Ethics news:
20 July 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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The fight is against evil, not orthodoxy
Joanne Rowling has given a gift to the world. She has enriched the lives of tens of millions of children, enticing them to the universal wonder of imagination. No matter how hyped and large the Harry Potter commercial juggernaut may become, Rowling has enchanted a generation of children and millions of adults in an era when books were becoming irrelevant to young people and the imagination of play was being eroded by video games. Her books also teach children a basic truth: that there is a permanent struggle between good and evil, between light and dark ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 18 July 2005
Let's not compromise the rule of law
Human rights, even those of the enemy, cannot be set aside in the struggle against terrorism. We all condemn the dastardly and cowardly acts of terrorism across London. The totality of that condemnation must not, however, be allowed to prevent a debate about the most effective means of combating terrorism. We all join Prime Minister Tony Blair in saying that the determination and endurance of democratic peoples will far outlast and overcome terrorism. An expression of that determination, however, is not in itself a policy ...
The Age - 13 July 2005
Time to set some limits
For the past two years Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammad has preached in a London mosque, calling for Muslims to wage a holy war against Britain. Seemingly no one in tolerant, free-speech Britain has thought it a good idea to stop him. At a public meeting last December, he vowed that if Western governments did not change their policies, Muslims would give them "a 9/11 day after day after day". British intelligence estimates that 10,000 to 15,000 Muslims living in Britain support al-Qaeda ...
The Age - 18 July 2005
A betrayal of trust
The London bombings have shaken our faith in the future of multiculturalism. The psychological wounds will run deep, but the suicide bombings in Britain have at least awakened Western society to the full extent of the struggle against radical Islam. Sadly, it is now established beyond reasonable doubt that it would be foolhardy for Western nations, Australia included, to count on the undivided loyalty of all of their citizens ...
The Age - 19 July 2005
Assimilation is a beaut idea which works
Assimilation is a sweet word. The dictionary says it is "the process whereby individuals or groups of differing ethnic heritage, as migrant groups or minority groups, acquire the basic attitudes, habits and modes of life of another all-embracing national culture". You would have to be really lucky to fetch up in a country so hospitable that it would let you be assimilated - that is, would accept you without reservation as being entitled to call yourself by the name of that all-embracing national culture. Multiculturalism, on the other hand, is a repulsive word denoting an ugly concept ...
The Age - 17 July 2005
There is no such thing as community
The idea that society comprises homogeneous groups is deluded. It's that word again, that wonderful chameleon of a word, at once crisply decisive and warmly humane. Community: a word for every occasion. We could be talking ruddy-faced folk, warm beer and village green cricket, or Iona, or youth clubs on a sink estate. Community. Or, then again, we could be clearing our throats for yet another topical political rant: "The Muslim community must act at last to exorcise the terrorism in our midst" ...
The Guardian - 18 July 2005
What is really irking the radical Islamists?
Some people believe that Islamist terrorism such as the London attacks is due to unaddressed Muslim grievances that fester into violence. Therefore, they conclude, the "real" solution is to cure Muslims of their sense of victimisation with policies they approve: leaving Iraq, "solving" the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, providing economic aid to deal with Middle Eastern economic backwardness, and so on. This theory is superficially plausible ...
The Age - 14 July 2005
How to confront a cult of terror
Cult psychology may help explain why young men become suicide murderers. Zealots who tend to violence are meant to be easy to spot. That is why the identities of the alleged London bombers are so arresting. All were British born and raised. Most were well educated, showing no signs of religious fervour. Only one appears to have been remotely socially dysfunctional. For those who believe in the stereotyped terrorist as either rabidly fanatical or desperate, illiterate, and oppressed, this superficial normality is mystifying ...
The Age - 16 July 2005
Talking with the jihadists
Terrorism can only be defeated by political compromise and negotiation. On the battlefields of Iraq, American military officials now no longer deny the skill of the home-grown insurgents and foreign jihadists against whom they have been fighting since the fall of Saddam Hussein. In Pentagon language, US forces are fighting a "thinking" and "adapting" enemy. The most important conclusion to draw from the July 7 terrorist bombings in London is that part of that enemy's "adaptation" is to continue the strikes against civilian targets ...
The Guardian - 16 July 2005
Appeasement won't change suicide bomber's minds
It didn't take long for the chorus line of appeasers to strike up the same old tune. Barely had the bombers attacked the London Underground, and days before we knew the identities of the British-born Islamists responsible for this awful crime, there were those telling us that Western society had only itself to blame. Were it not for the Bush-Blair-Howard adventurism in Iraq, we would all be safe and sound and snug in bed. Some of these admonitions came from predictable quarters ...
The Age - 15 July 2005
We rock the boat
Today's Muslims aren't prepared to ignore injustice. If I'm asked about 7/7, I - a Yorkshire lad, born and bred - will respond first by giving an out-clause to being labelled a terrorist lover. I think what happened in London was a sad day and not the way to express your political anger. Then there's the "but". If, as police announced yesterday, four men (at least three from Yorkshire) blew themselves up in the name of Islam, then please let us do ourselves a favour and not act shocked ...
The Guardian - 13 July 2005
After the aftershock
The realisation that Britons are ready to bomb their fellow citizens is a challenge to the whole of society. Like an earthquake, the London bombings have brought an aftershock - and it came last night. The police announcement that Thursday's explosions on the underground and on the Number 30 bus were, apparently, the work of British suicide bombers is the most shocking news to come since the attacks themselves. It is also the bleakest possible development ...
The Guardian - 13 July 2005
British-born bombers: not so shocking
From 9/11 to 7/7, nihilistic terror has its origins in the West. Charles Clarke, the British home secretary, is 'shocked'. According to the latest police updates, the London bombers were not some Johnny Foreigner threat to our 'way of life': they were four young Britons brought up in our way of life; four men aged between 19 and 30 who were born in Britain to normal, and by all accounts perfectly respectable, Pakistani families. But why is Clarke shocked? The harsh reality is that these young Brits would appear to be pretty typical al-Qaeda types ...
Spiked-Online - 13 July 2005
Not hate, vengeance
The two-minute silence brought the tears forth again, as I thought about the victims, and their tenuous connections with me. Shahara Islam, who died on the number 30 bus, is from Plaistow, where one of my daughters lives. All those others, whose pictures stare out of our newspapers, worked in London, where I also work, and I wonder if I ever crossed paths with them. Then there is the 18-year-old who killed them and himself. He is from Leeds where another member of my family lives. He too is a victim of religious madness ...
The Guardian - 16 July 2005
Is this our unwinnable war?
An important obstacle to winning the "war on terror" is that the conflict is extremely difficult to define. The phrase, first coined by US President George Bush as a response to the September 11 attacks, has since expanded to encompass a global effort by the US Government and its major allies to defeat international entities it deems "terrorist". After the tragic deaths in London 10 days ago, the "war on terror" seems open-ended ...
The Age - 17 July 2005
Others do the dying in our easy war
Australia's contribution to the war against terrorism so far has been so modest it's dishonourable. In Iraq, for example, this country was one of a small coalition that unleashed a wave of death on the population and then largely walked away from its moral obligation to protect the wretched Iraqis from the consequences. We left most of the hard work - and the dying - to American and British soldiers. Honour in this context means matching our deeds to our words ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 16 July 2005
London memorials: a show for whose benefit?
At yesterday's official vigil and two minutes’ silence, the crowd at times became a stage army. After the London bombs, makeshift shrines sprung up near King's Cross and Aldgate Tube stations, including messages of defiance, appeals for the missing, and marks of respect. One Union Jack was crossed with the felt-tipped message 'We are not afraid'; another note read 'You will never defeat us, London lives on'. But these shrines were soon incorporated by officialdom. A week ago, nobody told Londoners how to respond to the terrorist attacks ...
Spiked-Online - 15 July 2005
The reality of 'absolute' truth
Modern science is being battered by people with differing agendas about what matters most. 'Of course science is value-free," announced the professor. "Do you imagine a black female scientist would discover something different in an experiment that a white male one could not? Science reveals truth, pure and simple!" Well, not exactly, but that's not the point. Ideology enters scientific research in at least three ways: money, identity and innovation ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 20 July 2005
Moral right versus legal right
The Cornelia Rau saga - the story of "Anna" - is an illuminating case of distinction between lawfulness and propriety. That an Australian resident, who arrived from Germany as a baby, could go unidentified for 10 months is, as Mick Palmer's report noted, "hard to believe". That the concealment was unwittingly assisted by the inflexible application of law designed to deal with unlawful immigrants is disturbing ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 15 July 2005
Don't let rare peek inside be worthless
The Palmer report offers a chance for genuine immigration reform, writes Christine Rau. When Mick Palmer shakes your hand, looks you straight in the eye from his lanky height and tells you he's "doing an inquiry for the Government, not a Government inquiry", you tend to believe him. My gut feeling was that his report was going to be no whitewash. Nor is it. It's as strong a report as we could have hoped for after Palmer's five months of intense work under intense pressure ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 15 July 2005
All work and no play
In our addiction to consumption, we are forgetting our wellbeing. It's not hard to look at the news and decide the Americans are in the process of really stuffing up their society. Nor is it hard to conclude that where the Yanks go, we follow. What's hard to work out is what it is we're doing that's making our community increasingly dysfunctional. I suspect it may be a lot of little things, each of which doesn't seem too terrible, with the cumulative effect escaping our notice ...
The Age - 13 July 2005
Earth needs a climate of change
Those with entrenched environmental beliefs are being left behind. Environmental sustainability is the key to our future, yet we seem to be drifting ever further away from it. In part that is because ideology can blind us to the obvious, while the unexpected effects of evermore rapidly changing technologies can make it very difficult to predict the outcomes of our activities. This is particularly true of the debate on climate change, where complex science and entrenched ideologies test the limit of our abilities to deal with a great threat ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 18 July 2005
Global warming: common sense prevails
The G8 declaration blows apart Green delusions. I have been in Canada and have thus largely avoided the Gleneagles G8 Summit. Not only did this spare me the excesses of a febrile Britain, it also enabled me to take a cooler view of the overheated debate on climate change. Read online from the pretty harbours of Vancouver's Burrard Inlet, newspapers like Guardian and Independent seem little more than hysterical rags all dressed up in middle-class angst ...
Spiked-Online - 14 July 2005
More power to bouncers: more guys locked out
A ruling allowing nightclubs to refuse entry to men goes too far. In the alleys and dark corners of Melbourne's night life world, door people - colloquially known as bouncers and "door bitches" - enjoy an absolute power that makes John-Howard-with-a-Senate-majority look like, well, pretty much any Labor senator. Here, principles such as democracy and natural justice go out the door: door people are arbiters of cool from whom there is no court of appeal ...
The Age - 17 July 2005