Ethics news:
9 February 2005
Ethics News is regularly updated with links and introductions to ethics-related news stories gathered from all over the web. Discuss the ethical issues raised by these stories in our Ethics Forum by clicking on the 'discuss' links.
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This is the first Ethics in the News for 2005.
Prince Harry and Auschwitz horror
If we forget Auschwitz, there's every chance we will also forget its lesson. Not long ago, Prince Harry - an accident away from the British throne - showed up at a costume party dressed as a Nazi. We know this because someone took a picture that made it into the English tabloids - a diversion for a day or two before the papers returned to more serious matters such as the sexual affairs of cabinet ministers. But they should have stuck with the Harry story. The dim prince is truly a child of the new century. Nothing that happened in the past century seems to have affected him. The 60th anniversary of the last century's most searing event, the liberation of Auschwitz, has just passed ...
The Age - 1 February 2005
Hypothesis as thought crime
Are women worse at maths than men? An American professor gives his view on the dispute engulfing Harvard. Harvard University, the oldest in the USA and the wealthiest in the world, thinks very well of itself. Within its precincts, to speak of 'the President' is to speak of the potentate who rules from Massachusetts Hall, not the upstart jackass, whoever it may be, who lives in exile at the White House. In recent decades, however, Harvard has bestowed the office on a succession of rather colourless fellows; earnest, conscientious, and ostentatiously fair-minded, to be sure, but deeply averse to controversy and far too pallid to set the world of intellectual dispute afire when they spoke out ...
Spiked-Online - 27 January 2005
Dresden: don't apologise - understand
The debate surrounding the sixtieth anniversary of the firestorming of Dresden shows how sober analysis of history is being distorted by angst about the world today. On the night of 13 February 1945, 700 Royal Air Force bombers, directed by Air Marshall Arthur 'Bomber' Harris, dropped 2,690 tonnes of incendiaries and high explosives on the capital of Saxony. In a few short hours, at least 35,000 civilians lost their lives. Dresden's inferno was visible over 100 miles, and the city's flames were not put out for a week. Apart from the Allied raids on Hamburg in 1943, in which an estimated 22,500 women, 17,100 men and 5,400 children died, Dresden was a firestorm unparalleled in the whole European theatre of the Second World War ...
Spiked-Online - 8 February 2005
Are bloggers journalists? Do they deserve press protections?
An Apple lawsuit against the operators of fan websites stirs debate on whether bloggers can claim legal protections. In the small universe of powerful bloggers, Joshua Micah Marshall and John Hinderaker are separated by 900 miles and an even wider political divide. Mr Marshall leans to the left from Washington DC, while Mr Hinderaker, a Minneapolis attorney, sits firmly in the conservative camp. But the two men do share something in common: No one is really sure what to think of them. Are they journalists with an obligation to check facts, run corrections, and disclose conflicts of interest? Or are they ordinary opinion-slingers, like barbers or bartenders, with no special responsibilities - or rights? ...
Christian Science Monitor - 2 February 2005
Seeing is no longer believing
Manipulating digital images has never been easier or faster. But there's a fine line between 'improving' a photo and altering it. The advertisement shows a photo of a smiling couple. Then right next to it sits the same photo, but this time the man is missing. "We can fix your photographs to match your life" reads the sign in the framing store. Airbrushing individuals out of your life is not new. Joseph Stalin routinely erased personae non gratae from official photographs. As his dictatorship progressed, early communist comrades gradually disappeared to the point where Stalin's entourage started to look quite sparse at times ...
Christian Science Monitor - 2 February 2005
Disaster aid furthers fears of proselytizing
or countries with thousands left homeless and bereft by the tsunami, the outpouring of help from around the world is a godsend. Yet in some nations, the growing presence of faith-based agencies dispensing the aid is posing another challenge - stirring tensions already simmering around evangelism and anti-Christian violence. In Sri Lanka, for example, prior to the tsunami, two anti-conversion bills that would make "unethical conversions" illegal were introduced into parliament. Reacting to a perceived increase in Christian proselytizing, the bill proposed by a militant Buddhist party would impose fines and five to seven years imprisonment for anyone who gives material aid to someone of another faith ...
Christian Science Monitor - 31 January 2005
To right past wrongs, Spaniards seek present change
It was painful for Ana Viéitez Gómez to read the file the Spanish dictatorship had kept on her father. In a single folder, she says, she saw "the destruction of a life." There were letters from the mayor, the police, even the local priest, denouncing him as a communist, an anarchist, and a mason. Sentenced to life imprisonment, Ms. Viéitez's father, a schoolteacher, escaped Spain after several years in jail for exile in Mexico where, she says, he died at age 46, a broken man. Viéitez's father was denounced in 1937 - while Spain was mired in civil war - but it wasn't until last year that his daughter finally saw his file ...
Christian Science Monitor - 2 February 2005
The perils of porn
As the internet boosts the use of pornography, there are fears that for some it can become a dangerous addiction. Porn is everywhere. While the excesses of child pornography grab headlines, images of sex, nudity and related activity are organically linked to many people's sexual lives. Porn resides most famously on the internet, but has seeped throughout society - it sells in service stations, infiltrates mainstream advertising and profits stock exchange-listed companies. But contradictory evidence about porn's impact confuses the passionate debate for and against it. And as the internet boosts supply, an apparently growing minority of users suffers what some experts call porn addiction ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 3 February 2005
A plague upon these misguided allegations of literary cribbing
Lot of plagiarism about this week. The astrologer and author of Single White E-mail, Jessica Adams, had to face an allegation of ripping off Agatha Christie. If so, Adams hardly sought to profit from her alleged crime. She published her story in that highly regarded literary organ and well known stepping stone to the Booker Prize and Hollywood adaptation, The Big Issue. In the interests of balanced and insightful reporting, let me tell you I've read neither Adams's tale The Circle nor the one she allegedly cribbed, Christie's The Idol House of Astarte, but I do know this: for writers, throwing accusations of plagiarism around is the same as accusations of wife-beating and child molestation for everyone else ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 5 February 2005
Poor ambitions for the world
Despite its bold name, the new celebrity campaign won't Make Poverty History. There can be few more worthwhile goals for humanity than to make poverty history. The problem with the Make Poverty History campaign, recently launched by many charities, religious organisations and celebrities, is that it does not live up to its name. Judging by its publicly stated aims, it would be more accurate to call the campaign: 'Slightly alleviate the most extreme aspects of poverty over the very long-term, maybe.' Make Poverty History aims to ensure that the Millennium Development Goals, officially endorsed by every member of the United Nations in 2000, are met ...
Spiked-Online - 3 February 2005
Healthier in lungs, poorer in spirit
A non-smoking New Yorker misses the illicit, adult camaraderie of smoke-filled bars. Eating in a Manhattan midtown restaurant the other night, I happened to glance over at the bar area. People were perched on bar stools, leaning into each other's ears, making conversation; you could hear the pretty bartender's husky laugh halfway to the kitchen. I flashed on to a feeling direct from my teenage years - a longing to be part of that group of cool grownups connected to each other by faint but unmistakable sexual electricity. But then I realised that something was missing: smoke ...
Spiked-Online - 1 February 2005
How we could have a real abortion debate
Those inciting this "debate" aren't asking enough questions. In the past year, public debate on abortion has followed an interesting trajectory: every few months it bursts onto the scene, there's outrage from both sides, and then, as quickly as it appears, it loses momentum and fizzles out. It is a debate that is going nowhere, despite the best efforts of those - mostly at its conservative end - who keep resuscitating it. There are a number of reasons for this. One is the paucity of information on abortion in Australia that would help us understand what is going on and what, if anything, we ought to do about it ...
The Age - 4 February 2005
The silence of the feminists
Why don't left-leaning Western women speak up about abuses in the Islamic world? 'They'd blanch at foot binding, but for stiletto-smitten New Yorkers, surgical reshaping makes perfect sense," said an introduction to a story in Good Weekend last week. The story was about women in New York paying $A8000 to have their second toes shortened to make them look better in open-toed stiletto shoes. Some American women might have more money than sense, but what they are doing should not be compared to the ancient Chinese practice of foot binding, in which the feet of little girls were bound backwards so tightly that they could barely hobble, and resulted in grotesquely deformed, agonisingly painful feet for life - all in the cause of the sexual gratification of men ...
The Age - 4 February 2005
Are the sexes innately different?
Unless you are politically correct, steer clear of Harvard. Did you know that the male green spawn worm is 200,000 times smaller than its female counterpart? And that this little bloke spends his life inside a female spawn worm's reproductive tract fertilising eggs by regurgitating sperm through his tiny mouth? Did you know that in fruit flies the same genes that turn the males into Don Juans would turn the females into wallflowers? Or conversely, the gene that turns females into sex magnets would make males sexual losers? That this information is now common knowledge, at least to the readers of The New York Times and viewers of NBC's Today program, is all down to Larry Summers, the president of Harvard, America's oldest and most prestigious university ...
The Age - 3 February 2005
Terminating debate snubs democracy
Religious leaders and politicians have a perfect right to discuss abortion. There is a twist to the familiar debate in Western societies about what belongs to Caesar and what is the preserve of God. Many religious leaders have become involved in discussions about the temporal order - even though it has been claimed by some that they should focus on matters spiritual. But now there is an emerging view that religious leaders should not become involved in questions of morality if the issue under discussion is abortion. Last week interest was raised about a meeting of religious leaders - Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and Hindus - in Sydney. The discussion was attended by some federal politicians ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 8 February 2005
The most precious commodity
We can increase the sum of human happiness - but as a side effect of other pursuits, not an end in itself. Here comes Jeremy Bentham echoing down the ages: "The best public policy is that which produces the greatest happiness." The line is actually from a clever new book, Happiness: Lessons From a New Science, in which the economist Richard Layard argues that public policy should be devoted to increasing happiness rather than wealth or success. He is far from the only person to be exploring this territory. In another new book on the subject, Making Happy People, Paul Martin discusses how we can bring up our children to be happy, and why we should. "Happiness is arguably the most important thing in life" ...
The Guardian - 8 February 2005
Rau is only an extreme example: our prisons are full of the mentally ill
Services to support people with psychoses have been shamefully neglected. Over the past few days the tragic story of Cornelia Rau has unfolded to an increasingly incredulous public. How is it that for the past 10 months she has been held in prison and in a detention centre when her mental distress was so apparent to her fellow detainees and the Aboriginal people who discovered her? Has the mental health system let her and her family down? This case is of particular interest for me. Eight years ago my daughter Isabella, now 33, was diagnosed with schizophrenia after many years of bizarre behaviour. Not only has her illness had a major impact on her life, but it has also affected those who love her ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 9 February 2005
More than a touch of evil
Portraying the mind of a murderer takes more than the E-word. Predatory killers often do far more than commit murder. Some have lured their victims into home-made chambers for prolonged torture. Others have exotic tastes - for vivisection, sexual humiliation, burning. Many perform their grisly rituals as much for pleasure as for any other reason. A few forensic scientists have begun to think of these people as not merely disturbed but "evil". Evil in that their deliberate, habitual savagery defies any psychological explanation or attempt at treatment. Most psychiatrists avoid the word evil, saying its use would precipitate a dangerous slide from clinical to moral judgement that could put people on death row unnecessarily and obscure the understanding of violent criminals ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 9 February 2005
The unlikely volunteers
The hundreds of millions of pounds donated to the tsunami appeal have highlighted the need for a new and unlikely sort of aid worker. Step up the emergency accountant. They don't exactly spring to mind when considering who should be first on the ground in a disaster zone. But with charities sitting on a mountain of cash given in response to the tsunami appeal, the scramble is now on for perhaps the most unlikely subspecies of aid worker: accountants. "It sounds crazy - there's a huge disaster and we send out an assessment team of emergency specialists: perhaps a nutritionist, a logistician... and an accountant," says Dominic Nutt, of Christian Aid.The charity is looking for emergency accountants ...
BBC News - 8 February 2005
Climate change right for another look at Kyoto
The world should make no mistake: in 2005, global warming is a real and present weapon of mass destruction. Its current effects – along with frightening predictions of its future impact – demand immediate action, both at home and internationally. Recently, I wrote to the Prime Minister, Premiers and chief ministers seeking a special meeting of the Council of Australian Governments. The sole topic on the agenda should be the drawing up of a comprehensive national response to the threat posed today by climate change. Why the urgency? A series of international reports has recently revealed that the metabolism of the world's economy is on a collision course with the metabolism of our planet ...
The Australian - 9 February 2005
It takes two to create a fetus, so share the pain, guys
There are a number of problems with the so-called debate about abortion. The first is that anti-abortionists are more interested in ranting than actually reducing terminations. Eliminate the hysteria and abortion could be handled as just another preventable surgical procedure. It would be on par with treatments for lung cancer and melanoma, and reducible via public health programs and people's natural desire to avoid having icy surgical instruments jabbed up their privates. But pro-lifers aren't interested in any of this rationality. Instead, they offer the bizarre "solution" of abstinence outside of marriage ...
The Australian - 9 February 2005
You've got to draw the line somewhere
Racist pundits, reckless royals and overzealous admen: all stand accused of 'going too far'. But who's deciding where the boundaries of taste and decency lie? "I like Rodney's style as a pundit, but he has overstepped the mark by a long way," said an unnamed football fan outside the BBC, joining the chorus of head-shaking that followed Rodney Marsh's play on the words "tsunami" and "Toon Army" and cost him his six-figure job at Sky Sports. "The girls are used to men coming on to them," said the manager of a lap-dancing club in Mayfair, about an incident when a drunken Formula One driver exposed himself to a pair of pole-dancers, "but Raikkonen overstepped the mark" ...
The Independent - 8 February 2005