Revista Española de Empresas y Derechos Humanos Núm. 5 (2025): Nº5 - Octubre 2025 Just Published

 

 

Delighted to pass along information about the publication of the latest volume of  Revista Española de Empresas y Derechos Humanos Núm. 5 (2025): Nº5 - Octubre 2025.

The volume includes some very interest9ng and powerful essays that are well worth reading. The table of contents and links to the essays follow below. The full volume of essays may be accessed HERE.

2025 Absa Africa Financial Markets Index Released

 

I am delighted to pass along the recently released Absa Africa Financial Markets Index. The Absa Africa Financial Markets Index was produced by OMFIF in association with Absa Group Limited. The pRess Release explained:

Progress despite global headwinds

The past 12 months have seen highs and lows around the world. Difficult macroeconomic conditions, compounded by a turbulent trade environment and geopolitical tensions, have created challenges for African economies. As a result, countries in this year’s Absa Africa Financial Markets Index have seen their progress hampered by global headwinds. While a third of countries were able to improve their overall scores, the remaining two-thirds saw their scores fall or remain unchanged. However, this is just the surface story. The detail shows important developments in a number of areas.

The index assesses financial market development across the continent through the lens of transparency, accessibility and openness. Now in its ninth year, it provides a benchmark for market infrastructure and an opportunity for policy-makers to learn from improvements across Africa. With support from the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the index covers 29 economies in the region. This equates to approximately 80% of the population and gross domestic product of Africa.

Enter your details on the right to access the report.

The most interesting focus of the findings are on those instruments and actions that reflec6ted the sensibilities and objectives of the international al financial order before 2015. Not that these are either wrongheaded or irrelevant.  It is just that since 2015 and especially in the United States since 2025, the focus of financial instruments and political objectives in both liberal democratic and Marxist Leninist States has shifted primarily toward modernization (by whatever name modernization is utilized--development, stronger national economic integration, sector security and the like). Most useful, in this respect, then, is on the growth of market variation in financial products offered--greater variation suggesting depth of market and a growing consumer taste for differentiated product. Bit the object of all of this is development and development strategies and it is hoped that this might be better focused. In that respect ESG and ESG related products are a great vase in point, one that requires a bit m ore drilling down to the essence of the product offered to get a better sense of what it is that the market considers useful or at least market ready ESG instruments. That is a small quibble in light of the quite useful information digested and presented in the report, one worth considering carefully. 

Key findings:

While many economies faced a decline in reserves adequacy in the 12 months to June 2025, countries that prioritised tackling inefficient foreign exchange regimes fared best.

In total, 18 AFMI economies now offer environmental, social and governance-related or Islamic financial products, providing crucial diversification for both short- and long-term investment.

Despite backtracks on ESG goals globally in the past year, four AFMI countries have issued green bonds for the first time this year, taking the total number to 14.

Expectations for GDP growth rose in 22 countries this year despite the more challenging economic conditions.

 The Table of Contents and the Executive Summary of the Index follows below.

 

Literary Encounter at the University of Lille Celebrating Release of Marilyn Bromberg, "Body Image Law"

 

 

I am delighted to pass along this notice of a literary encounter from my friend and colleague  Anne Wagner (Lille):

Join us for a Literary Encounter with Marilyn Bromberg at Université de Lille! The Bibliothèque Paul Duez is delighted to host Marilyn Bromberg for a special literary event celebrating the release of her new book, Body Image Law: Revolutionising Images of Thin-Ideal Women.

📅 Date: 21 November 2025, 14h30
📍 Location: Bibliothèque Paul Duez — 1 Place Déliot, Lille
🎙️ Hosts: Anne Wagner & Jean-Christophe Duhamel

Join us in person for an engaging discussion on law, body image, and social change.
Learn more about the book here: https://www.routledge.com/Body-Image-Law-Revolutionising-Images-of-Thin-Ideal-Women/Bromberg/p/book/9781041129677. All are welcome — don’t miss this thought-provoking exchange!

Book Description, Rable of COntents and Author Bio follow.

Conference: The Art of Chinese Social Media (27-28 November) School of Art, BCU, Birmingham, UK

 

 I am delighted to pass along information about the upcoming Conference: The Art of Chinese Social Media. It will take place 27-28 November at the School of Art, BCU, Birmingham, UK. The organizers describe the event this way:

Welcome to The Art of Chinese Social Media! Join us at the Birmingham School of Art for two- day filled with insights, networking, and creativity. This conference seeks to explore the artistic strategies and visual cultures generated from Chinese social media to reflect broader sociopolitical dynamics in the context of Xi Jinping’s increasing digital censorship and control. How do platforms like Weibo, Douyin/TikTok, and WeChat construct new forms of artistic practice and cultural expression within the new age of ‘digital China’ and the deglobalising world? In what ways do contemporary artists and communities remediate social media to challenge power asymmetries, and foster digital democratisation through reclaiming agency and individual empowerment?

The conference welcomes contributions that can develop disciplinary perspectives and critical inquiries on the art and aesthetics of Chinese social media in the fields of visual arts, digital media, design, performing arts, and cultural studies. Part of Dr. Shiyu Gao’s Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship research project, Emerging Surveillance Culture, which explores the intersection of expanded media art and technology in the context of ‘digital China’.

The Conference Program follows.  Registration through this LINK. 

World Justice Project 2025 Rule of Law Index is now Available

 

 

The World Justice Project has just made available its 2025 Rule of Law Index covering the great majority of the globe's states.  The Press Release which follows below in full, concludes that "Global Rule of Law recession accelerates as Authoritarian trend deepens, WJP Index finds decline in judicial independence and shrinking civic space signal heightened risk to democracy worldwide."

The WJP Rule of Law Index provides data on eight factors: Constraints on Government Powers, Absence of Corruption, Open Government, Fundamental Rights, Order and Security, Regulatory Enforcement, Civil Justice, and Criminal Justice. Scores range from 0 to 1, where 1 signifies the highest possible adherence to the rule of law. This year, the Index covers 143 countries and jurisdictions, with Qatar integrated for the first time.

The regional press releases may be accessed HERE.

Key Findings  the methodology provides a useful framework for interpreting these findings) also follow below

 

Additional useful links:  The Index at a glance What we measure How we measure Who uses the Index Contact Past reports

 

PowerPoint for Remarks: "Legal-Institutional Foundations for Reconstruction in a Post-Revolutionary Cuba: A Conceptual Exercise"

 

In my last post I distributed the extended text of remarks I had prepared for delivery at the 2025 Conference of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy ("Legal-Institutional Foundations for Reconstruction in a Post-Revolutionary Cuba: A Conceptual Exercise," Remarks prepared for delivery at the 2025 Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, Miami, Florida, 25 October 2025)- I had promised the PPT that would accompany that presentation.  

Those are provided here. ACCESS PPT: Backer_Cuba_Institutional-Legal-Foundations_ASCE2025, or via QR Code that follows

 

 

 

"Legal-Institutional Foundations for Reconstruction in a Post-Revolutionary Cuba: A Conceptual Exercise," Remarks prepared for delivery at the 2025 Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, Miami, Florida, 25 October 2025

Pix credit here (Genet, "The Balcony" 1963 film version

 I was delighted to have been asked to contribute to a fascinating panel, Long-Term Reconstruction Investment and Recovery Funding, organized for the 2025 Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, the theme of which is "Recovering Cuba."

I was asked to speak to legal and institutional foundations for reconstruction in a post-revolutionary Cuba. To those ends I prepared remarks for delivery, framing them as a conceptual exercise. The abstract of which nicely summarizes the main points of the remarks:

ABSTRACT: Cuba is certainly in transition. But that means very different things to groups competing to drive transition. The resulting dissonance, guided by sometimes incompatible formative premises, complicates the challenge of transition, its forms, where that transition leads, and what may be necessary. Whatever the form and trajectories of transition, it is clear that transition will require substantial attention to the construction of aligned institutional-legal foundations. The purpose of these remarks is to consider the form and challenges of developing robust institutional-legal foundations in the Cuban context. It is organized in five parts. After the introduction the remarks first considers conceptual starting points--the importance of the development and choice of political-economic models as a predicate for the construction of robust institutional-legal foundations. It is divided into two parts, the first focusing on normative political orders, and the second examining institutional-legal orders. The remarks then considers two starting points of analysis. The first situates the Cuban political-economic model as a conceptual baseline. The second the current state of institutional-legal foundations in Cuba. The remarks then articulates the context in which the challenge of transition appears in contemporary Cuba—the end of the long arc of the Cuba revolutionary regime. That brings the remarks to the heart of the matter: what the future can bring. This is divided into several organizing-normative questions: (a) Who is to make decisions about transitioning?; (b) What ideological political economic model is to serve as the basis of post-revolutionary institutional-law building?; (c) Through which institutional actors is this ideological political-economic model to be realized?; (d) What time line is to be chosen to develop and implement this transition?; and (e) The Marie Kondo moment—what of the present system is to be kept and what is to be discarded or repurposed?

Cuba has been worked on for well over a century by a shifting host of well meaning people all of whom know in their hearts what is best for the Cuban people. It may, perhaps be time to create a fairly stable environment in which, organically, people in Cuba may, by their actions and behaviors, by their discourse and desires, produce a community of behaviors and aggregated arrangements which, then, might be given a name and a narrative to suit the times and interests of the troubadours of ideology.  The view from Jean Genet's The Balcony (Le Balcon 19656), in this sense, is quite instructive. 

 The full text of the Remarks, "Legal-Institutional Foundations for Reconstruction in a Post-Revolutionary Cuba: A Conceptual Exercise,"follows below and may also be accessed here.

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Part 14 (Part IV, Chapter 13: UNGP--The Corporate Responsibility to Respect Human Rights: Operational Principles; Policy Commitment (UNGP Principle ¶16))--Vetting the Discussion Draft: "The United Nations Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights: A Commentary

 

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I have been working on the production of a comprehensive commentary of the United Nations Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights.  This is a humbling task. It follows the production of both an official commentary, written in tandem with the UNGP itself, and a collective commentary of the UNGP undertaken by some of the most distinguished students of other fields of human rights, business, and its related fields of academic  study ( The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: A Commentary (Barnali Choudhury (ed); Edward Elgar, 2023).  

I am at a point where I can start vetting portions of the draft. I hope to share those discussion drafts with a wider audience in hopes of getting feedback. In these posts I provide a short summary of the draft chapter and a link t access a 'pdf' version.  All draft chapters may be found on my Coalition for Peace & Ethics Website website at UNGP Commentary Page HERE.

Part I (On the Making of the UNGP), organized in five chapters, introduced the reader to the background, context, and sources that contributed to the drafting and eventual endorsement of the UNGP. Parts II through V then consider in detail the text and interpretation of the substantive provisions of the UNGP. Part II considered the UNGP's General Principles; Part III examines the State duty to protect human rights (UNGP Principles 1-10); Part IV then addresses commentary to the corporate responsibility to respect human rights (UNGP Principles 11-24); and Part V considers the remedial principles (UNGP Principles 25-31). 

 

The UNGP divides the principles for each of these Pillars into "foundational" and "operational" principles.  The former reflects the conceptual framework for each of the Pillars developed through the focus on the principled part of principled pragmatism exploration of the SRSG's initial mandate and culminating in the SRSG's 2008 Reports; the latter reflects the second mandate's direction to operationalize the conceptual framework, which focused on the pragmatism part of principled pragmatism that drove the SRSG's work throughout the mandates. The operational principles are then subdivided into a number of different categories of focus. 

 

Pix credit here (Pauwels, Luther 95 Theses (1872))

This post considers the first of the operational principles of Pillar 2--The expectation that an enterprise produce a  policy commitment statement described in UNGP Principle 16. 

The Foundational Principles of the UNGP’s Pillar 2 corporate responsibility to respect human rights provide the conceptual framework around which the operational principles of human rights due diligence as the central structural element of Pillar 2 (UNGP Principles 16- 21 are built, modified by principles of remediation (UNCO Principle 22) and context (UNGP Principles 23-24).[1] Together these rationalize the norms, policies, and processes within and through which private markets are expected to operate—one in which the principle of economic welfare maximization, the autonomy of legal persons, and of individuals are respected, but now managed within a system grounded in a more vigorous compliance regime. Compliance with what? Compliance with the normative imperatives of human rights as they affect economic transactions. Compliance is undertaken through the expectations of Pillar 2 in markets, but also through the fulfillment by States of their duty to protect human rights under Pillar 1 through smart mixes of public power (policy and regulation; two different forms of power) directed to actors in private markets that may operate transnationally and through production chains.[2] These inter-relationships serve as the foundation for the connection, and separation, between Pillars 1 and 2—what SRSG Ruggie referenced as polycentricity of interlocking systems of public and private power.[3] Polycentricity, essentially anarchic in the sense of imposing order without a center, revolves around alignment between spheres of public and private collective governance; beyond though dependent on societal constitutionalism,[4] more anarchic that a fully formed system of entangled legalities, or transnational legal ordering,[5] or as much as it is grounded in polycentric mimesis[6] by way of the ordering premise of business and human rights.[7]

Pillar 2, Like Pillar 1, then, each acquires both its power and its autonomy through their adherence to this structuring principal of polycentric mimesis. That is evidence not merely in the organization of the principles in each Pillar—each divided between foundational and operational principles—but also in their internal structuring. The foundational principles themselves each starts with the declaration of the ordering premise of each Pillar. That is followed by a set of elaborating principles that together constitute the normative structures within which it is possible to appropriately manage the scope of possible variations in operationalization of duty (State) and (enterprise and other collectives). Lastly, that parallel mimetic structuring is embedded within pathways to structural coupling—for example, human rights due diligence might be transposed from the Pillar 2 to Pillar 1 and reconstituted as a set of mandatory legal measures bounded by law, yet at the same time, the expectations built into the autonomous obligations of human rights due diligence, the normative basis of which is autonomous of national public legality, continues unabated.[8]

Likewise there is a connection between UNGP Principle 3 (General State Regulatory and Policy Functions)[9] and UNGP Principle 16 (Policy Commitment), the object of the Commentary in this chapter. Both serve as bridging provisions. Each is focused on structuring the forms and trajectories of the operational expression of their respective foundational principles. UNGP Principle 3 creates the framework through which States may exercise their political authority (in and through law and policy) to fulfill their foundational duty (specified in UNGP Principles 1-2) “to foster business respect for human rights.”[10] UNGP Principle 16 provides the institutional and textual form within which an enterprise can “meet their responsibility to respect human rights”[11] elaborated in Pillar 2’s foundational principles (UNGP Principles 11-15). While the foundational principles describe an expectation to develop policies to fulfill the foundational premises of Pillar 2 in UNGP Principle 15, UNGP Principle 16 actually develops the way that expectation (policy commitment) is expressed.

[1] Discussed Chapter 12.
[2] Discussed Chapters 6-9.
[3] Concept discussed at Chapter 3.2; see also Enrico Partiti, ‘Polycentricity and Polyphony in International Law: Interpreting the Corporate Responsibility to Respect Human Rights,’ (2021) 70(1) International and Comparative Law Quarterly 133-164; Larry Catá Backer, ‘The Structural Characteristics of Global Law for the 21st Century: Fracture, Fluidity, Permeability, and Polycentricity,’ (2012) 17(2) Tilburg Law Review 177-199.
[4] See Gunther Teubner, ‘Societal Constitutionalism: Nine Variations on a Theme by David Sciulli,’ in Paul Blokker and Chris Thornhill (eds), Sociological Constitutionalism (CUP. 2017) 313-340.
[5] See Nico Krisch, ‘Entangled Legalities in Postnational Space,’ (2022) 20(1) International Journal of Constitutional Law 476-506.
[6] The focus here is on imitation or representation sourced in distinct, multiple network of autonomous but decentralized entities. Cf., Larry Catá Backer, ‘ The Soulful Machine, the Virtual Person, and the “Human” Condition: An Encounter with Jan M. Broekman, Knowledge in Change: The Semiotics of Cognition and Conversion (Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature, 2023),’ (2024) 37 International Journal for the Semiotics of Law 969-1083.
[7] Larry Catá Backer, ‘Transnational Corporations' Outward Expression of Inward Self-Constitution: The Enforcement of Human Rights by Apple, Inc.,’ (2013) 20(2) Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 805-879.
[8] Compare the Commentary of Chapters 6-7, with Chapter 12.
[9] Discussed Chapter 8.
[10] UNGP Principle 3 Commentary.
[11] UNGP Principle 15; discussed Chapter 12.

 

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The Chapter 13 discussion draft may be accessed directly HERE (where revisions earlier chapters may also be accessed). The text of the draft of Chapter 13 as of the time of this posting also follows below along with its table of contents. 

 

Just Published Vol 11(4) Academe: "Defending Academic Values"

 

Delighted to pass along the announcement of the publication of the latest issue of Academe, the Magazine of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). 

Our fall issue examines a range of threats to academic freedom, freedom of expression, and shared governance on campuses today. Contributors expose the strategies underpinning the Trump administration’s attempts to seize control of colleges and universities—including the weaponization of “viewpoint diversity,” of accreditation, and of US civil rights law—and consider the role of the faculty in defending and reasserting core academic values.

The Table of Contents with links follows below.

Part 13 (Part IV, Chapter 12: UNGP-- The Corporate Responsibility to Respect Human Rights: Foundational Principles (UNGP Principles ¶ ¶11-15))--Vetting the Discussion Draft: "The United Nations Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights: A Commentary

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I have been working on the production of a comprehensive commentary of the United Nations Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights.  This is a humbling task. It follows the production of both an official commentary, written in tandem with the UNGP itself, and a collective commentary of the UNGP undertaken by some of the most distinguished students of other fields of human rights, business, and its related fields of academic  study ( The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: A Commentary (Barnali Choudhury (ed); Edward Elgar, 2023).  

I am at a point where I can start vetting portions of the draft. I hope to share those discussion drafts with a wider audience in hopes of getting feedback. In these posts I provide a short summary of the draft chapter and a link t access a 'pdf' version.  All draft chapters may be found on my Coalition for Peace & Ethics Website website at UNGP Commentary Page HERE.

Part I (On the Making of the UNGP), organized in five chapters, introduced the reader to the background, context, and sources that contributed to the drafting and eventual endorsement of the UNGP. Parts II through V then consider in detail the text and interpretation of the substantive provisions of the UNGP. Part II considered the UNGP's General Principles; Part III examines the State duty to protect human rights (UNGP Principles 1-10); Part IV then addresses commentary to the corporate responsibility to respect human rights (UNGP Principles 11-24); and Part V considers the remedial principles (UNGP Principles 25-31). 

 

The UNGP divides the principles for each of these Pillars into "foundational" and "operational" principles.  The former reflects the conceptual framework for each of the Pillars developed through the focus on the principled part of principled pragmatism exploration of the SRSG's initial mandate and culminating in the SRSG's 2008 Reports; the latter reflects the second mandate's direction to operationalize the conceptual framework, which focused on the pragmatism part of principled pragmatism that drove the SRSG's work throughout the mandates. The operational principles are then subdivided into a number of different categories of focus. 

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This Post starts the exploration of what has proven to be the most controversial and the most invoked portions of the UNGP--the corporate responsibility to respect human rights.  Its focus is on the five principles that together make up the foundational principles of the Pillar 2 responsibility to respect. These are particularly important in contextualizing the UNGP provisions on human rights due diligence, which include the most influential elements of the UNGP.

UNGP Principles 11-15 set out the fundamental conceptual basis for elaborating a corporate responsibility to respect human rights beyond the legalities and political preferences of the State and deeply embedded in markets. The Foundational principles are set out logically to create a deeply self-referencing normative structuring of corporate responsibility within markets, the contents of which, of course, may be affected by States, singly, in groups, or through international instruments, as they projected public regulatory power onto the private law arrangements beyond their institutions.

UNGP Principle 11 sets put the “global standard of expected conduct for all business enterprises wherever they operate.” The global standard is simple and straightforward: “Business enterprises should respect human rights.” Everything that follows in UNGP Principles 12.-15 is an elaboration of that ordering premise. Several sub-premises apply to the entirety of the Pillar 2 foundational principles. The first is that these principles provide expectations rather than mandatory obligations. The State may produce mandatory obligations through its political-institutional public authority—at least to the ends of its jurisdiction. The enterprise operates in markets both within and beyond the State. The foundation of those foundation concepts in expectation represents the deep embedding of the normative framework of principled pragmatism in the heart of the UNGP Pillar 2 structures. Principled pragmatism starts with current practice, adds to it the nudging effects of the UNGP normative framework the practice of which produces a dialectic over repeated application that is meant to move expectation closer to realization by internalizing norms through iterative practice. The model is not for the impatient.

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The expectation of the core premise of the corporate responsibility to respect human rights is given a meaning: the expectation that enterprises ought to avoid infringing of the human rights of others, and should address adverse human rights impacts with respect to which the UNGP assigns them responsibility. Nonetheless the core of the principle is unwavering—the enterprise may have a responsibility, but its character is that of expectation, and expectations are social collective norms that may be quite severe in their effects but lie beyond the reach of the legal structures that define the relationship between States and their subjects. States, of course may, to the extent of their political will and for so long as that will is deemed worthy of manifestation, transform social expectation into mandatory legal duty. Yet that duty can extend no farther than the reach of their jurisdiction and may be checked by the habits, will and legal authority of other States, all subject to sometimes superior claims of authority in international law.

The meaning of this meaning of the corporate responsibility to respect human rights is then elaborated as a conceptual matter in UNGP Principles 12-15. UNGP Principle 12 identifies the international law and norms with respect to which the corporate responsibility arises. At its broadest to is limited to “internationally recognized human rights—a term that is itself elastic and subject to a variety of interpretations. UNGP Principle 12 also provides a minimum, the International Bill of Human Rights and the principles concerning human rights of the ILO’s Declaration on Fundamental Principles and the Right to Work. The Principle also emphasized detachment—a detachment from the legal or normative architecture of the responsibility to respect and the boundaries of a State’s duty to protect human rights. These two may overlap but neither controls the other with respect to scope or interpretation.

UNGP Principle 13 attaches the active principle of respect to the normative elaboration of UNGP Principle 12. UNGP Principle 13 divides the corporate responsibility into two parts. The first applies a “causing or contributing” standard to adverse human rights impacts. These ought to be avoided, and if avoidance is not possible, then addressed. Critical here is the way in which principles of principled pragmatism applies to the key terms—“causing and contributing”, “adverse impact” “through their own activities”, “avoid” and “address.” The focus first is on prevention; and if prevention is not possible then mitigation and then remediation. The second applies to adverse impacts “directly linked to their operations, products or services” by their “business relationships.” With respect to these, the expectation is to “seek to prevent or mitigate” any consequential adverse impacts, without regard to whether or not the enterprise contributed to those impacts. Within a production chain enterprises are responsible for the conduct of all others without regard to their contribution to the adverse impacts that must be addressed.

UNGP Principle 14 adds two critical elements to the conceptual framework of the corporate responsibility. The first introduces the notion that factors of scale and complexity may shape the “means through which enterprises meet” their Pillar 2 responsibilities. That introduces the notion of variability in the operationalization of Pillar 2 human rights due diligence—though not of the expectation of the responsibility to respect itself. Objectives remain constant; means vary from enterprise to enterprise. That produces a distinctive element in enterprise compliance that moves away from the one size fits all rigidity of law but is more suitable to the sensibilities and practices of the market (again principled pragmatism in system design). Specific factors that enter into the analysis are also identified: size, sector, operational context, and ownership and structure. Each of these is left undefined and thus amenable to development. The second introduces the concept of severity as a factor that shapes and limits the flexibility of adopting context specific means toward the realization of the responsibility to respect expectation. Severity, in turn “will be judged by their scale, scope and irremediable character.” Putting the two together produces the analytical matrix within which an enterprise can develop institutional structures for realizing the means of fulfilling their responsibility to respect, while severity adds temporal and transaction oriented limitation. Thus structures must be flexible enough to meet both the character of the enterprise and to respond to changing levels of severity of impact form transaction to transaction and over time.

Lastly UNGP Principle 15 serves as a bridge between the conceptual construction of the UNGP Pillar 2 responsibility to respect and the more precisely drawn operational principles built around human rights due diligence. The bridging is undertaken through the development of a conceptual basis for operationalization. That basis includes three elements. The first is based on the production of a useable enterprise policy commitment in a form that furthers the task of fulfillment. This will be elaborated in UNGP Principle 16. The second focuses on the essential role of human rights due diligence as the primary mechanism for realizing the Pillar 2 foundational principles in context. These will be elaborated in UNGP Principles 17-21. And the third focuses on the elaboration of a suitable remediation framework. These will be elaborated in UNGP Principles 22-24. Holding these together and emphasizing the important of the analytics framework of factor balancing in UNGP Principle 14 is the overarching referent against which these policies and processes are to be elaborated: an “appropriate to size and circumstances” standard. The foundational principles thus appear to make clear enough that while the UNGP describes a unitary normative standard, it “activates” that normative standard (e.g. addressing adverse human rights impacts measured against internationally recognized human rights), as well as a single framework for its fulfillment (human rights due diligence), it also provides substantial flexibility, which can differ from enterprise to enterprise, with respect to the means adopted to fulfill these expectations, and that even those means may be required to vary depending on the severity of individual cases of adverse impact 


The Chapter 12 discussion draft may be accessed directly HERE (where revisions earlier chapters may also be accessed). The text of the draft of Chapter 12 as of the time of this posting also follows below along with its table of contents. 

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America First--Text of President Trump's Address to the Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem - October 13, 2025

 

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And perhaps most beautifully of all, we have made peace together. And this week, against all odds, we have done the impossible and brought our hostages home. So now we're going to forge a future that is worthy of our heritage. We're going to build a legacy that all the people of this region can be proud of. New bonds of friendship, cooperation, and commerce will join Tel Aviv to Dubai, Haifa, to Beirut, Jerusalem to Damascus, and from Israel to Egypt, from Saudi Arabia to Qatar, from India to Pakistan, from Indonesia to Iraq, from Syria to Bahrain, Turkey, to Jordan, the United Arab Emirates to Oman and Armenia to Azerbaijan, another war that I just settled. (President Trump Address to the Israeli Knesset)

I have posted the text and brief reflections on the  "The Trump Declaration for Enduring Peace and Prosperity" Dialogical Reflections on the Tractability of the Intractable. President Trump also delivered an Address to the Israeli Knesset on 134 October 2025. The full text of that address follows below with thanks to the folks at Roll Call for posting it HERE. The coverage was as might be expected--having spent so much time creating a monster out of President Trump the press, especially its legacy organs, found it difficult to cover a news story about his role in cobbling together a cease fire  in the Israel-Gaza war and the return of the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas. 

The speech is worthy of review, if only to get a better sense of the emerging rhetorical and discursive tropes around which the emerging world order may be rationalized. It is transactional, deeply utilitarian, and grounded in the sensibilities of the market. That, in turn, tends to view disruptions and instability with horror--chaos is not good for order or business. And the order of the day is business, the advantages of which it is left to the State to protect and advance.  That is the essence, as well, of America First. It centers on national interest; it leaves the calculation of national interest to the parties to any transaction; it is at its most comfortable in the spaces available for sometimes sharp negotiation; it views disruption and destruction of the means of production with substantial suspicion and distaste; it focuses on the near term, adjusted to some extent to the middle and long term where that is advantageous to the deal and to the constitution of a stream of dealmaking among agreeable parties. 

 

"The Trump Declaration for Enduring Peace and Prosperity" Dialogical Reflections on the Tractability of the Intractable

 

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"Trump and the leaders of Qatar, Egypt and Turkey, the countries that were acting as key mediators, held an official signing ceremony for the Gaza peace plan. Notably missing from the signing ceremony were the two parties expected to abide by the peace plan: Israel and Hamas. The president praised the "amazing array of talent" in the U.S. who helped get the deal across the finish line, as well as help from Qatar, Egypt and Turkey." (CNBC News)

 The text of  The Trump Declaration for Enduring Peace and Prosperity follows below. 

1.  Marketing Power Relations;. The document references the "Trump Peace Agreement"--a reference to the American Peace Plan for Gaza (my discussion here: America First as a Template for the Global: Text of the U.S. Cease-Fire Plan for Gaza). One of the most interesting things about the agreement  and this Declaration was not its terms of its positive sentiments but rather its performative semiotics: in transactions of this kind, there are two sorts of transactional objects--those who negotiate the deal and the objects of deal making. In the former club were the  "mediating" states--lumped together in a sort of quite interesting equality was the State of Israel and the vanguard organization Hamas. There is nothing wrong with this--but the "this" exists, and it might well reflect not just the contextual necessities of the moment but perhaps less consciously some quite deeply held culturally specific cognitive tropes (discussed Brief Reflections on Recent Messages of the Trump Administration to Religious Communities on Michaelmas and Yom Kippur). This is neither good nor bad and perhaps it is with the knowledge of this cognitive cage that the Israelis may act strategically. 

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2. Queen of the Damned. The Declaration is about a conflict and the role that each have taken upon themselves with respect to the ceasefire. Each observes the fundamental rule of vampires--they are not allowed in unless invited.  And, as has been the practice of the last cycle of violence and ceasefire, each has been invited by one of the objects on which they all work. The signatory powers have taken it upon themselves to "act on" belligerents. That produces both the normative and forms of transactions in peace--which focus on cessation of violence as its core, followed by a dialectic of transformation or of attrition (considered more abstractly in On the 2nd Anniversary of the 7 October Hamas-Led Gazan Attack on Israel). Yet it is precisely the first step that counts; the rest will run its own course, aided, to come extent by the facilitators who signed onto the Declaration  to end the current violence. . . and no more. The great tension in the Declaration, then, is between the transactional sensibilities of cease fire with the institutional imperatives of a stable managed "peace", whatever that means (see below).  

3. Incantations have power. The discursive tropes embedded in the rest of the Declaration reaffirms the ideals that have become powerful incantations. The power of the incantation lies in its repetition, and the repetition makes it possible to focus on the incantation itself. One incantation goes to methodology, the way in which they will "work on" the belligerent parties: "we will implement this agreement in a manner that ensures peace, security, stability, and opportunity for all peoples of the region, including both Palestinians and Israelis." Another is offered up as a sort of Credo with  undefined contextual application--as the parties see it: "that lasting peace will be one in which both Palestinians and Israelis can prosper with their fundamental human rights protected, their security guaranteed, and their dignity upheld." Yet another suggests the normative dialectic which serves as the glamour through which the incantation manifests their collective power: "meaningful progress emerges through cooperation and sustained dialogue, and that strengthening bonds among nations and peoples serves the enduring interests of regional and global peace and stability." This is not meant as a criticism; it is meant as a warning both about the power of words and the relationship of that power as a function of its ability to bridge context to abstraction. One can always throw words at a challenge; sometimes they have effect; and sometimes that effect is unintended. Incantation is both instrument and the instrument's object. Still,that one is capable of hammering a nail does not suggest that the repetition of this act will produce a house. It will, however produce a certain noise which for some may be the essence of the music of the spheres, a musica universalis of social relations in contested spaces. 

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4. Ambiguity as the Elixir of Power. Virtually all of the words and concepts, all of the ideals expressed--and so nicely expressed, in the document, are and have been highly contested and assume quite distinct meanings  depending on who is reading them against what germinal set of rationalizing conception premises. While incantation is power; that power once cantilated may simultaneously produce quite distinct visions among  the community of the incantation faithful. But that is an old story and the essence of the rituals of cease fire. Incantations are meant to be received in deeply personal ways, at the same time they provide the performative cover that makes cease fire possible and peace impossible. One paragraph of the Declaration stands out in this respect:

 We recognize the deep historical and spiritual significance of this region to the faith communities whose roots are intertwined with the land of the region — Christianity, Islam, and Judaism among them. Respect for these sacred connections and the protection of their heritage sites shall remain paramount in our commitment to peaceful coexistence.

5. Are you a Good Witch or a Bad Witch? There is nothing but good intention in the Declaration; that good intention, in turn, elaborates core values and the premises against which good and evil are identified, measured, and judged. The Declaration's now well worn incantation on radicalism provides an excellent illustration.

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We are united in our determination to dismantle extremism and radicalization in all its forms. No society can flourish when violence and racism is normalized, or when radical ideologies threaten the fabric of civil life. We commit to addressing the conditions that enable extremism and to promoting education, opportunity, and mutual respect as foundations for lasting peace.

All necessary, of course, but also packed with presumptions about the constitution of good and evil, one necessarily (and correctly) grounded in the protection of the values of the stats quo against radical transformation, irrespective of its political, social, or religious trajectories. Stability and the protection of the "now" have always been the central measure threat. The initial response, where such threat manifests as violence, is ceasefire. The longer term response is to eradicate the threat.  But it is precisely here that the incantations of ceasefire transaction lose their power. The commitment to "addressing conditions" and "promoting education, opportunity, and mutual respect as foundations" tell us as much about the failures of the contracting parties or order their own houses within which these radical elements find a home as it says anything about the  resolution of  conditions of radicalism itsef.  Perhaps, at the end of the day, the best one can hope for is enough stability so that violence is reduced to tolerable levels--an airstrike here, a massacre there can be absorbed and covered over with the necessary incantations, spiced with strategic recrimination. The mages of incantation appeared satisfied enough to tolerate that state of affairs for decades. Perhaps the peace referenced in the Declaration also implicitly includes a "manageable violence clause." 

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6. Tomorrow is Another Day. And it is hard to believe that they mean exactly what they say; the Declaration speaks to a particular vision: "We seek tolerance, dignity, and equal opportunity for every person, ensuring this region is a place where all can pursue their aspirations in peace, security, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, faith, or ethnicity." However that is hard to square with the determination to keep Palestine Jew free.  Again, the magic of incantation is that they say precisely what they mean but they do not mean precisely what they say.  None of that matters as long as the recitation of incantation produces the desired result--ceasefire. The Declaration, to its credit expresses not just consciousness of this irony but also a measure of frustration with the performative cage within which its repetition is likely: 

"We acknowledge that the Middle East cannot endure a persistent cycle of prolonged warfare, stalled negotiations, or the fragmentary, incomplete, or selective application of successfully negotiated terms.  The tragedies witnessed over the past two years must serve as an urgent reminder that future generations deserve better than the failures of the past."

Connected to this is the obligatory aspiration to "lasting peace", the avoidance of prolonged war,  and the usual suspects of the unattainable under current conditions the causes and transformation of which is only anemically encountered (though even that is a step forward): "tolerance, dignity, and equal opportunity for every person, ensuring this region is a place where all can pursue their aspirations in peace, security, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, faith, or ethnicity." But these are aspirations for tomorrow; the war has ended, it is time to return to one's home and plot within the parameters of new circumstances. In a world of half measures and an abhorrence of the end of things, this is the best that good can expect in the face of its nemesis, which is legion (Mark 5:8).

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7. The Commitments. Aspirations are good; the aspiration to cobble together a world  marked by an absence of organized violence even better. Nonetheless, the performative tropes  around these good intentions remain substantially unchanged from those of the last century. And they are marked by an unwillingness to devote as much attention to the normative disjunctions that sustain violence as they are to the transactional context in which violence can be reduced to a periodic and manageable level in the name of something greater--some sort of lasting peace beneath which conflict can take more acceptable forms and the destruction of one's enemies can be undertaken with less fuss. That was the "cold war" model--one can actually talk ones enemy to death--where talking is enhanced by strategic deployments of activity that transform violence into campaigns of destabilization, delegitimization, and micro-aggression that allows attrition to do its work. 

 "In this spirit, we welcome the progress achieved in establishing comprehensive and durable peace arrangements in the Gaza Strip, as well as the friendly and mutually beneficial relationship between Israel and its regional neighbors. We pledge to work collectively to implement and sustain this legacy, building institutional foundations upon which future generations may thrive together in peace."

Perhaps that is the best one can do in this stage of global historical development. This is a passage worthy of song. We have done worse. Indeed, none of this is to suggest that the Declaration or its sentiments and normative aspirations are wrong or wrongheaded, or that transactions in cease fire are foolish or bad.  Quite the opposite; yet it is also useful to approach all of this conjuring with a certain humility and a commitment to the attainable for as long as attainment is possible. For that all parties are to be congratulated.

 

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The "Merchant" Presidency Meets the State Official in Rare Earth Transactions, Socialist Modernization, and Market Access; What Can Go Wrong?

 

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It has become the habit of states to engineer some sort of drama on the eve of meeting between high officials. Perhaps this is derived from some sort of remnant of the instinct of animals that retains a place somewhere on the human psyche. So it appears that this pattern retains its vibrancy in the run up to the scheduled meeting between Presidents Trump and Xi.  

China dramatically expanded its rare earths export controls on Thursday, adding five new elements and extra scrutiny for semiconductor users as Beijing tightens control over the sector ahead of talks between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.
The world's largest rare earths producer also added dozens of pieces of refining technology to its control list and announced rules that will require compliance from foreign rare earth producers who use Chinese materials. (Reuters here)

Traditionally, American officials have tended to be somewhat measured in their responses--assuming that any sort of response is to be made other than through some sort of  performance for the press and the masses. This time, however, the response from the Americans was fairly swift, and entirely transactional. It's essence, in the manner of communications in this century, was not delivered from the press officers of institutional state organs, but through the Truth Social web site, and it appears above. In addition, the President "added that he had planned to meet Mr. Xi in two weeks at an international economic conference in South Korea, “but now there seems to be no reason to do so.” (New York Times here).

The issue has been brewing for some time and may be understood as part of a broader negotiation strategy that pairs the availability of rare earths with the availability  of chipmaking equipment, as China and the United States each seek to advance their own interests and cause damage to the interests of their rivals. . .

The Ministry of Commerce's announcements follow U.S. lawmakers' call on Tuesday for broader bans on the export of chipmaking equipment to China.
They expand controls Beijing announced in April that caused shortages around the world, before a series of deals with Europe and the U.S. eased the supply crunch.
"The White House and relevant agencies are closely assessing any impact from the new rules, which were announced without any notice and imposed in an apparent effort to exert control over the entire world's technology supply chains," a White House official told Reuters on Thursday.

This drama will play out over the course of the next several weeks. No doubt some sort of resolution will be cobbled together "at the last minute."  The only thing worth noting at this point is that scarcity ought to breed innovation. A failure to innovate around the need for rare earths, at this point, makes for foolish U.S. policy even as in the short term it engages in transactions to secure them to feed its  industries. And of course, the race for rare earth exploration will intensify in the meantime, the price of components that use rare earths will increase, and its effects on advances in tech based processing, including data consuming programming, remains unknown. 

"Lead, Locks & Ledgers: Operationalising Good Practices on the Management of Weapons and Materials of War by Private Security Companies" ICoCA Webinar, Oct 16,2025, 15:00 CET

 

 

I am delighted to pass along this notice from the  International Code of Conduct Association (ICoCA)

Operationalising Good Practices on the Management of Weapons and Materials of War by
Private Security Companies
Webinar, Oct 16,2025, 15:00 CET

Following September’s release of the ‘Guidance for Private Security Companies on the Management of Weapons and Materiel of War’ publication, ICoCA and Small Arms Survey are hosting a webinar to discuss what more is needed to help PSCs implement the guidance and explore some of the challenges faced by both companies and regulators charged with exercising effective control over their practices.

Join us as we delve into what good weapons and ammunition management looks like for companies and regulators and the risks companies run by not following good practice.
Date: 16 October 2025
Time: 15:00-16:15 CET
Location: Online

ICoCA's mission "is to promote responsible, transparent and accountable private security practices worldwide that respect human rights, international humanitarian law and the rule of law, safeguarding communities through robust oversight, collaboration and capacity building." 

Registration HERE 

 The Background and Guidance Section of ‘Guidance for Private Security Companies on the Management of Weapons and Materiel of War’  follows below.

Novos artigos publicados na RCA Vol 27 [New Articles Published Vol 27 Revista de Ciências da Administração]

 

 

Delighted to pass along information about a series of quite interesting essays just published in  Revista de Ciências da Administração, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Departamento de Administração, Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brasil. The articles are published in Portuguese and english.

The articles include 

Vera L. Cançado, Alinne Freitas Frade Drumond, Sistema de aprendizagem organizacional em uma empresa pública: validação de modelos da relação entre os estoques e fluxos de aprendizagem com o desempenho de negócio [Organizational learning systems in a public company: model validation of the relationship between stocks and flows of learning with business performance]

 Quezia Rosa, Ana Maria Machado Toaldo, Processo de estratégia de desenvolvimento de novos mercados: uma abordagem de capacidades em um contexto inter-regional [New market development strategy process: a capabilities approach in an interregional context]

 Guilherme Gustavo Holz Peroni, Priscilla de Oliveira Martins-Silva, Etarismo e suas implicações sob a ótica dos servidores públicos mais velhos [Ageism and its implications from the perspective of older public servants]

 Marisa Delfino, Ana Burcharth, Maria Elisa Brandão Bernardes, O papel do líder operacional para o desenvolvimento da ambidestria dinâmica em uma empresa tradicional: a AcerlorMittal Brasil [The Role of the Operational Leader for the Development of Dynamic Ambidexterity in a Traditional Company: AcerlorMittal Brasil]

 

 

On the 2nd Anniversary of the 7 October Hamas-Led Gazan Attack on Israel

 

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The events that produce anniversaries like this ought not to to have occurred. But they did. And so did its consequences. The last two years has seen a transformative deployment of resources and experimentation but all sorts of groups in the art of war, the power of mass management in liberal democracies, the power of migration (and sometimes simultaneous) as a positive and as an evil force, and the efforts to use the conflict to reshape the way in which war is understood, legalized, and its actors punished for failing to adhere to behavior expectations. Most importantly, the last two years has witnessed the evolution of a most extraordinary manifestation of a political and normative project, one the focus of which is to allocate risk in war, and a responsibility for its prevention, mitigation, and remediation. In the process it appears to have, at least where it concerns the Jes, to have produced an embrace of the notion that wars are effectively unwinnable, that ceasefire arrangements can serve as the avatars of peace, that peace itself is understood merely as a pause between periods of violence, and that the object of the international community is to manage these cycles and ensure that they remain contained to defined theaters of violence. The object of ceasefire, then, is not peace--understood as a long term goal with characteristics of a stable equilibrium state--but rather the cessation of violence as an unstable episode between stable states of violence, the management and containment of which can be rationalized through law.

One is reminded here--and in the Ukrainian situation--not of the rhetoric and idealization of peace post-1945 (the second effort at a war to end all wars, perhaps, in a century notable fpr its warring spirit), but rather the realities of ceasefire during the course of the Spanish Reconquista, but this time with two equally determined forces of reconquest, each backed by powerful outsiders who have, in a sense, as much at stake as their avatars of violence whose blood fuels these stable periods of war, with breaks for consolidation of victory, replenishment of combatants and manipulation of the larger forces of empire swirling around their project. These projects thrive on the art of attrition through narratives of peace that produce the cover of "ceasing" fire permitting regrouping both on the front and among all of the players who view the action, in the long term (measured in centuries) through the metrics of the4ir own obsessions with religious climax, ethno-pandering, and the lust to accelerate what is viewed as the determinism of human and other divine imperatives--plus it doesn't hurt to through several millennia of organized Jew hatred/tolerance, as a religious, social, economic, and cultural matter (something apparently quite easy to learn). And thus the map. The only question is whether one will, through iterations of cease fire achieve a Jew Free Palestine from the river to the sea or the establishment of a Jewish multi-cultural/ethnic/religious enclave, the operation of which remains a mystery. 

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Yet that is hardly the most interesting element of change bought with the blood of locals at the hands of those who can make at least some of them passive instruments of their ambitions and those who back them from afar for their own problematic ends. The “Reconquista” trope is hardly new; and its direction—just which “empire” is seeking to “reconquer” whom, remains contested. People seem to enjoy the delicious irony of the Jews as an imperial power; they appear to delight more on the facilitation of the expansion of some modern version of some sort of rump ethno-infused the dar al Islam in its more ancient forms of absorption. And it is a trope of derision—something one accuses one’s enemy of attempting in order to veil the identical effort of one’s own. The tactic requires both the control of the meaning of the term, its value (good or bad), and the ability to naturalize both within a target population especially in liberal democratic states.

Ceasefire is especially powerful in a global conceptual environment grounded in risk avoidance and organized within sequential blocks of transactions. From the conceptual vantage point of “transactional” reality, the ceasefire itself—and the mechanics for getting to ceasefire, perform the most vitally central element of a transactional mindset, or rather of a mindset the cognitive realities of which can only be understood or perceived as organized transactions in time that then produce ort set up other transactional situations. Peace is a collective state of being, ceasefire , in the sense of a conditional cessation of violence in return for objects and actions of interest to the parties within the risk constraints within which the transaction is negotiated. Once the transaction is accomplished, its sequential interlude state—reralized as a period marked by no major organized violence directed by and between the parties to the transaction—can be maintained until action is required to move to the next ceasefire transaction state, one intended to bring either of both parties closer to their longed for state of being.

But that is not the point—the point—that is the point of transformation—exists at that spot where the concept of peace merges with that of ceasefire. If the object of all efforts to halt violent organized hostility, then one acquires very little indeed that goes to the notion of peace as the stable state of pacific relations the dividing points of which are physical, economic, cultural, religious, political, and social borders. Or better put one acquires a specific set of results the objects of which might not be compatible with peace. First, one acquires a breathing space from violence. One can do with and in those spaces whatever one likes—from instilling hatred to using that space-time to better prepare for the next round of violence. The later, of course involves non-violent field operations—cyber ops, destabilization, and the construction of narratives and the values and premises underlying them that tends to paint one a saint and the other the manifestation of the legion of evil incarnate, and with that agit-prop. One insinuates oneself within the ruling apparatus of engaged peripheral states (especially where the political classes are not interested either in changing sides or the nature of their relationship with the enemy)—public intellectuals, academics, the legacy press but especially the young. Etc., Its tactics are well known, tolerated and even celebrated as somehow different and better than violence though they are meant to lead to the same conclusion. That, in turn, suggests that as long as one does not violate bodies, one can harm minds and perceptions to produce a victory without organized state based military violence, There will still be blood—but the bandits and “lone wolf” types that are easy enough to embed within ordinary patterns of social violence or made a part, particularly effective in transitioning societies, of the discourse of structural “badness” in a targeted society. All of this; and ceasefire too! That is the spirit of Reconquista. This is all a great pity. One ought to strive for the cessation of hostilities; one ought to aim for peace as the stable equilibrium state. Violence in the long run negatively impacts the human condition; the problem is that this is true but not always, and our ability to try to distinguish produces its own tragedy—as well as the shrug of the shoulder and the push for cessation—the glory of transaction when the manifestation of peace becomes impossible.

Nonetheless, the Reconquista spirit of ceasefire, in the longer run, may not be the most valuable transformation that the global engagement of this sort produces. The most interesting aspect of what the post 7 October world has produced for itself touches on some of the ways in which one allocates risk, liability, and behavior expectations in organized violent conflict. Much of this revolves around the concept of civilian and the responsibility for keeping civilian populations “safe.”

1. Who are civilians? The question has become an important one though, given the war of pictures in the recent conflicts in Ukraine and Israel, one that has been sidetracked by its own imagery. Since the middle 20th century the global order has stubbornly refused to confront the fundamental dialectic of violent conflict—the (a) apotheosis of the sanctity of civilians (either as assets that require preserving for exploitation by the victors or as those who have no direct interest in the conflict which their representatives and leaders wage) embedded in law and normative cognitive cages of social values, and at the same time (b) the equally impassioned apotheosis of total war and with it the notion that there are no civilians ion war (everyone is either a resistance fighter or a collaborator; everyone contributes to the war effort on the front and behind the lines of battle). While these are not necessarily incompatible, they do complicate the calculus of the “civilian” in violence. Legal systems, as always, solve the problems of the last large violent conflict and have little value for the way that social collectives evolve, including the evolution of the role of civilians in war, or against it.

And there is a bit of hypocrisy in the issue as well. For decades Hamas has taken the position that there are no civilians in its war against the Jews, apostates, heretics, and infidels occupying a territory that must be purified of their contamination. Party of the problem, for decades, has been the racism and ethno-chauvinism of the developed States eager to treat this as the acting out of infants who merely need education (capacity building) in order to be civilized. The error has been compounded when, taking Hamas at its conceptual word, the Israeli’s treat civilians as combatants instrumental in the Hamas war effort—from hiding hostages to serving as human shields—and are treated as uncivilized barbarians and fundamental law breakers for assuming the impossible—that a large civilian population can be complicit in the actions of the military wing of their military, ort to put it differently, that the difference between civilian and combatant becomes irreconcilable with the definitions created in and as law of another era. In thagt context, law ceases to be a n expression in command form of a norm and instead assumers its role, nicely evidenced since 7 October, ad an instrument in the arsenal of those whose preference is either ceasefire by any means, or to in aid of Hamas.

2. Counting civilians? 

Accounting for the dead has become a political enterprise in number of respects.

First, it serves to aid the construction of narratives of civilian death barbarity. It becomes a ritualized drumbeat in the press organs the sympathies of which appear to have become fairly clear. Numbers have played an essential role in the management of popular opinion in war since the 19th century. It has become increasingly a tool of the propaganda and destabilization wings of states over the last century. And it appear to be quite effective.

Second, its labeling, untested and certainly not reviewed, serves to launder causality categories to aid in the propaganda wars. This returns us first to the “who is a combatant/who is a civilian” issue. But it does more, it provides a space within which traditional combatants can be added to the figures of the dead to buttress the work of the propaganda department. With no accountability and a desperate willingness to believe “numbers” as having some sort of unalterable “truth” the value of such counting could become immense.

Third, it empowers the “counters,” in this case the Hamas Health Ministry whose chief competence appears to be in counting he dead almost in real time. The counting then serves other purposes, principally, it might seem, to show solidarity with one side and complicity in delegitimating the other. All of this is fair in war. Yuet it is the cluelessness of those who appear to be reporting rather than facilitating the propaganda efforts of one or another side that has become the hallmark of systems of accounting, the legitimacy of which will remain clouded in strategic considerations.

Fourth, counting is selective. One counts civilians, especially children and women, of course—though there is again a hypocrisy treating women both as worthy of serving combat and at the same time as delicate gender based creatures incapable of action and needy of additional protection. That is another dialectic that remains to be considered other than as a strategically useful tool drawing on old prejudices to good effect for Hamas. One does not count others: summary execution of collaborators; LGBTQ+ community members; civilians performing work for combatants, corruption chains for aid and relief. One could go on But that’s the point.

3. Accounting for civilians?

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Human shields had tended to be considered a negative impact on civilians in times of violent conflict. That says little, though, about who ought to bear responsibility for their death and injury in combat. Putting aside the question of facilitation, engagement and complicity that complicates the status, “civilian,” one still must consider the question of who is to be held accountable for their deaths ort injury. For most of the world the answer is horribly mindless: while the use of civilians as human shields is to be deplored, the crime of being deplorable is not actionable in law, though one may no longer be invited to important dinners, ort dinners with important people. On the other hand, those who seek to engage combatants through human shield bear the full responsibility for the deaths of those shields, irrespective of the lengths to which they seek to minimize harm. One ought to be horrified by the thoughtlessness with which this all to easy approach has been embraced by elites in and out of the conflict.

The ease with which states have conceded a right to use human shields by shifting responsibility for their casualty to those seeking to engage the forces that hide behind (or beneath or around) them suggest either a mindlessness that is perplexing, or an agenda that dare not speak its name. Otherwise it seems clear that all of the great powers ought to be building their military installations beneath Churches, cities and other centers of population or culture. But surely that cannot be so. And yet here we are. Perhaps Secretary of State Marco Rubio was right to suggest that there ought to be a prosecution for genocide, but that it is Hamas that ought to stand accused. Global elites are not in a mood for that sort of discussion.

Of course all of this is wrongheaded. People who know better know that the Jews are committing genocide; that the Jews are responsible for aid not reaching civilians, that UN institutions haver not been corrupted and infiltrated by combatant operatives, that the Jews have no business protecting other religious minorities in the region, that they have misbehaved and require punishment for becoming the monsters that murdered most of them in the 1940s in Europe and then the other monsters who made life “uncomfortable” for the remnant that survived, etc. Perhaps it is best if Jews learned to behave themselves, and thus well behaved, could remain in polite society and under the watchful eyes of others, permitted to participate in political, economic, social and cultural life. Perhaps they also ought to pay some sort of annoyance tax as well for the effort. Jews as the always movable perpetual dhimmis would make it easier to produce e a Jew free Israel-Judea-Palestine. Otherwise, it appears, that the lesson of 7 October is clear—the periodic sacrifice of the Jew, heretic, infidel, apostate is the necessary price for a Jewish population insistent on inhabiting Israel.

These, indeed, might be thoughts that might cross the minds of those mourning the events of 7 October.Yet none of this matters.  Popular positions have hardened. The time for conceptual debates has passed. The success of the propaganda wars has produced a victory that diminishes whatever was accomplished on the ground. Israel will be punished, and with them the Jews. Israel itself has appeared to have produced something of an astonishing transformation in the status of the Jew in global society; the success of that transformation might well be measured by the length of the indictments of the State in the ICC. That itself has caused In the process the more important task of sorting between excess and tragedy will likely be lost. But that appears to be the nature of war; and of ceasefire.  And that is the greater pity.