Ethics news:
17 August 2005
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Just what is this thing called family?
Politicians espouse family values, but they're looking backwards. Let's hear it for The Family! All together now, "Ahh." The family is back in vogue. For a while, we were so caught up in gender issues we forgot to acknowledge that the family is where a nation's character, values and outlook are formed. For better or worse, we are the products of our familial origins — genetic, social, economic and cultural ...
The Age - 12 August 2005
Let humanity prevail
We must decide how radically we want technology to change the way we live. In the next few years, your child will come home from school in tears. He'll say, once again, that he is unable to compete with the children who are brighter, better behaved and physically more capable than he is because their parents have bought them technological enhancements and you have not. What will you do? ...
The Age - 11 August 2005
Dragging Discovery down to Earth
Space missions should be about more than returning in one piece. It was impossible to watch the Discovery's landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California yesterday without a lump in the throat. Ever since the shuttle Columbia broke up two-and-a-half years ago, a shadow has hung over the space programme. A Columbia post-mortem accused NASA of a culture of avoidance, and NASA responded with a number of measures to increase the safety of its risky shuttle flights ...
Spiked-Online -10 August 2005
Sun, sea and saving the world
Travel snobs have turned holidaymaking into a moral dilemma. Tourism is changing, and not for the better. Not so long ago, package tourism was regarded simply as a welcome respite from the rigors and proscriptions of everyday life. Today, the tremendous growth of opportunities to travel and enjoy the environment ... is regarded by the critics as a threat to the environment, to indigenous cultures, and to the traveller's own sense of self ...
Spiked-Online - 11 August 2005
Rewriting an ugly past
Japan refuses to come to terms with the horrors of its past, to Asia's detriment. How different the 60th anniversaries of the end of World War II in Europe and in Asia. In the former, German participation was taken for granted, and the defeat of Nazism celebrated on all sides as the dawn of liberation. In the latter, it would be inconceivable for the Japanese Government to be invited to participate in commemorative events ...
The Age - 15 August 2005
Chinese look back in anger at Japan's wartime atrocities
Li Shaogen was just 10 when war broke out between China and Japan in 1937 but his memories remain vivid. "The Japanese soldiers made us kneel down before them when they came to our village. They burnt down our houses. My brother and cousin died. I saw a 15-year-old girl taken away by the soldiers and raped. She died later." The girl was one of an estimated 35 million Chinese who were killed or wounded ...
The Independent - 15 August 2005
Japan's wartime savagery: better to forget it
From the graceful dome of the Legislative Council building to the gaudy entertainment district of Wan Chai to the touristy warren of small shops in Stanley, Hong Kong seems as peaceful and prosperous a city as any in Asia. Cai Song-ying, now 80, was a Communist partisan who fought against the Japanese. Yet 60 years ago, this city suffered some of the worst ravages of World War II ...
The New York Times - 17 August 2005
Palestinians must face up to their responsibilities
Israel's landmark decision to leave Gaza and transfer control to the Palestinian Authority is a bold reaffirmation of its unwavering commitment to peace and could make a substantial contribution to bolstering Israeli-Palestinian relations. But while the departure of all Israelis from Gaza is certain, what will happen thereafter is unclear. The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has a golden opportunity to make the Gaza withdrawal a success ...
International Herald Tribune - 11 August 2005
A meaningless act if there's not real settlement
The Israeli pull-out from Gaza will achieve nothing on its own. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has finally begun to implement his controversial plan to withdraw Israeli troops and settlers from Gaza. Although opposed by his former finance minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and many Israeli settlers, he enjoys the support of a majority in the Israeli electorate and parliament on the issue. He is also strongly backed by the Bush Administration ...
The Age - 17 August 2005
After Gaza
The dismantling of Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip is neither a cunning plan by Israel nor a victory for the Palestinians. As Israeli troops set about removing Jewish settlers from their homes in the Gaza Strip, there are two different interpretations of events. The first says that this is an Israeli victory: Gaza was never really worth much to Israel anyway, and by withdrawing it can concentrate on the real prize ...
Spiked-Oline - 16 August 2005
Faith and the fanatics
Withdrawal from Gaza is central to all the issues that confront us. A kibbutznik friend of mine showed me a poster that is going up all over Israel. In orange and blue it declares: "Two people. Two states." What's new about that slogan? Just that the two states are both Jewish - one for the oranges who oppose leaving Gaza, and one for the blues who are in favour of what the government of Israel is about to do ...
The Guardian - 13 August 2005
Warning from Australia: don't legislate against hate
An Australian Muslim says that Victoria's laws against incitement to religious hatred have sown division, and undermined freedom of speech, thought and conscience. The attempt, for the third time, to pass laws outlawing incitement to religious hatred in the UK has, once again, drawn applause from the usual quarters. It has been welcomed by some on the left who seem to view society as so irredeemably racist that only the state can protect people ...
Spiked-Online - 16 August 2005
Unholy strictures
It is wrong - and dangerous - to believe literal truth can be found in religious texts. Human beings, in nearly all cultures, have long engaged in a rather strange activity. They have taken a literary text, given it special status and attempted to live according to its precepts. These texts are usually of considerable antiquity yet they are expected to throw light on situations that their authors could not have imagined ...
The Guardian - 11 August 2005
End this chorus of intolerance
It is uncivilised to demand that Muslims abandon their way of life. The best thing that can be said for the critics of multiculturalism is that they are confused. Their muddled thinking was perfectly illustrated last week by David Davis, the shadow home secretary, when he denounced the concept and then added that he welcomed "the mainstream version of Islam as part of British society". That is as good a definition of multiculturalism as we are likely to get ...
The Guardian - 12 August 2005
Bill of rights full of risks
Terrorist attacks elicit two reactions. One is a call from the likes of Tony Blair and John Howard for tougher laws and stronger resolve in prosecuting terrorists and those inciting terrorism. The second is a call from the likes of academics for a bill of rights to protect these people. It's fortunate that academics are not running the country. week the British Prime Minister outlined a sweeping package of reforms aimed at protecting the British people ...
The Australian - 10 August 2005
Give up your freedoms - or change tack
Blair's anti-terror measures are exactly what Bin Laden wants. No one will be more pleased than Osama bin Laden with the new measures announced by Tony Blair. He will be even more pleased should the prime minister succeed in turning his plans into legislation. There are two reasons for Bin Laden's satisfaction at what doubtless looks to him like a historic victory. First, he will believe he has succeeded in forcing Britain to abandon a number of hard-earned achievements in the fields of justice and liberty ...
The Guardian - 11 August 2005
Sending them Bak will solve nothing
What's driving the UK government's war against loudmouth mullahs? As Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, the loudmouth 'Tottenham Ayatollah', slips back to Lebanon to avoid treason charges, you get the feeling that Britain's war on terror has entered its own silly season. Last Friday, prime minister Tony Blair unveiled a raft of measures to crack down on Bakri and other radical preachers ...
Spiked-Online - 9 August 2005
The struggle for human rights in Iraq as spectator sport
There is a sort of unspoken feeling, underlying the entire debate on the [Iraq] war, that if you favoured it or favour it, you stress the good news, and if you opposed or oppose it you stress the bad. I do not find myself on either side of this false dichotomy. I think that those who supported regime change should confront the idea of defeat, and what it would mean for Iraq and [the US] and the world, every days ...
The Australian - 10 August 2005
Oil for food corruption
The latest report on the oil-for-food program and a guilty plea by a procurement officer provide the most troubling evidence yet of criminality at the United Nations. The commission investigating the program charges that Benon Sevan, who ran it, received kickbacks. The panel concludes that Sevan deposited at least $147,000 in cash generated by Iraqi oil transactions and did not receive the money from an aunt, as he has claimed ...
International Herald Tribune - 11 August 2005
Reverse psychology
If Big Brother's expert psychologists' main role is to help create scenarios likely to result in 'entertaining' - read abrasive - behaviour, should ethics compel them to quit the reality TV show? Racial tension, sexual harassment, masturbation with a bottle - this year's Big Brother (UK) has plunged to new depths in reality television. From self-loathing gay hairdresser Craig groping drunken geordie Anthony, to wannabe footballer's wife Saskia telling Zimbabwean nurse Makosi her Afro hairdo looked like "a fucking wig"...
The Guardian - 12 August 2005
Big Brother damages our health
Reality TV has stepped into dangerous psychological territory. I want to start with two admissions. First, I wanted Anthony to win Big Brother (UK), which ended last night; and second, despite having resigned from last year's programme, I have watched enough of this year's show to realise that it plumbed new depths. Kinga's masturbation with a wine bottle, Saskia's racism towards Makosi, and Craig's fondling of Anthony were genuine low points ...
The Guardian - 13 August 2005
Online porn addiction turns our kids into victims and predators
On sexual matters, Australians are pretty pragmatic, lying on the public mattress somewhere between prudish America (think Janet Jackson's breast) and the laissez-faire Europeans (think wall-to-wall bonking on Big Brother Belgium). We don't get our knickers in a twist over censorship, pornography and prostitution, and morals crusaders are usually benignly ignored ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 14 August 2005
Sex with teenager raises doubt about definition of rape
In Vermont, Sandra Beth Geisel would not be a rape suspect. Sex there between an adult and a 16-year-old is not a crime. But in New York State, the former teacher faces four years' jail if convicted of third-degree rape for having sex with a Christian Brothers Academy student. The revelation that Geisel, the estranged wife of a prominent local banker, allegedly had sex with at least four teenage students shines a light on a controversial area of law and social norms ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 13 August 2005
The bravest women in the world
The world depends on Muslim feminists pushing for reform. Feminist debate here - what little of it there is - seems to be mainly about whether Big Brother is empowering to or patronising of young women. Many of the same young women would rather die (metaphorically speaking) than own the title of feminist. In other places women are dying, literally, for the feminist cause. Did Western feminists in the 1970s - so silent these days! - think they had it hard? ...
The Age - 8 August 2005
Future abortion hangs on landmark hearing
A court case has again stirred up public debate about a heart-wrenching subject. For the first time in more than 20 years a medical practitioner has been charged under section 83 of the NSW Crimes Act with unlawfully procuring a miscarriage. The committal hearing against Dr Suman Sood, former owner of abortion clinics in Fairfield and Rosemeadow, has been proceeding at the Liverpool Local Court since Monday ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 11 August 2005
Abortion case could set ugly precedent
We should not further restrict women's access to late abortions. The charging of Dr Suman Sood for manslaughter and procuring an unlawful abortion in NSW is the first such prosecution in that state since 1971, though it was only seven years ago that two West Australian doctors were charged as criminals for providing terminations. Indeed, Australia has a long history of prosecuting women and doctors over abortions ...
The Age - 11 August 2005