of civil and political rights, such as the right to self-government and freedom of speech.
Today, the problem continues at the U.N. Human Rights Council. Repressive states claim concern over human rights violations in other countries, while rarely being confronted over their hypocritical failure to admit their own problems or the human rights shortfalls of their allies.
Meanwhile, countries like the U.S. receive more criticism and recommendations on improving their human rights practices than Cuba, Iran, or Venezuela.
Accountability is further undermined by activists seeking to reinterpret the traditional definitions of rights and assert new rights not contemplated in the original negotiations.
We see this with claims that women’s rights cannot be realized without inclusion of a right to abortion. Bypassing the democratic process to impose new interpretations of existing rights is an assault on the very spirit of rights.
The State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights, made up of experts on the right and the left, acknowledged these problems in a report released last summer.
Many human rights activists strongly opposed the report because it recommended steps to slow their counterproductive efforts to expand the number and definition of rights.
Specifically, the commission recommended that policymakers carefully consider new rights claims, weighing how closely they are rooted in the rights laid out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; their consistency with U.S. constitutional principles and American traditions; whether the U.S. and other nations have formally given their sovereign consent to recognition of the claimed rights; whether there’s a clear consensus of support among the many cultures and traditions of the human family; and whether new rights can be integrated into the existing human rights rubric without harmful conflicts.
The commission’s recommendations were hardly radical. They merely call for due consideration of new rights claims, reflection on their potential impact, and democratic accountability. But prudence often involves modest steps, not the sweeping, rapid changes that activists increasingly demand.
Pompeo observed, “More rights does not necessarily mean more justice.” Indeed, the proliferation of ever more rights and the desire to advance all of them without preference has diffused efforts to advance the fundamental rights and freedoms essential to individual liberty.
Respect for and enforcement of universal human rights depend on a clear understanding of what human rights are, practical consensus around the legal norms that protect rights, and respect for the sovereignty of states that guarantee those rights.
Is Israel Racist? A Reply To An Anti-Semitic Writer
The Jewish State, by definition, rejects some and welcomes others into the fold.
In “Is Israel Racist?”, a reply to an anti-Semitic interviewer (he bailed), the emphasis was on demonstrating why Israel’s particularism is an extension of the individual’s right as a sovereign, discerning human being. For the freedom to include or exclude is not racist. Rather, it is the inherent right of free individuals, living severally or collectively.”
Jews are to be faulted only to the extent that they deny to other nations the rights they claim for the Jewish ethno-state.
Israel’s particularism, moreover, is not race-based, it’s religious.
As understood in the U.S., racism is more often concerned with discrimination based on distinct physical characteristics. It’s thus important to understand that Jews no longer constitute a race.
Before the two exiles of the Jews from Israel, the first in 586 BCE, I would hazard that Hebrews were likely genetically quite distinct.
Some scientists suggest there is a “genetic basis for a common ancestry of the whole of the Jewish population.” The Cohanim, descendants of Aaron of the priestly caste, certainly share distinct genetic markers.
Thousands of years hence, however, there are white, brown and black Jews in Israel. In fact, there are Jews from 100 countries, including Yemen, India, the Arab countries and Ethiopia.
In 1991, roughly 36,000 Ethiopian Jews were lifted to safety in a series of daring operations initiated by successive Likud governments, headed by Menachem Begin, heir to founding father Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s classical liberalism. It’s hard to imagine an American government doing the same, say, for the racially persecuted Christians of South Africa or Zimbabwe. At the time, Ethiopian Jews were being oppressed by a brutal Marxist-Leninist, Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam.
While Israeli Jews share a common faith—Judaism—in what way are they a race? Clearly, Israeli Jews are a variegated people – many look just like Arabs and vice versa. The charge of racism as we know it in the U.S. is no more than liberal lather, racial agitation as atavistic and base as the kind that unleashed violence on American cities, during 2020.
By all metrics, Israeli-Arabs are not shunned and “segregated” based on defining physical appearance. The accusation that roughly 18 percent of Israel’s more than six million citizens incur “institutional racism” doesn’t pass muster. The same deductive debunking applied to this concept in the column “Systemic Racism Or Systemic Rubbish?” applies in Israel.
Namely, from the fact that distinct racial and ethnic groups are reflected in academia and in the professions disproportionately to their presence in the larger population—it doesn’t follow that they have been disenfranchised. Discrimination is far from the only plausible explanation for the lag in the fortunes of certain homogenous groups.
While (unofficially) rejecting multiculturalism, Israel retains liberal, democratic institutions and accords equal rights and protections to minorities. Israeli Arabs have equal voting rights, freedom of speech, assembly and press, as is evident from the hate-filled Islamic journals that thrive in Israel. Israeli Arabs run for the Knesset, hold government posts, and serve on the bench. Israel is one of the few places in the Middle East where Arab women may vote. Arabic is one of Israel’s two official languages.
The sole legal distinction between the Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel is that the latter are not required to serve in the Israeli army. A perk, some would say. As such, they don’t qualify for veteran benefits and, I imagine, will not get work where military security clearance is required. On the other hand, as the Jewish Virtual Library points out, Israeli Arabs get a head-start in the economy while Jews are conscripted for three years.
Is most "racism" in police practice actually classism?
A brief background for you, I was a police officer for a larger county department and a smaller city department for 13 years total. I was predominately a "beat cop," but spent a year my department's gang unit. I trained police officers at both departments, though a lot more at the second department, and I was a police instructor. I worked both the wealthiest side of town, and the poorest side of town.
I don't think law enforcement has a racism problem, but a classism problem. The poorer you were, the worse you were treated by police. While I was on my department's gang unit, I was assigned to a newly formed "high crime taskforce." We were tasked with spending our days in the worst neighborhoods and apartment complexes for several months after a kid was beaten to death at a bus stop. I witnessed numerous illegal searches and seizures, found case law that involved one of my fellow officers that should have stopped certain policing tactics since it was deemed illegal, but I was told "they're poor, they can't afford good attorneys" and was eventually kicked out of the unit. The areas I worked on that unit were 99% black/hispanic. If you saw a white person you never saw before, you would stop them because they were probably there trying to buy drugs. In fact, we would catch a car load of white teenagers coming out of a local apartment complex, driving a BMW, and they would get stopped immediately. Whenever we did a roadblock, it was in the poorest neighborhoods. Whenever we had a "targeted patrol" or "foot patrol," it was in the poorest areas of town, which just happened to be black/hispanic.
After getting kicked out of the gang unit for my "questioning" of their tactics (several promotions came from the "success" of that unit mind you), I went to work in an area that was poor white/black/hispanic. Poor whites were not treated any differently than poor blacks or hispanics. The poor white kid caught with weed went to jail just the same as the poor black or hispanic kid, and you were praised for it.
So I question, are the police actually conditioned to target minorities (or inherently racist), or do they target poor people? Unfortunately, the poorest areas in our country happen to be minority communities, but that's a different debate with LBJ's "great society," welfare, etc.
Germany cancels Christmas: Angela Merkel plunges country into new national lockdown over the festive season in desperate bid to drive down Covid infection rate
Germany will be plunged into a new national lockdown for the Christmas period as Angela Merkel makes a desperate bid to drive down soaring Covid infection rates.
The country will be closing non-essential shops, hair salons and schools, and further limiting social contact.
Chancellor Merkel said she and the governors of Germany's 16 states agreed to step up the country's lockdown measures from December 16 to January 10 to stop the exponential rise of COVID-19 cases.
Existing restrictions imposed in November failed to significantly reduce the number of new infections, she said.
Germany recorded 20,200 newly confirmed cases and 321 additional deaths on Saturday, a high number for the weekend when many local authorities don't report figures.
The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in Germany has risen over the past two weeks from 21.23 new cases per 100,000 people on November 28 to 26 new cases per 100,000 people on December 12.
With the exception of Christmas, the number of people allowed to meet indoors will remain restricted to five, not including children under 14.
Companies have also been urged to allow employees to work from home or offer extended company holidays.
Alcohol sales will be banned in public places, essentially outlawing the business of mulled wine stands, which have proved popular in the days running up to Christmas.
Restaurant takeout will remain permitted, but consumption on-site will be banned.
The sale of fireworks traditionally used to celebrate New Year's will also be banned.
'The corona situation is out of control,' said Bavarian state premier Markus Soeder, welcoming the tougher restrictions which he pledged to implement in his state.
Germany in November closed leisure and cultural facilities and banned indoor dining in restaurants.
The measures had helped to halt rapid growth of infections after the autumn school holidays, but numbers had plateaued at a high rate.
Over the last week however, the country's disease control agency reported that the infections trend has taken a worrying turn.
'With increasing mobility and the therefore linked additional contacts in the pre-Christmas period, Germany is now in exponential growth of infections numbers,' said the policy paper agreed by regional leaders and Merkel.
It was therefore 'our task to prevent an overload of our health systems and that's why there is an urgent need to take action,' said the chancellor.
Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said the government would provide further financial support for businesses affected by the lockdown.
German news agency dpa reported that the additional sums set aside amounted to 11.2 billion euros ($13.6 billion).
Religious services will be permitted, provided minimum distancing rules are in place and masks are worn, though singing will be banned.
Staff in nursing homes will be required to take COVID-19 tests several times a week, and visitors will also have to provide a negative test result before being able to see relatives in care.
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http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
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http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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