Ethics news:
26 October 2005
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It's a dodgy law of nature that says big is better
It has to be said that Bret Walker, SC, is a brave man. His talk to an entranced gathering at the Banco Court on Tuesday evening was "lawyers and money". The "guns" bit was missing, but it didn't matter because he fired enough bullets of his own in this year's lawyers' lecture for the St James Ethics Centre. The fact one of the most gilded advocates of his generation would venture so forthrightly into the topic of lawyers and money was brave enough ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 21 October 2005
* Click here to read the 2005 Lawyers' Lecture about Lawyers & Money
Schools failing to pass on values
Public and private schools are spending too much time teaching students to earn a living and too little time exploring beliefs and values that shape lives, a leading education expert says. Academic competition is pushing some students into areas of study they do not fit and traditional disciplines are overcrowded with subject matter that makes it difficult for teachers to spare time for more critical evaluation and discussion...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 21 October 2005
* Click here to read about St James Ethics Centre's values in education project.
The onslaught
Half of all children aged four don't know their own name - but two thirds of three-year-olds can recognise the McDonald's golden arches. Jonathan Freedland investigates the multi-million-pound industry intent on turning teenagers and toddlers alike into avaricious consumers. "B-Daman warriors. Rapid fire! Serious Accuracy! Awesome firepower! Be da man - with B-Daman!" If you have trouble recognising those product names, or even understanding the words, don't worry. They're not meant for you ...
The Guardian - 25 October 2005
Morals go to market
When it comes to booze, books, fags and fast food, we're keen to curb capitalist excesses. As longer licensing hours draw closer, the binge-drink panic movement gathers vim - at the weekend, it was revealed that many pubs intend to "exploit" the binge-drink culture, by encouraging punters to drink more. Their methods are nefarious - they might "upsell" singles to doubles with such satanic whispers as "why not make that a double?" ...
The Guardian - 25 September 2005
Like America, we're destined for big things
Australia stripped bare is a disturbing sight. Statistics about the obesity epidemic are familiar by now. But statistics lie cold on the news pages. It is only when you see near-naked Australians en masse - thousands of them as I have just done - that the figures become, well, flesh and blood. And the scale of the problem hits home ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 8 October 2005
The obesity myth
The 'war on fat' is a witch-hunt masquerading as a public health initiative. Is your weight hazardous to your health? According to America's public health authorities, there's an 80 per cent chance that it is. From the Surgeon General's office, the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health, and our leading medical schools, America's anti-fat warriors are bombarding us with dire warnings. According to such sources, no fewer than four of every five Americans maintain a medically dangerous body mass ... If these claims sound implausible, there's a very good reason why: because they're false ...
Spiked-Online - 7 October 2005
By our silence, we all stand condemned
Australia's neglect of a fellow citizen on death row in Singapore reeks of racism. When Kevin John Barlow and Brian Geoffrey Chambers were hanged in the Pudu Prison in Malaysia in 1986, you could have heard a pin drop in Australia. Enormous protests had been ignored and prime minister Bob Hawke's description of the executions as "barbaric" so infuriated Malaysian leader Mahathir Mohamad that he all but sentenced our country to diplomatic death. Any day now another Australian, Nguyen Tuong Van, will be hanged in Singapore ...
The Australian - 25 October 2005
Singapore's deadly sling
The impending execution of Nguyen Tuong Van is a travesty of justice and a failure of diplomacy, writes Mark Baker. At dawn on a Friday soon a young Australian will be taken from his death-row cell in the grey colonial pile of Singapore's Changi Prison, fitted with a hood and noose and dropped to oblivion through a gallows trapdoor. A few hours later his broken body will be handed back to his family ...
The Age - 25 October 2005
How's this for sedition?
The latest legislative threat to our freedoms is worthy of contempt. Edmund Burke, who declared the tyranny of bad laws, was a deep political thinker and a ferocious polemicist. In 1777, he wrote to the Sheriffs of Bristol that the true danger to freedom was when liberty was nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts. We should wish that 1777 is now, and that Burke was writing to our prime minister. I declare, therefore, that I write the following with open, seditious intention ...
The Age - 21 October 2005
Extreme behaviour, but it's only to be expected
The estimated 7000 Australians who were in Bali last weekend when the bombs went off were neither heroic nor stupid. They were simply representatives of that very large section of the population who convert their fear of terrorism into defiance. Had they been in London on July 7, they would have been back on the buses and trains the next day. Other people react differently. Many Australians wouldn't dream of visiting Bali ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 8 October 2005
Aftershock of the beach bombs
Western governments' response to attacks on tourists can make or break places like Bali. The dust has now settled on the beachside bombs in Bali on 2 October that killed 22 people. While the immediate impact is on relatives and friends of the victims, Western governments' response to the tragedy will have a more long-term impact on tourism in the region. After the bombs, there were conflicting reports about tourists' response ...
Spiked-Online - 20 October 2005
Terrorism's toxic strains
The young men who became suicide bombers all did so for different reasons. After last week's Bali bombing, one question repeatedly arises: What turns young Indonesians into suicide bombers? If we look at the five men who have chosen to become "martyrs" thus far, we know the answer is not poverty and desperation, and it's not necessarily affiliation with Jemaah Islamiah - in fact, most of the suicide bombers so far haven't been JI ...
The Age - 5 October 2005
Their democracy vital to our future
What is the main aim of the terrorists who bombed Bali? And the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta? And the Australian embassy in Jakarta? And Bali again? From much of our media coverage and political discussion, you could be forgiven for thinking that their chief purpose was to kill Australians. But no, that is just a bonus. The Islamic extremists in Indonesia have a far more ambitious goal and they have been working on it, violently, for 58 years ...
The Sydney Morning Herald - 8 October 2005
How state-building weakens states
The new focus on the international community's ‘responsibility to protect’ failing states is external meddling by another name. State-building - the development of international regulatory mechanisms aimed at addressing cases of state 'collapse' or at shoring up 'failing states' - is commonly held to be the most pressing question on the global security agenda. As the 2002 US National Security Strategy states: 'America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones' ...
Spiked-Online - 24 October 2005
Iraqi constitution: they call this victory?
The incompetence of the US government's policy in Iraq was demonstrated by this weekend's referendum on the Iraq Constitution. The Constitution, written by the Shi'a and Kurds, has passed, over the objections of many Sunnis. Yet it symbolizes one of the US government's biggest errors in Iraq: confusing democracy with liberty. Curiously, the United States has forgotten the wisdom of its own founders, who were more concerned with liberty than democracy ...
Iviews - 20 October 2005
Saddam trial: whose demons are they anyway?
The coalition is focusing on Saddam's crimes of 23 years ago in order to disclaim responsibility for present failures. The opening of the trial of Saddam Hussein, starting with the charge of killing 143 Shias from the village of Dujail in 1982, is held by many commentators to be a fundamental turning point for Iraq and its people. Apparently, this marks the birth of a new post-Saddam Iraq, with the Iraqi government putting Saddam on trial for crimes largely committed against the Iraqi people ...
Spiked-Online - 4 October 2005
Stem cells: don't dodge the debate
Even if scientists didn't have to destroy embryos, that wouldn't end the ethics war. 'Stem cell creators find answer to ethical doubts' proclaimed one headline on 17 October. In work published by the science journal Nature this week, two teams report the successful use in mice of two different techniques for deriving embryonic stem cells without requiring the destruction of viable embryos. It's interesting stuff, certainly ...
Spiked-Online - 20 October 2005
Mental health: the crisis that affects us all
With half the population at risk, we need a new deal for mental illness. When a young person experiencing an acute asthma attack goes to see a doctor, they can be guaranteed an almost immediate response. When a woman notices a breast lump and seeks a diagnosis and treatment, it is readily available. When a middle-aged man experiences chest pain and calls the ambulance, he gains immediate access to high-quality care. What about the 22-year-old with depression who deliberately harms themselves? ...
The Age - 24 October 2005
Bush not a prototype
Anti-US bigots should recognise that Americans are not unblinkingly right-wing. On a recent visit to an inner-east Sydney cafe, I was confronted with that popular new intellectual pastime of many Australians: radical anti-Americanism. Prominently displayed under the wall-mounted menu was a faded American flag and next to it a supposedly thought-provoking question: "Would you like world domination with that?" The tone of the Chomskyesque quote was like something out of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion ...
The Australian - 25 September 2005
The mystery of 'Sid'
Why did he do it? Months of investigations have uncovered an apparently integrated, happy, western-thinking man behind the face of one of Britain's first suicide bombers. But many questions remain unanswered. Like millions of others, Ian Barrett watched the news just a week after the 7 July bombings to discover that three of the men responsible were from the Beeston district of Leeds. But it was only later that evening, when old school friend Rob Cardiss called Ian on his mobile, that he realised he knew one of the bombers ...
BBC News - 19 October 2005
Elle's fur gets unwanted scrutiny
The Body is now the target of a fatwa by animal rights activists. So you think political correctness is dead and buried? That the fashion mafia only concerns itself with heels and waistlines? That corporate ethics is for, well, pussies? Think again on all counts. Just ask Elle Macpherson. The Body, now 42, recently scored a big fat modelling contract to the tune of $2.3 million with an outfit called Blackglama. No, that's not a Jamaican porn website ...
The Age - 8 October 2005