Ethics Newsline®

Source: U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics figures for June 30, 2002, and press sources.

When widespread looting broke out in Iraq following the fall of Baghdad, I suspect the typical response of Western TV-watchers was a cluck of disapproval — a kind of sighing, boys-will-be-boys dismissal.

Now, over the weekend, we’ve seen the shocking consequences of such looting. In 48 hours, the National Museum of Iraq has been emptied of priceless collections dating back more than 5,000 years. With the stealing of an estimated 170,000 artifacts may have gone an inestimable treasury of understanding about the Mesopotamian cultures that gave birth to modern civilization — and about the region, now called Iraq, in which they developed.

So it’s worth asking, What’s all this looting about?

In one sense, of course, it’s not new. The history of Mesopotamia is filled with accounts of conquering armies pillaging the kingdoms they defeated. Lamentable, yes. But not news.

This time was different: Here the conquering army stepped back while the citizens pillaged their own nation. This was not outsiders wrecking the most cherished relics of a civilization; it was a people vandalizing its own history. Why would people pillage themselves?

Among the more benign answers, often put forward in current commentary, is vengeance. According to this interpretation, Iraqis aren’t pillaging themselves. Instead, they’re seeking revenge on a hated regime by attacking its buildings and institutions. The National Museum was hardly a public place: As part of Saddam’s apparatus, it had been closed during much of the period since the first Gulf War, its activities hidden from view.

Another answer, equally common, is exuberance. This argument notes that, having just been let out of a 24-year-old box into which Saddam’s regime had put them, the looters are simply expressing delight in their newfound freedom.

A third answer lies in economics: After decades of deprivation and a dozen years of sanctions, ordinary Iraqis lack so many commonplace things that the looting is nothing more than a redistribution of wealth.

Each of these answers paints part of the picture, though each has its flaws. If the reason is revenge against Saddam, why have so many ordinary neighborhoods in Baghdad been forced to erect barriers to keep looters at bay? If the reason is exuberance, why wasn’t South Africa pillaged clean after the 1994 election that ended apartheid and brought Nelson Mandela to power? And if it’s economics, why did the Baghdad looters visit such destruction upon the diplomatic property of France and Germany — whose governments sought to slow the destruction of Saddam’s regime — while apparently leaving other foreign property alone?

But I suspect there’s a larger, less benign reason here: the widespread moral degradation that comes through abiding, relentless corruption. That’s not to say that Iraqis are inherently more prone to bribery and extortion than other people. But like the liberated populaces in Russia, Afghanistan, and other countries living under tyrannies, they may well have become habituated to corruption simply as a way of surviving. Iraqis may have had to invent ways to work around repressive situations where so much was illegal, where shakedowns were commonplace, where Saddam’s officials had life-and-death personal power, and where police brutality was very real.

How did they cope? Probably through an underground economy. At best, such an economy works through an old-boy network of winks and nods, a studious non-reporting of factual details, and a merry abundance of cash. At worst, it operates with the same tyrannical power, ruthless precision, and lathering of bribery and extortion that characterizes the repressive regime itself.

Of the many motivations for corruption, two seem relevant to the situation in Iraq. The first is straightforward: They owe me, and now it’s payback time. The second is more ethically convoluted: The only way to get ahead is to cheat others before they cheat you, to look out for No. 1, and to use the elements of corruption itself to make your way forward.

The motivations for the current looting are probably complex, ranging from the benign to the nefarious. They’re also foreseeable. Given what we’ve seen in other modern wartime situations — Kosovo comes to mind — looting should come as no surprise. Yes, Iraqis should have shown some moral restraint. But it’s now clear that the coalition military forces should also have restrained them more forcefully. They should have anticipated the major targets of the looters, especially the museum. They should have exercised enough cultural and moral futurism to see this one coming.

And they should have read history. They should have known that Caesar is still notorious for destroying, in 48 B.C., the library at Alexandria, which at the time was the greatest in the world. That’s not the legacy U.S. forces meant to leave behind in liberating Baghdad.

(c)2003 Institute for Global Ethics

“This is so arbitrary for a man whose only crime is to write what he thinks. What they found on him was a tape recorder, not a grenade.”

– Blanca Reyes, wife of Cuban dissident Raúl Rivero, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison last week as part of Cuba’s crackdown on pro-democracy individuals and groups. The New York Times reports that almost 80 people, many turned in by government informants, were arrested over the past month and sentenced to stiff jail sentences of up to 27 years last week. Those targeted by the Cuban government included poets, writers, journalists, and librarians advocating democratic reforms. (“Cuban Dissidents Get Prison Terms as Long as 27 Years,” New York Times, Apr. 7.)

NEW YORK
The New York Police Department (NYPD) last week abandoned a recently launched program to collect data on the political activities and affiliations of antiwar protestors arrested on the city’s streets after the initiative came under attack by civil rights groups.

The NYPD database was built upon the department’s “Demonstration Debriefing Form,” completed by police during interviews with arrested protestors since mid-February, reported the New York Times.

Hundreds of protestors later contacted the New York Civil Liberties Union to complain about the forms, saying the police were collecting data that was protected by First Amendment rights.

After police were questioned about the practice last week, NYPD chief spokesman Michael O’Looney said the program had been halted and the records destroyed, along with a computer database holding the information.

“After a review, the department has decided to eliminate the use of the Demonstration Debriefing Form,” O’Looney said. “Arrestees will no longer be asked questions pertaining to prior demonstration history or school name. All information gathered since the form’s inception on Feb. 15 has been destroyed.”

O’Looney insisted that superior officers had no knowledge of the program, adding that protestors’ political activities and memberships would still be recorded — but this time as a tally, stripped of personal identifiers, noted the Times.

The controversy comes only a few weeks after a Manhattan judge relaxed long-standing laws designed to curb police efforts to spy on political groups. Those rules were weakened to allow greater police monitoring in the wake of 9/11, according to the Times.

Special to Newsline from Canadian correspondent Errol P. Mendes

WASHINGTON
The Globe & Mail is reporting that at a closed-door meeting between Canadian corporate leaders and present and former U.S. officials, Richard Perle, an influential Bush administration defense policy adviser and former assistant secretary of defense, warned that Canadian companies may be cut out of contracts to rebuild Iraq if the Canadian government did not contribute to the estimated $100 billion reconstruction bill needed for Iraq.

In addition, Mr. Perle, widely reputed to be one of the main architects of the Bush policy to oust Saddam Hussein, warned that any new Iraqi government may be hesitant to award contracts to companies from countries that did not support the U.S.- and British-led military action in Iraq.

Canadian and U.S. executives and officials who attended the meeting also were reported to have sensed a general U.S. disappointment that one of its closest allies had not supported the war, but that there was no intention to retaliate in vital economic relationship between the two countries.

WASHINGTON
The U.S. Supreme Court last week upheld the right of states to ban cross burning as an act of intimidation, but overturned part of a Virginia law that said burning a cross should be considered menacing by its very nature.

The court’s compound decision upholds the bulk of laws barring cross burning in 14 states and the District of Columbia, noting that the act often crosses the line from protected free speech to intimidation.

“In light of cross burning’s long and pernicious history as a signal of impending violence,” Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote, “…Virginia may choose to regulate this subset of intimidating messages.”

The 6-to-3 decision said states are within their rights to bar a behavior usually designed to threaten citizens, reported the Associated Press.

Three members of the court dissented, saying that states should not be permitted to issue a blanket ban on a behavior — cross burning, in this case — that may not always be meant to intimidate.

“The symbolic act of burning a cross, without more,” insisted Justice David Souter, may sometimes be “an ideological statement free of any aim to threaten,” and thus should be sheltered.

While that view was rejected in favor of state sovereignty in the matter, the court voided a portion of the Virginia’s law that ordered juries to consider the act inherently and always threatening.

Sometimes cross burning may be considered protected political speech, the court ruled, throwing out the conviction of a Ku Klux Klansman who held a 1998 rally on his own property in Virginia, condemning interracial marriage while burning a cross.

While the man’s behavior may be repugnant, he was within his rights to express his views on his own property, the court ruled. In contrast, the court upheld the conviction of two young Virginia men who burned a cross in a black man’s yard, saying the act was meant to threaten the man and his family.

Justice Clarence Thomas, a black man who grew up in the segregated South, lashed out at the court’s differentiation between types of cross burning, saying the act is intrinsic to the Ku Klux Klan, which he labeled a “terrorist organization.”

Ridiculing the court’s consideration of the “the fate of an innocent cross burner,” Justice Thomas said the act alone is inherently threatening. “It is reasonable to presume intent from the act itself,” he asserted, according to coverage from the Los Angeles Times.

Some analysts worried that the court’s ruling could wedge open the door on free-speech attacks, especially in the case of flag burning, noted online legal news source Law.com.

“Our concern is how much the language in the decision would lend itself to being used in other contexts,” Joshua Wheeler of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, told Law.com. “Even if the Court intended its ruling to be limited to cross burning, the potential always exists for legislators to go beyond that.”

WASHINGTON
The U.S. Supreme Court last week overturned a Utah jury’s $145 million punitive damage award against insurer State Farm, saying the size of the award was unjustified — a move hailed by industry as restoring perspective to the issue of punitive damages.

The court’s action came in the case of Curtis and Inez Campbell, a Utah couple who said they were mistreated by State Farm after causing a car accident that killed one man and permanently disabled another.

State Farm refused to settle with the victims’ estates for the amount guaranteed by the Campbells’ policy, opting instead to take the matter to court while assuring the couple that their assets would be protected, reported the New York Times.

During the trial, State Farm employees described how the firm often tried to limit payments to “the elderly, the poor, and other consumers who are least knowledgeable about their rights,” reported the New York Times. Another employee said the company had instructed him to falsify evidence in a bid to erroneously put some of the blame on the driver killed by the Campbells.

After it lost its case, State Farm refused to cover the nearly $136,000 in penalties above the Campbells’ policy, telling them the extra costs may be borne by them privately, according to the Times. The Campbells sued State Farm for bad faith.

A jury sided with the Campbells, ordering the company to pay $2.6 million in compensatory damages and $145 million in punitive damages.

After the judge reduced the awards to $1 million in compensatory damages and $25 million in punitive damages, both sides appealed. The Utah Supreme Court reinstated the original $145 million punitive fine.

State Farm then appealed to the Supreme Court, which last week ruled in the firm’s favor by a 6-to-3 margin, calling the punitive damages excessive.

“Punitive damages are not a substitute for the criminal process,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority. Even though Kennedy found that the company’s behavior could be considered “reprehensible,” the award of punitive damages failed to meet established legal guidelines.

The court rejected Utah’s fine as an overstep of federalism principles, saying Utah had no right to punish State Farm for abusive policy practices committed by the company in other states.

The court also rebuked Utah for allowing the jury to consider the size of State Farm’s coffers when assessing punitive damages, noted the New York Times. “The wealth of a defendant cannot justify an otherwise unconstitutional punitive damages award,” Justice Kennedy wrote, saying the ratio in the case should have been closer to one-to-one.

Dissenting Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg blasted that part of the court’s decision, calling the Supreme Court “boldly out of order” for trying to impose its view of how to calculate fair damages instead of allowing states to legislate the issue.

While agreeing that the case’s punitive fine “indicates why damage-capping legislation may be altogether fitting and proper,” Justice Ginsburg assailed the court for trying to write policy. Neither the 145-to-1 scale of the award nor the trial record “justifies this court’s substitution of its judgment for that of Utah’s competent decision makers,” she wrote.

Analysts told the Los Angeles Times that the decision will likely be used by cigarette makes and automakers to try and reduce hefty punitive damage awards by juries.

WASHINGTON
Church-state controversies played out last week in Washington, DC, and Tallahassee, Florida, after apparent endorsements of Christian views by government sources were publicized.

In Washington, Department of Education secretary Rod Paige refused to apologize for remarks made to the news service of the Southern Baptist Convention, in which he showed a personal preference for Christian education.

“All things equal, I would prefer to have a child in a school that has a strong appreciation for the values of the Christian community, where a child is taught to have a strong faith,” Paige told the Baptist Press news service.

“The reason that Christian schools and Christian universities are growing is a result of a strong value system,” Paige added. “In a religious environment the value system is set. That’s not the case in a public school where there are so many different kids with different kinds of values.”

Paige’s comments landed him in hot water with lawmakers and others, who said his comments cast doubt on his ability to fairly administer the nation’s secular schools, which serve roughly 47 million students, reported the Associated Press.

Paige, a supporter of vouchers and school prayer, last week said his comments were taken out of context and indicated only his personal preferences, which he insists he has successfully separated from his public policies as a professional educator.

Despite such explanations, the controversy over Paige’s remarks continued last week. On Friday, the Baptist Press pulled the original article from its Web site, posting instead a transcript of the interview and a notice that the article’s author would no longer be employed by the Baptist news service.

In Florida, the state’s Department of Health last week pulled a pamphlet titled, “A Christian Response to AIDS,” from the agency’s list of officially approved and distributed resources.

The Christian-themed pamphlet, which has been distributed by the state for more than a decade, includes Bible passages and pictures of Jesus healing the sick. “Jesus is our Hope,” it promises.

More than 13,000 copies of the pamphlet were purchased by the Health Department in 2000 and 2001, reported the Miami Herald.

After the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida contacted the state, officials recalled the brochure, saying they had previously declined to decide whether “it’s out of bounds of state-church rules.”

“The predominant message conveyed by the brochure is a sectarian religious one, representing a single religious perspective, which is inappropriate for endorsement by any agency of the state government,” executive director Howard Simon said.

Noting that the pamphlet’s message may be worthwhile, the group said the state nevertheless was not the right agent to voice the Christian viewpoint.

CINCINNATI, Ohio
The government has no right to impose random drug testing on welfare recipients in order for them to remain eligible for benefits, a federal appeals court ruled last week, striking down a Michigan law that had attracted attention nationwide.

Michigan’s law, the most comprehensive effort to condition welfare payments on drug testing, was voided as illegal in 1999 after a judge ruled that the Constitution prohibited that type of “suspicionless testing.”

In her ruling, Judge Victoria Roberts said the government cannot force welfare recipients to submit to drug tests simply because it believes the practice to be good social policy. Instead, the government must have legitimate cause to believe those being tested are actually taking illegal drugs, reported the New York Times.

A three-member appeals panel overturned that decision, saying Michigan was within its rights to require recipients of welfare, a voluntary program, to submit to random drug tests every six months. The testing policy pertained only to welfare recipients who had children or were pregnant.

Last week, the full appeals panel deadlocked on the issue, legally upholding Judge Roberts’ ruling by default, according to the Times.

American Civil Liberties Union executive Graham Boyd welcomed the ruling. Had it gone the other way, Boyd warned, it could have allowed the government to instate drug testing regimes for other programs, such as “driver’s licenses, student loans, and the exemption for children on your tax return.”

The Times notes that certain occupations — bus drivers, customs agents, firefighters, police officers, and railroad employees — are exempted from the “suspicionless” protections and can be randomly tested for drugs due to public safety concerns.

In a ruling last year, the Supreme Court said students also were largely exempt from the drug-testing protections and could be randomly tested without legal recourse.

LONDON
A British couple with a critically ill son were given the right last week to have their next child genetically screened to improve the chances that the future child’s tissue can be used in a transplant to save the life of their son.

The decision by Britain’s Court of Appeal overturns a December 2002 ruling that barred Shahana and Raj Hashmi from working with doctors to conceive a so-called designer baby.

The Hashmis, who are conceiving their next child through in-vitro fertilization, are already screening their embryos to block transmission of a rare genetic disease now afflicting their four-year-old son, Zain.

The controversy erupted after the Hashmis asked the government for permission to also screen the embryos for tissue type to ensure a match for Zain after a worldwide search for a viable donor failed, reported the Reuters news agency.

In December 2001, Britain’s Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA) approved the request. One year later, the U.K. High Court blocked the process after hearing a lawsuit filed by an antiabortion group, which argued that the matter should be decided by lawmakers, not a government agency like HFEA.

Last week, the Court of Appeal overturned that decision, saying the HFEA had proper jurisdiction, green-lighting the hunt for a matching embryo.

“This means that the Hashmi family can continue with their treatment,” HFEA chair Suzi Leather said after the ruling. “Clearly clinicians cannot always prevent diseases but if they are able to and also save the life of a sibling, then this is a legitimate use of these new techniques.”

Comment On Reproductive Ethics, the group that filed the legal challenge against the HFEA, called last week’s decision a “defeat for society at large,” warning that it could lead to social engineering.

Dr. Simon Fishel, a reproductive physician treating the Hashmis, denied that the ruling poses a threat, saying safeguards are already in place to prevent embryo selection on the basis of frivolous traits, noted the BBC.

“From the public’s point of view, they should have no fear because cases such as the Hashmis and the procedures involved will remain highly regulated by the HFEA and strict conditions will apply to all couples seeking this treatment on a case by case basis,” Fishel said last week.

IOWA CITY, Iowa
The State of Iowa and its university system were sued last week on behalf of five orphans who were reportedly conditioned to stutter as part of a 1939 study into the origins of the speech disorder.

The suit charges the University of Iowa with violating the rights of the orphans, who were part of a long-concealed experiment into whether stuttering was an inborn or learned speech pattern.

The experiment, led by renowned speech pathologist Wendell Johnson, was kept secret until 2001, when a graduate student who helped with the experiments came forward out of guilt, reported the Associated Press.

In an exposé published by the San Jose Mercury News, Mary Tudor explained how Johnson induced the children to stutter through a system of psychological pressure and negative therapy. Researchers concluded that in addition to stuttering, the children demonstrated a loss of self-confidence and self-esteem.

Last week’s lawsuit against the University of Iowa seeks unspecified damages on behalf of the orphans, all but two of whom have now died. The state is also named for breaching its duty to the orphans, who were housed in state-run homes.

MUNICH
Two German businessmen were convicted last week of falsifying financial reports to hide losses at their once-promising firm, EM.TV, contributing in large part to the crash of the country’s “New Market” tech sector.

Brothers Thomas and Florian Haffa were accused of distorting revenues and losses in the first half of 2000 at EM.TV, a firm that bought and sold the rights to film and TV properties, including the Muppets and Formula One racing, reported the Associated Press.

Once the $425-million discrepancy between reported profits and actual losses was made public, investor confidence crashed, contributing in large part to the bursting of Germany’s New Market stock bubble and the resultant economic crash.

Florian Haffa, EM.TV’s former chief financial officer resigned in November 2000. His brother Thomas, who founded the firm, quit nine months later under pressure from shareholders.

Both men deny any wrongdoing and say they will appeal last week’s convictions.

Prosecutors had sought suspended jail terms for the Haffa brothers, but were forced to settle for fines alone — $1.3 million for Thomas Haffa and $255,000 for Florian Haffa, noted the AP.

Shareholders reportedly hope that last week’s convictions will prove a good omen for further trials of financial fraud in the Neuer Markt technology stock exchange, where distorted figures are believed to have been commonplace.

LONDON
Britain’s working women, worried that they may be getting paychecks smaller than those of men doing similar work at the same firm, now have the legal right to ask their employers for data on salaries.

Under the Equal Pay Act of 1970, employers are required to pay the same amount to men and women doing similar jobs. Despite progress over the past 30 years, women still take home less — an average of 81 percent the figure paid to their male counterparts, reported Bloomberg.

Less than 20 percent of U.K. firms have assessed how well they are holding to the Equal Pay law in the past five years, according to a Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development survey cited by Bloomberg.

Last week’s law is meant to put more backbone — and bite — into efforts to make sure equal-pay principles are followed, giving workers more tools when taking their cases to private tribunals.

The measure gives both women and men the right to check on the pay of their opposite-sex colleagues. It does not cover questions about fair pay for workers of the same gender, reported the BBC.

Parents of young or disabled children also got a helping hand from the U.K. government last week, which passed a measure requiring employers to seriously consider requests for flex time.

The new rule, which covers parents of young children under six or disabled children under 18, urges employers to accommodate the needs of parents faced with especially difficult demands for work-life balance.

“In the vast majority of cases, they will find they can accommodate [parents' needs] without any problems,” U.K. Trade and Industry secretary Patricia Hewitt told the BBC.

From the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press:

“The public is paying close attention to the war and continues to give news organizations high marks for their coverage. But a sizable minority of Americans (39 percent) feel the news media is focusing too heavily on the war, and significant numbers believe the media is undercovering other major stories like the tax cut debate and the state of the U.S. economy.

“When it comes to various aspects of the war, the public has clear ideas of what is being overcovered and undercovered. Four-in-ten Americans say the press is giving too much coverage to anti-war protesters, and almost as many (36 percent) feel the media has given too much attention to commentary by retired military officers. In contrast, three-in-ten say there has too little coverage of the cost of war (31 percent), the personal experiences of ordinary soldiers (30 percent), and civilian casualties in Iraq (28 percent)….

“Most Americans (55 percent) feel the media has given the war the right amount of coverage, but those who say it has gotten too much coverage far outnumber the percentage who think the war has been undercovered (39 percent-4 percent). By contrast, significant numbers say there has been too little coverage of other significant issues facing the country, including debate about the president’s proposed tax cuts (45 percent say there’s too little coverage), the condition of the economy (43 percent), the federal budget deficit (42 percent), the race for the Democratic presidential nomination (38 percent), and the lung disease known as ‘SARS’ (33 percent).

“Views on what the press should be covering are strongly related to opinions about the war and to partisanship as well. Only one-third of war supporters say there is too much coverage of the conflict. But among those who think the U.S. made the wrong decision in going to war, 62 percent think the press is overdoing it….

“While they disagree on most aspects of press coverage, war supporters and opponents have generally the same view of the level of commentary from retired military officers. By well over two-to-one, members of both groups say they have heard too much, not too little, from the ‘armchair generals.’…

“The public strongly prefers neutral coverage of the war to coverage that takes an explicitly pro-American point of view. Nearly seven-in-ten (69 percent) say neutral coverage is better, while only about a quarter (23 percent) want coverage to be pro-American….”

“A man who causes fear cannot be free from fear.”

– Epicurus (Greek philosopher, 341-270 B.C.)