Ethics news:
22 June 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.
Note that you may need to register for free with sites to read some of these news articles.
Free enterprise
The temptation to buy buy buy is hard to resist, be it a new outfit, gadget or item of furniture. Now guilty shoppers keen to offload a no-longer-needed purchase have a radical new option... simply giving it away. As second-hand technology goes, who'd have thought that my sluggish, ageing, Korean-made computer would generate much interest when I put it up for offer online. I was wrong. A bidding war quickly begins for the five-year-old Daewoo machine which is "past its best" and a printer which probably works. Surprising that there are any takers at all? ...
BBC News - 20 June 2005
'I will if you will'
Tom Steinberg and pals have created a clutch of notable websites which aim to get people involved in their communities. He's now turned to a site where, instead of talking about good intentions, people can do something about them. Here he explains how it works and what he hopes to achieve. Have you ever said to yourself "I'd really like to do something", but then shelved the idea because you couldn't get any support from anyone else to help you with it? If so I hope that PledgeBank might be able to help ...
BBC News - 14 June 2005
Chequebook hostage
There was no doubting that Douglas Wood had a story to tell. The big question was, who would pay for the right to tell it? The camera crews and press pack had been waiting at Melbourne airport since well before Douglas Wood's plane touched down from Dubai at 5.45am. The pressure was on to find out what had happened to the Australian hostage in Iraq during his 47 days of captivity. How was he taken? How was he treated? ...
The Age - 21 June 2005
Doug's grateful, but armed forces must make way for market forces
The hero of the day is now a product being ripened by a platoon of PR agents, managers, stylists and personal trainers. There's a buck to be made with this boy. Not that Douglas Wood doesn't understand how to trot out a volley of cliches all on his own: "It's great to be an Australian … God bless America … Any chance of a VB? … It's bloody good to be home … How are the Cats going? … Waltzing Matilda." Not bad for a guy who's lived away from his proud homeland for 25 years ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 21 June 2005
A victory for civilisation
Douglas Wood's liberation is a setback to the callous hearts behind the scourge of hostage-taking in Iraq. No ransom was paid. No troops were withdrawn. Douglas Wood was liberated from his captors without any concessions to terror or extortion. This is as it should be: nobody should have to barter for the life of an innocent man. The liberation of the 63-year-old Australian after 47 days under threat of death is a setback to the callous hearts behind the scourge of hostage-taking in Iraq ...
The Age - 17 June 2005
Racism made easy
I've been looking for a lifestyle alternative for some time now, and given the way so many people have been behaving lately I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon and give racism a go. Some people are very "down" on this lifestyle, and it's easy to see why. It gets such bad press. Yet, truth be told, it is to be warmly recommended as the benefits are many. Just allow its charms to work their magic and within minutes you, too, will be calling talkback radio to let those (insert name of target group here) know exactly what you think of them ...
The Age - 17 June 2005
Sadly it is the Australian way
"It's un-Australian," Dick Smith asserted this week, as he railed against the seven-year detention of Peter Qasim, the Kashmiri asylum seeker recently transferred from the Baxter detention centre to an Adelaide psychiatric ward. "We drove him mad," Smith said on ABC radio, and then repeated his charge: "It's un-Australian." Sorry, Dick, but it's not un-Australian at all. It might be unjust, unkind, unfair, unreasonable and inhumane but, unhappily, it's not un-Australian ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 18 June 2005
Popular, yes - but is it moral?
It needs more than public opinion to say our detention policy is right. It's been driving me crazy for years, but John Howard's comments in Parliament early this week about the rectitude of mandatory detention and public support for it tipped me over the edge. The time has come for some clarity in the minds of public figures and commentators about what public support for something does - and does not mean - in terms of morality ...
The Age - 18 June 2005
We don't want you here
There are no judicial checks to Australia's system of mandatory removal. For a century Australia had a legal process for deportation, but since 2001 deportation has effectively disappeared. No new deportation orders were issued in Australia after 2001. Instead there is a process called "removal", which is prone to overzealous action. The removal system emerged from the Commonwealth Migration Reform Act introduced in 1992 ...
The Age - 21 June 2005
Prisoners of a nation's prejudices
There are similarities in how Australia reacted to the Chamberlain and Corby cases. It was probably inevitable that Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton would make contact with Schapelle Corby. After all, Australia's two most celebrated women of crime have a lot of experiences in common. "Seeing your verdict and the reaction to it made me feel like I had been kicked all over again," Chamberlain-Creighton wrote to Corby in her Bali prison last week. "My heart bleeds for you." ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 17 June 2005
Doing justice in Bali and California
The Jacko and Corby cases have exposed our Aussie biases. It wasn't long after he'd been cleared by a jury that I heard the first of a new round of Michael Jackson jokes. It had Jacko meeting up with Woody Allen. Enough said. Then there was the one Jay Leno told on his US TV show. All about how a black man in the same circumstances would certainly have been convicted. Hang on, I thought. Didn't Leno give evidence at Jackson's trial? Sure did. He made gags about that too ...
The Age - 18 June 2005
Should jurors speak out?
The Michael Jackson jury has spoken - not just to record its verdict, but in post-trial news conferences and interviews. But in the UK it's illegal to even ask a juror how their day was. "I feel that Michael Jackson probably has molested boys," says Raymond Hultman, juror number one in the singer's trial. "But that doesn't make him guilty of the charges that were presented in this case." For a juror to speak publicly about their deliberations - let alone their doubts about a defendant's behaviour - is a very American phenomenon ...
BBC News - 15 June 2005
Drowned in a pervasive moral murk
All Jackson can hope for is that Thriller and Off the Wall play on. Advance publicity for the Michael Jackson trial promised a melange of celebrity and controversy that would look like some star-spangled version of Jerry Springer. The kind of magazines that sit at supermarket checkouts would be filled with paparazzi shots; the rolling news networks would gleefully stuff their bulletins; and everyone would be spellbound. Give or take the spasm of hysteria surrounding the verdict, however, the public seems to have been less excited than planned ...
The Guardian - 15 June 2005
Not guilty but not a free man either
Michael Jackson must consider his options on the long road to rehabilitation. Why do you suppose Michael Jackson looked almost as unhappy leaving the Santa Maria courthouse with 10 acquittals in his pocket as he did when he walked in 45 minutes earlier with 10 criminal charges over his head? He's a smart businessman; even in his relief, I expect he was scanning his options: what to do after an acquittal that - arguably - leaves him with fewer good choices than other people have after a conviction? ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 17 June 2005
Jackson's soul search
Michael Jackson has been in my life since I was a child. Born a year after me (and sharing the same astrological sign) this native of Gary, Indiana, was the first black boy I knew to receive the unbridled adoration of mainstream America. Sure, he was better looking and vastly more talented than me, but it felt like Michael and the rest of the Jackson Five were representing all of us little Afro-wearing early 70s kids ...
The Guardian - 17 June 2005
The first step forward
There should be no doubt that the agreement to wipe billions of pounds off the debts of the world's poorest countries is a mighty step forward. Those campaigners who have been lobbying the world's wealthiest governments for the past decade, trying to lift the burden of debt from the necks of the world's poorest nations, have been rewarded for their perseverance. For 10 years or more, they had been told that writing off debts owed to international financial institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, was unthinkable, impractical, unfeasible and impossible. Now the impossible is suddenly possible ...
The Guardian -13 June 2005
No relief for Africa
On 11 June, finance ministers from the G8 countries agreed to cancel the debt of 18 of the world's poorest countries. Coming at the same time as Bob Geldof's plan for a Live 8 benefit concert for Africa, the proposal appears to be a gesture aimed more at immediate appearances than lasting results. No doubt UK prime minister Tony Blair has an eye to winning the favour of those disenchanted with the Iraq war, and seeks to create an issue around which he can appear to exercise leadership internationally. But this is the least of the problems with the debt issue ...
Spiked-Online - 16 June 2005
The first embedded protest
Live 8 and G8 are attempts to hijack justice campaigns. Shortly after Bob Geldof called for a million people to converge in Edinburgh for the opening day of the G8 summit, Midge Ure, the co-organiser of Live 8, was asked if he was worried about the events being hijacked by anarchists. His response was that Live 8 was, in fact, hijacking the anarchists' event. There is more than a little truth in this statement. What is becoming increasingly clear, however, is that Blair and Brown, in turn, are trying to do something similar ...
The Guardian - 18 June 2005
Doing the sums on debt
How much does Africa stand to gain from the G8 finance ministers' deal? Gordon Brown should win a prize for Orwellian use of the English language in relation to the debt write-off package for the world's poorest countries. The UK chancellor was widely quoted as saying that now was 'not a time for timidity but boldness'. But the package agreed by the finance ministers of the G8 industrialised countries was about as bold as Woody Allen at his most neurotic. Some 18 countries, 14 of them in Africa, will have $40billion (£22billion) of debt written off under the deal ...
Spiked-Online - 16 June 2005
Casualties of the oil stampede
Those behind human rights abuses and an alleged safety cover-up around the Caspian pipeline must be held to account. A huge new oil pipeline, opened a week ago but not fully operational till August, is set to become an environmental, political and economic timebomb. Over 1,000 miles long, it is a classic example of pretensions to corporate social responsibility claimed by the BP consortium being trampled all over by the stampede for oil. The new Great Game is the competition for control of the world's few remaining big oilfields ...
The Guardian - 15 June 2005
Living standards fuel our need to burn coal
Coal-fired power stations must continue to play a vital role in meeting energy needs. Claiming you want to protect the environment is like saying you are in favour of parenthood. It's easy to say but what really counts is how you do it. In NSW we burn coal to produce more than 90 per cent of our electricity. We do this because it is the only affordable way of generating the scale of base-load power we need to keep the lights on and business running all year round, come rain or shine ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 16 June 2005
Big Brother Backlash
Network Ten has defended its raunchy Big Brother Uncut, insisting "extensive consumer advice" is being given before each episode of the late-night program goes to air. It also says the reality show, which features full-frontal nudity and crude language, is complying with the industry's code of practice. But growing concern about the program spread today to federal Liberal and National party backbenchers, who feel Uncut is inappropriate for free to air television ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 21 June 2005