Ethics news:
9 March 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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Armchair warrior
One of the big drawbacks of ethical endeavour is that it can sometimes seem too hearty for its own good. Projects are traditionally heavy on physical input - tilling the land to grow sustainable legumes, herding rare-breed sheep in the rain or protesting by pulling up fields of GM crops in the dead of night. The pioneer spirit required could, therefore, deter those who are low on energy reserves, or even indolent by nature, from giving a stuff. What's needed is a less labour-intensive approach to reforming and nurturing our wounded planet and its peoples. Enter slacktivism, where physical output and effort is almost inversely proportional to depth of concern ...
The Observer - 6 March 2005
The profit motive is pure enough
If the Australian economy goes into recession, not only will it end our long economic boom, it will also be the end for many corporate social responsibility programs, with companies slashing or eliminating them to reduce costs. That will confirm what a weak and ineffective concept it is. People concerned about environmental and social sustainability would be well served by the death of CSR. It needs to be replaced by a far more market-focused approach, a more Darwinian sustainability that sees environmental and social trends as opportunities for growth and competitive advantage. CSR, despite its emotional appeal, is and always was a bad idea ...
The Australian - 24 February 2005
Humiliation on film
The Iraqi abuse photos which led to the conviction of two British soldiers were an extreme example of what some believe to be a growing trend. Staff at a Staffordshire photographic shop were the first to see the pictures which were later broadcast around the world. One picture showed Lance Corporal Darren Larkin, dressed only in boxer shorts and flip-flops, standing on top of a distressed Iraqi. Another showed an Iraqi suspended from the prongs of a forklift truck. In another, two prisoners were forced to simulate a sex act, putting their thumbs up for the camera as they did so. Tony Blair said the photos were "shocking and appalling". But weren't they also strangely familiar? ...
BBC News - 26 February 2005
Answer to TV violence: turn it off
Violent games provoke children" thundered a recent headline, calculated, no doubt, to send a chill up the spine of any parent. Quoting an article in the latest issue of the British medical journal The Lancet, The Weekend Australian reported that "there is consistent evidence of an association between younger children watching media violence and showing more aggressive play and behaviour". At first glance, this looked like a re-run of the conclusion drawn from an infamous, but influential, US experiment conducted in the early 1960s that went roughly like this: one group of children was shown a film in which children were seen punching an inflatable doll ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 5 March 2005
An acceptable career?
These days anyone can set up a website and become a porn star. With the internet fundamentally changing the industry, could pornography be becoming mainstream? Pornography is one of the world's most profitable industries. In the UK alone it is estimated to be worth £1bn, says the Adult Industry Trade Association. It even has its own trade show which attracts more visitors than the Ideal Home Exhibition, according to its organisers. It used to conjure up images of backstreet sex shops and dirty, old men, but the rise of new technology has meant anyone can set up a website and - should they so desire - become a porn star. So is pornography becoming an acceptable career option? ...
BBC News - 1 March 2005
A war of words
We should not ask whether the Iraq invasion was 'legal' - we should ask whether it was ‘good’. Last week's jilbab decision left me wondering whether the law was always this important. Wasn't there a time when schools could take decisions about the uniforms their pupils should wear without a judge having the final say? I see the advantages of greater legal protection for the individual and I also see the problems. And one of the dangers is that we may become reliant on legal processes to settle for us the question of what is right and what is wrong when, in reality, morality can neither begin nor end with the law ...
The Observer - 6 March 2005
The demands of democracy
We have to hang on to the central tenets of our democratic tradition. Time certainly gets away. Almost two years have passed since Saddam Hussein surrendered control of Iraq. In early 2003, Saddam's Baath Party ruled the country through terror, intimidation and patronage. Now, Iraq is occupied by foreign troops but it has already held a national election. It can still be a deadly place but the terror is now carried out by insurgents. Things have changed considerably in Iraq. But they have changed hardly at all in Australia. Here, we continue to have the same argument about Iraq we were having in March 2003 ...
The Age - 7 March 2005
'We are living in a state of constant fear'
As the violence in Iraq continues, the number of people traumatised by the conflict grows. Yet little or no psychiatric treatment is available to them - and what there is can be terrifyingly crude. Hafid al-Qadhi is one of the most precarious places in the new Baghdad. Gangs, brothels and piles of rubbish fill its dark, unelectrified alleys, where kids play around lakes of green sewage. It has been known for decades as the crazies' neighbourhood, not only for the eccentricities of its inhabitants, but also because since the late 50s it has been home to the country's most celebrated psychiatrists ...
The Guardian - 2 March 2005
Creationism, pluralism and the compromising of science
The rise of creationism in the USA is taken as evidence that fundamentalist Christianity has become a powerful force in society. But scepticism towards science does not just come from traditional Christianity. Liberal relativism has been important in creating a climate in which creationism is tolerated. Many Americans, not just scientists, now worry that the teaching of biology will be replaced by religious indoctrination. The spread of fundamentalist Christianity is seen by many to be a force for a renewed far right political agenda, and in particular to be responsible for the election victory of George W Bush ...
Spiked-Online - 1 March 2005
Seeing beyond blind faith to a dire revelation
Bill Moyers, the founding director of Public Affairs Television in Washington, retired three months ago, one of the United States' most honoured journalists. Harvard Medical School that same month named him the recipient of its fourth annual Global Environmental Citizen Award. Moyers's acceptance speech should terrify you. If not you deserve everything you get, even if the rest of us don't. Here is an edited version. "One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 9 March 2005
If terminations are really murder, there should be no abortion debate
Anti-abortion campaigners do not follow the logic of their frequent references to child killing. By allowing abortion to remain on the Medicare schedule, the Federal Government is offering to "pay you a subsidy to have your child killed by abortion", said Right to Life Australia's Margaret Tighe last month. To Tighe, an abortion is not a medical procedure to end an unwanted pregnancy; it is a procedure in which a child is killed. In light of this view, it is astounding that Tighe is worried about a triviality like funding. If something is killing children, shouldn't the priority be to stop it, regardless of how it is being paid for? ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 9 March 2005
Adoption vs abortion: they both involve pain
The bitter choice facing some women is one Tony Abbott can't understand. In November last year, Health Minister Tony Abbott was reported as saying: "For anyone who can't bring up a child, adoption is a very reasonable alternative. It's not pain free. It isn't only the absence, it's the prolonged feelings of guilt ... but I suspect that it is not the same as the grief of abortion." Perhaps a statement like this is to be expected from a man who has become one of Australia's fiercest supporters of adoption and strongest critics of abortion. But how do you weigh up the pain of adoption against the pain of abortion? Is it even possible? Is there a hierarchy of suffering? ...
The Age - 2 March 2005
It will take all our energy to stand still
Bush's America is waging a global battle against women's rights. For all George Bush's courting of Europe, when it comes to women's reproductive rights he is closer to Iran and Syria than the EU. In 1995, representatives from 189 countries met in Beijing and agreed a major programme on women's equality and human rights - the Beijing platform for action. This statement was ambitious, and the UN commission on the status of women is currently meeting in New York to review its progress over the past decade. The meeting was to publish a statement reaffirming international support for the platform for action. But the US has refused to support it unless it is amended to say that the platform does not create any new human rights or the right to abortion ...
The Guardian - 8 March 2005
A smarter way to fight for Muslim women
The push for change must come from within the Muslim world. On occasions such as International Women's Day, which was marked around the world yesterday, the Muslim world never escapes negative attention. Nor should it. As a Muslim who is deeply troubled by the kinds of abuses that women infamously endure in some parts of the Muslim world, I think it would be profoundly immoral to ignore such injustice. It should be unapologetically confronted. Reform is badly needed. To this end, it is vital that any discourse seeking to initiate change in the Muslim world has traction among mainstream Muslims. It is otherwise doomed to irrelevance ...
The Age - 9 March 2005
Victim of slight royal treatment
George Orwell had it only half right. It's not just some animals that are more equal than others. It's royalty too – as last week's events surely demonstrate. Royal one visits Australia: goes yacht racing with her husband, attends glitzy balls in designer outfits and is fawned over by even the most hard-core republicans. Royal two visits Australia: goes to see victims of the Bali bombings, addresses indigenous issues and is lambasted by parliamentarians for wasting taxpayers' money. Of course, there are important differences between Princess Mary of Denmark and the heir to the British – and Australian – throne. As The Sydney Morning Herald so succinctly put it, one is young and beautiful and the other is not ...
The Australian - 7 March 2005
Bumper crop of drug overdose scares misses the real story
With the help of the internet, users are learning about what they are taking, with beneficial results. If media reports this week are to be believed, the war on drugs is far from won. Our children are doomed to a lifetime of schizophrenia because of all the marijuana they're smoking in primary school. Heroin use is down, only to be replaced by other life-threatening drugs. And the manufacture and consumption of amphetamines is out of control. Scary stuff. "The Federal Government should be 'seriously concerned' about the abuse of party drugs, including the potentially lethal GHB, as heroin dries up and new drugs gain popularity," a report in the Herald told us ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 9 March 2005
The Supreme Court strikes down the death penalty for juvenile offenders: a morally good result, supported by less-than-convincing legal reasoning
This week, in Roper v. Simmons, the Supreme Court declared the death penalty for juvenile offenders to be unconstitutional. In so doing, the Supreme Court brought the United States into line with every other nation in the world: Not a single other nation actively countenances the juvenile death penalty. Surely, that is a result to be applauded. Yet Justice Anthony Kennedy's bare 5-4 majority opinion serves as a sobering reminder that laudable results do not always coincide with a convincing jurisprudence. The Court's result may be laudable, but its reasoning fails to persuade ...
Findlaw - 3 March 2005
Fame in the frame as the moral majority rejoices
America has a passion for putting celebrities on trial. And as Michael Jackson could soon discover, the bigger they come, the harder they fall. The 46-year-old pop star, facing child molestation charges in Santa Maria, California, meets all the criteria for putting fame in the frame. He is rich, self-made, and controversial. And, like a disproportionate number of defendants in the US criminal justice system, he is black. Celebrity trials meet a range of needs. They have become an extension of the American showbiz, entertainment and sports industries which first raise individuals to dizzying prominence ...
The Guardian - 4 March 2005
Why I won't be giving my mother Fairtrade flowers
Ethical consumers shouldn't bear the cost of decent labour rights. It ought to have been a joyous announcement for someone like me who buys Fairtrade coffee and uses the swirly Fairtrade logo on Green and Black's chocolate bars to justify regular indulgence. At last Tesco was introducing a Fairtrade rose that would remove the guilt from Mother's Day. The guilt dates back to revelations about shocking conditions in the cut flower industry in Africa and Latin America - workers' health ruined by pesticides on intensive farms, women forced to stand in cold packing sheds snipping blooms for up to 18 hours at a time to meet western demand in peak periods, when everyone must have the exactly the same floral tribute on exactly the same day ...
The Guardian - 5 March 2005
Breast- and bottle-feeding: is 'better' always best?
Have you ever wondered what the phrase 'informed choice' means? Get pregnant, and you'll soon find out. One of the many leaflets that I was given at the antenatal clinic, around this time last year, deals with the question: 'Feeding your baby - breast or bottle?' 'This leaflet is based on research to help you make your own choice', it states at the top of page one. Further down, it clarifies: 'This is one of a series of leaflets designed to help you make the right choices for you and your baby.' But what is the choice? 'Breast milk is the best food for babies. For a long time people thought bottle feeding was a safe alternative ...
Spiked-Online - 1 March 2005
'I'm beautiful and HIV positive'
In the changing rooms behind the stage, 12 women are busy applying make-up and checking their lavish hair-dos. They are preparing for a beauty contest - only this is a beauty contest like no other. Because there is a lot more to the women taking part than meets the eye. They are all HIV-positive. And they will be judged primarily on their courage and spirit - qualities as invisible as the disease which is weakening their bodies. It is Botswana's third "Miss HIV Stigma Free" competition. It is held at a glamorous resort on the edge of the capital, Gaborone, and hundreds of enthusiastic people have come to watch ...
BBC New - 3 March 2005