Ethics news:
27 April 2005
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Lest we forget the ultimate price of warfare
We should remember the civilian toll of war and the danger of militarism, writes Michael Leunig. We live in a national culture that glamorises soldiers, yet the sight of a military uniform with its obvious connotations of morbidity and violence provokes in me the question: "What sort of person is attracted to the killing professions?" Army recruiting advertisements beg the same question. The raising of this query in public will bring hostile responses as well as the inevitable, "If it wasn't for soldiers you wouldn't have the liberty to ask that question", as if I owe my ration of happiness, sanity or spiritual health to militarism ...
The Age - 23 April 2005
Soldiers, not pacifists, gave us freedom
I was once a soldier. In battle, I fired only at armed enemies who were doing their best to kill me. I never saw, nor heard of any acts of murder, rape or looting by any of my countrymen. And I would never have tolerated such barbarous behaviour had it ever come to my knowledge. I volunteered to serve in a combat unit. When I was deemed to have sufficient leadership potential to warrant training as an officer, I stepped forward to meet the challenge. But no honour could conceivably adhere to these personal decisions in the eyes of Age cartoonist Michael Leunig ...
The Age - 26 April 2005
War crimes: have we learned anything?
You can't seem to turn the television news on at present without seeing black-and-white pictures of past horrors - Buchenwald last week, Belsen this, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki still to come in August. There was a time when we thought that killing on an industrial scale might be a thing of the past; but, depressingly, the pictures are no longer just in black and white nowadays. It may be 32 years since General Augusto Pinochet's men began killing left-wingers in Chile, and 30 since the Khmer Rouge arrived in Phnom Penh to force the entire population out into the killing fields. But it's only 11 years since Rwanda ...
BBC News - 20 April 2005
Medalling with our long history of sacrifice
Families of those affected by the Sea King tragedy need help, not medals. It was, in some eyes at least, an acutely embarrassing moment. There was the President of Indonesia placing on the coffins of nine dead Australian service personnel one of his nation's highest civilian awards, the Medal of Honour for Service to Society. The Australian Governor-General, by his side, placed a mere sprig of wattle, a traditional Australian gesture of remembrance. To some Australians, there appeared to be something shameful about this. Was this the correct way to honour our dead, killed in the line of duty? ...
The Age - 14 April 2005
Truth: last casualty of Japan's war
Japan is still struggling to face up to the truth and consequences of its brutal role in World War II. I remember visiting Berlin's Reichstag in the days when the city was still divided. Back then, 20 years ago, one floor of the building served as a Holocaust museum. The people of West Germany could make no more evocative statement than to turn over this edifice of Prussian power to a commemorative for the millions who died in concentration camps. Even so, it was awkward and uncomfortable to watch a middle-aged German woman collapse in tears as she confronted some of history's most gruesome images ...
The Age - 25 April 2005
What is relativism?
Shortly before he was elected pope, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger delivered a withering denunciation of relativism. For those unfamiliar with even the blunter points of philosophy, what was he driving at? Moral relativism is the idea that moral principles have no objective standard, so states its dictionary definition. In its extreme, the view that there are no hard and fast rules on what is right and wrong, on which values are set and should be fought for. It is in contrast to absolutism, that there is one truth. elativism is "Different opinions, no one authority, and as many 'truths' as there are people or societies or cultures advancing different ways of doing things," says Simon Blackburn ...
BBC News - 20 April 2005
The papacy in a post-political world
How the Pope became an all-purpose Ethical Prince of international relations. Even before the ascent of Pope Benedict XVI to the throne of St Peter, commentators observed that any new Pope would find it difficult to live up to the legacy of his predecessor. Judging by the ostentatious global grief that attended the last Pope's funeral, John Paul II has come to personify a new model of global leadership. Leftist commentators were quick to flag up John Paul's authoritarianism, by pointing out how his campaign against world communism led to the suppression of liberation theology in Latin America and the rolling back of the liberal legacy of the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s ...
Spiked-Online - 20 April 2005
Holier than thou
In the age of fame and media scrutiny the new Pope must be without sin. It's an article of faith in the media that John Paul II died as the most famous pope there had ever been. But a fresher cause for reflection is that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, at the moment of appointment, was already more recognisable than any previous new pontiff. Usually, the new man is largely unknown to both the media and the crowd in St Peter's Square, but on this occasion background television packages on the German were ready to roll as soon as his name was announced and the face on the balcony was already familiar to international TV audiences ...
The Guardian - 23 April 2005
Key issue for the next pope is a meeting of the faiths
A harmonious co-existence with other religions is essential. The death of Pope John Paul II and the election of a new pope raise questions about the agenda that faces the Catholic Church in the coming century, indeed the coming millennium. While there are many issues that will capture the attention of the new pope, there is one major issue that will confront Catholicism and Christianity for the foreseeable future: how will Christian faith relate to people of other religious beliefs? The past 50 years has seen remarkable shifts in attitude within the Catholic Church towards other religions ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 18 April 2005
'We all carry a sense of guilt'
Just how does the BBC go about covering the Michael Jackson trial, what's it like inside the court and why is there a soap-like atmosphere at a child abuse trial? Every day I sit on the edge of my seat in the courtroom half expecting something bizarre or surreal to happen. And it usually does ... So far we have had mad dashes to the hospital, "flu-like symptoms", pyjamas and a myriad of other strange twists that continue to make this one of the most extraordinary criminal trials I have ever covered. It could go on for six months. Jackson dramas aside, it always feels like Groundhog Day. The same routine - day in, day out ...
BBC News - 19 April 2005
Punishing the hapless is the true crime
Education is the key to keeping people out of prison. People are lured more by their hopes and the opportunities afforded them than by threats and punitive policies. The communities that I tramped around as a young parole officer more than 40 years ago were disadvantaged in terms of standards of education, health, income, housing, work skills and employment. At that time these were the attributes of communities that had high rates of admission to prison and the same is true today. My research shows that areas with high levels of court convictions and admissions to prison are places where you will find things going awry from the beginning of life ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 15 April 2005
Religious extremists an insult to our values
Some disturbing views on women run counter to multiculturalism. 'Every minute in the world a woman is raped, and she has no one to blame but herself, for she has displayed her beauty to the whole world," Sheikh Feiz Muhammad told a packed public meeting in the Bankstown Town Hall last month. "Strapless, backless, sleeveless - they are nothing but satanical. Mini-skirts, tight jeans - all this to tease men and to appeal to (their) carnal nature." There was pressure on Muslim women to unveil, the sheikh said, and this was because "they want you to be available for their gross, disgusting, filthy abomination! They want you to be a sex symbol!" ...
The Age - 14 April 2005
After Terri Schiavo: is there life in US politics?
Congress and the President showed that they are more interested in gestures than government. The Pope's death has all but swamped the whirlwind media affair that was the 'Terri Schiavo case', but there are good reasons to stop and reflect upon what that controversy signalled about politics in America. At one level, the battle over whether a woman in a permanent vegetative state should live or die, can only have reinforced public cynicism about politicians. For sheer politicking, nothing surpasses a recently revealed memo written by an aide to a Republican Senator and passed to other Republican senators, saying that the Schiavo affair was a 'great political issue' ...
Spiked-Online - 13 April 2005
The other case of an Australian in trouble a long way from home
It's human rights abuse, but nobody seems to be paying attention. While the media and the Howard Government have been focusing on the plight of Schappelle Corby, who languishes in a Bali jail fighting charges of drug trafficking, in Fiji a 55-year-old Australian man has spent time behind bars for having consensual sex with another adult. The case of Thomas McCosker , a retired lecturer, should outrage all Australians. This month McCosker was jailed for two years for having consensual sex with another gay man, 23-year-old Dhirendra Nandan, who also received a jail term ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 18 April 2005
Reconciliation a building block
Warren Mundine's call for greater private ownership within communally held lands, and the Prime Minister's support in response to similar calls from the Wadeye community, have generated a debate that conflates two different issues. For one thing, land reform - which enables community members to own their homes, facilitates the development of private enterprises and encourages external investment on Aboriginal lands to enable indigenous development - is a legitimate agenda. But re-contesting land rights is not. The indigenous community fears that any re-contesting of land rights will be aimed at diminishing indigenous rights ...
The Australian - 19 April 2005
The new bottom line
The concept of corporate responsibility may finally be beginning to make headway in the US. American capitalism has been called many things by its defenders and detractors, but one thing it has always been known for is its philanthropy. Most people know the name Andrew Carnegie and just as many know of Bill and Melinda Gates, who last year gave or pledged $3.4bn (£1.8bn) to their foundation. Those very corporations that are driving globalisation may now be about to change the way business, and philanthropy, are done ...
The Guardian - 19 April 2005
Risk assessment
Ethical funds can use risk to persuade the wider investment world to avoid environmentally dangerous investments. "How will it inspire you?" asks the slogan for Starbucks Coffee Liqueur, the latest product from the ubiquitous coffee chain. "Not a lot", was the response from Pax World Funds, one of the first socially responsible investment (SRI) funds in the US, which last month ditched 375,000 shares in the Seattle-based company. The decision was consistent with the Pax's abstemious screening guidelines. As with a number of ethical funds, it pledges to exclude companies that generate profits from alcohol, gambling, or tobacco products ...
The Guardian - 14 April 2005
Online vigilantes answer call of anti-terrorist defender
Aaron Weisburd walked up to his attic at 5am to begin another day combing through tips he had received about possible pro-terrorist activity on the internet. It did not take long for an email to catch his attention. Ekhlaas.com was offering instructions on stealing people's personal information from their computers. It was a development for an Islamic discussion site accustomed to announcing "martyrdom operations", or suicide bombings, against US troops and others in Iraq. Mr Weisburd listed the discovery in his daily log of offensive and dangerous sites, alerting his supporters ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 26 April 2005
Another song and dance about what can be shown at the movies
Should family pressure groups be given any weight in the censorship debate? The Australian Family Association is at it again. When it's not watching smutty European films, it is trying to stop the rest of us from seeing them. Today in Melbourne, Michael Winterbottom's rock'n'roll rompfest, 9 Songs, will be screened at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. This upsets the association no end. It tried unsuccessfully through the Classification Review Board to get the film banned. Now a taxpayer-funded institution is screening it ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 26 April 2005
Voyage from disaster to hope
Three decades after fleeing the war that tore their country apart, Vietnamese migrants are making their mark in Australia. Next Saturday marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. In fact, the gradual loss of parts of the Republic of South Vietnam started several weeks before April 30, 1975, when it became clear that the United States Government, emasculated by the Watergate scandal, was not going to intervene to stop the open invasion of the South by North Vietnam in flagrant contravention of the Paris Peace Accord of 1973 ...
The Age - 26 April 2005