Ethics news
Keep up with ethics-related stories appearing in the news.
Below are stories collected from news sources around the web relating to ethics. Click on the links provided to read the stories in full.
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nb. Links to new stories are generally to external websites. St James Ethics Centre is not responsible for the content on these sites. Some links may become invalid over time and this is beyond our control.
Population debate hides an ugly racism
30 July 2010 - The Age
Julia Gillard's ''right kind of migrants'' are people in her own image.
Nearly all commentators see the current ''population'' debate as confusing or conflating a number of issues: environmental sustainability, overcrowding, failing infrastructure - and the arrival of asylum seekers, despite their admittedly small and unthreatening numbers. However, there is an underlying coherence to...
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An everyday mockery of democracy in land of the free
1 August 2010 - The Age
Americans have always exploited the freedoms granted in the constitution.
America's weirdness is well documented. And I don't mean just the plastic-surgery addicts in LA, the outsourcing, pill-popping perfectionists in New York, the toddler pageants, the deep fried Oreos, or even the testicle festivals, the smelly sneaker competitions or the towns that speak their own language and print...
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Is Australia man enough to have a woman as PM?
1 August 2010 - The Age
The talk about Gillard’s hair and clothes could be masking a deeper unease.
We seem to have spent a disturbing chunk of the past week discussing Julia Gillard's ear lobes, hair, fashion sense and marital status.
Perhaps this is merely a bizarre symptom of a campaign during which - let's face it - not much has happened.
But perhaps it is also a proxy for a bigger...
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We must sow seeds for our nation's future today
1 August 2010 - The Age
Permanent and temporary migration programs are important for the economy.
With or without migration, Australia's population is increasing. For this reason alone Australia will become bigger.
This natural increase isn't enough to meet our economic needs. We are getting older faster than we are getting bigger. Although birth rates have recently started to lift, it will be a...
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Fat. Obese. Who cares? We're too obsessed by size
1 August 2010 - The Observer
When neo-puritans imply that slimness equates to virtue, we're on dangerous ground.
Obese. As a euphemism, it is useless. That big round "o" and that sibilant "s" – just the sound of it makes me think of the fat kid at school who would slyly pinch your arm when no one was looking.
Health minister Anne Milton dislikes the O-word too: she set off a row...
Let's embrace the years when we're weathered by life
1 August 2010 - The Observer
Instead of being dismayed at people working longer, we should think of imaginative ways to use their skills.
The announcement that employers will no longer be able to get rid of you just because you have reached 65 is supposed to be good news; and if it means that people can't be forced to retire against their will, it probably is. It's arguable, of course, that it is less hurtful to be...
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Give me Ryanair's brazen villainy over the bogus compassion of BP
1 August 2010 - The Observer
A recent newspaper advertisement for Ryanair has a big picture of Robert Mugabe shaking his fist, under the headline: "Here's EasyJet's New Head of Punctuality". This sends out a confused message. I'm no Zimbabwe expert but I'm fairly confident that the main charge levelled against Mugabe isn't one of unpunctuality. It's no more meaningful an insinuation than saying that Kim Jong-il...
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Babies don't suffer when mothers return to work, study reveals
1 August 2010 - The Observer
Siobhan Freegard of Mumsnet said the findings would be embraced by every working mother in the country. Photograph: Observer
A ground-breaking study has found that mothers can go back to work months after the birth of their child without the baby's wellbeing suffering as a result.
By assessing the total impact on a child of the mother going out to work, including factors outside...
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Will WikiLeaks handle its new power responsibly?
1 August 2010 - The Age
Coverage of the federal election in the past week was briefly interrupted by the WikiLeaks saga.
The international transparency and anti-corruption group roused a media storm when it released a compendium of 91,000 classified US reports on the Afghan war.
Among the revelations are that elements in the Pakistani government have been collaborating with the Taliban and that...
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The Afghan War leaks don’t tell us The Truth
27 July 2010 - Spiked-Online
Journalists’ increasing reliance on leaks is turning them into passive recipients of information rather than active seekers of truth.
So we finally know the truth about the Afghan War, do we, courtesy of the 90,000 leaked military documents simultaneously revealed by the UK Guardian, the New York Times and Der Spiegel? Rubbish. Truth is not something that is handed to us on a...
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Even grotesque fantasies should not be criminalised
28 July 2010 - Spiked-Online
In May 2009, Iowa resident Christopher Handley, a collector of comic books, pled guilty to federal charges of importing and possessing obscene cartoon drawings of children; he faced a maximum prison sentence of 15 years, for a crime involving neither actual children nor actual child porn.
A few weeks later, a Tennessee prosecutor charged Michael Wayne Campbell with aggravated sexual...
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Life balance still not working
1 August 2010 - The Age
Almost 10 years after then prime minister John Howard delivered his ''barbecue stopper'' line about the challenge of balancing work and family life, little has changed for most people.
Improvements to parental leave, flexible working hours, telecommuting and job sharing have had little effect on the nation's workplace culture.
In fact, Australians are increasingly dissatisfied...
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Conservatism, too, is relevant to our culture
31 July 2010 - The Australian
A conception of conservatism that is more relevant to Aboriginal Australians is patriotism in adversity: fighting for the survival of one's people, culture and language.
Last week I presented to the Centre for Independent Studies Consilium our argument about the relevance of liberalism to indigenous Australians.
There can be no policy for development that is not founded on the...
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The rich are different from you and me: they are more selfish
29 July 2010 - The Economist
Life at the bottom is nasty, brutish and short. For this reason, heartless folk might assume that people in the lower social classes will be more self-interested and less inclined to consider the welfare of others than upper-class individuals, who can afford a certain noblesse oblige. A recent study, however, challenges this idea. Experiments by Paul Piff and his colleagues at the University...
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Give the poor money
29 July 2010 - The Economist
Conditional-cash transfers are good. They could be even better.
CELIA ORBOC, a cake-seller in the Philippines, spent her little stipend on a wooden shack, giving her five children a roof over their heads for the first time. In Kyrgyzstan Sharmant Oktomanova spent hers buying flour to feed six children. In Haiti President René Préval praises a dairy co-operative that gives...
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Stop vilifying desperate people
10 July 2010 - The Sydney Morning Herald
Julia Gillard wants a dialogue with the Australian people on refugees. That's great, but let's start with the truth. Lies and distortions are the opposition's history. We expected better.
Asylum seekers do not commit any offence by coming here. The Hazaras from Afghanistan, for example, have been persecuted for centuries. In the past few weeks, Hazaras have been summarily executed in...
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Figures debunk the myths
10 July 2010 - The Sydney Morning Herald
Emotion, not reason, is clearly driving the hysteria over the recent increase in the number of asylum seekers arriving by boat. An essentially humanitarian issue has become hopelessly tangled in a broader debate about too-rapid population growth.
It is important to realise that asylum seekers arriving by boat constitute a tiny proportion of the growth in Australia's population.
...
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Money not the key to happiness
10 July 2010 - The Sydney Morning Herald
When it comes to happiness it turns out we are not just comparing ourselves with the Joneses, but the Wongs and the Kumars as well, according to the biggest ever international survey of what makes us happy.
The study, which surveyed 136,000 people in more than 130 countries that account for about 96 per cent of the world's population - found rich people in rich countries were much more...
Salo censors: covering our eyes from the truth of art
21 June 2010 - ABC: The Drum - Unleashed
So now we have yet another attempt to ban Salò, the disturbing masterpiece by Pier Paolo Pasolini which uses DeSade's 1000 Days of Sodom as a kind of map on which to inscribe with a breathtaking brutality and power the atrocity of fascism in Mussolini's Italy.
The film has always terrified people (and with some reason) and it has more or less constantly been the subject of...
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Responsibility goes with the celebrity
21 June 2010 - The Sydney Morning Herald
At my local Coles supermarket recently, I picked up a range of free recipe cards released by Curtis Stone, a regular celebrity guest chef on MasterChef Australia and The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Turning one over, I lost my appetite. On the back, Stone had listed "cage eggs" as an ingredient. Unsurprisingly, animal rights groups are furious over this endorsement.
The recipe...
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The Dalai Lama on violence
21 June 2010 - The Guardian
The Dalai Lama's message for Armed Forces Day may surprise those who assume him to be a pacifist.
The Dalai Lama has sent a message of support for Armed Forces Day, which is next Saturday. In it, he writes of his admiration for the military. That is perhaps not so surprising. As he explains, there are many parallels between being a monk and being a soldier – the need for...
Privacy: The clash of data civilisations
17 June 2010 - The Economist
Sharply differing attitudes towards privacy in Europe and America are a headache for the world’s internet giants.
Watchdogs are growling at the web giants, and sometimes biting them. In May European data-protection agencies wrote to Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! demanding independent proof that they were making promised changes to protect the privacy of users’ search history...
Legalising v decriminalising pot
18 June 2010 - The Economist
There are clear harms entailed in the practice of putting lots of unenforceable or unenforced laws on the books and consigning a significant swathe of your population to the category of lawbreakers. On the one hand, this promotes contempt for the law. On the other hand, it allows police and government to lock up many people at will, since most people are always violating some law or another,...
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Turning-point: The human-genome project
17 June 2010 - The Economist
Ten years after the reading of the human genome, humanity is about to confront its true nature.
The oracle at Delphi had two maxims posted above the entrance to her chamber, for the edification of those who sought her prophecy: “Know thyself” and “Nothing in excess”. Self-knowledge is often the hardest to learn and the least welcome, but the brutal truth is best...
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Why BP is not very slick in an emergency
21 June 2010 - Spiked Online
When companies adhere to the rituals of risk-aversion, they lose sight of how to deal with real emergencies. Now we can see the consequences.
The most important lesson of the tragic Gulf of Mexico oil spill is that the tendency today to dramatise risk creates a climate in which risk management becomes a kind of performance.
At a time when taking risks is seen as culturally...
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Addicted to oil? What a dumb idea
21 June 2010 - Spiked Online
The oil-addiction theorists are really disgusted by the desires of stupid, greedy, uppity consumers.
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We’re addicted to oil. It’s official. The Western world is hooked on the black stuff and Americans are the biggest energy junkies of them all.
This oft-quoted, little-criticised idea has been around for years, but...
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Bloody Sunday: history reduced to psychodrama
16 June 2010 - Spiked-Online
The inquiry report into the Derry massacre rips events from their historical context: the conflict between Irish nationalists and the British state.
‘It is often said that Irish people pay too much attention to history. This is not true. Irish people pay very little attention to history.’ Eamonn McCann, War and an Irish Town
The report of the Bloody Sunday inquiry and...
Prosecuting Bloody Sunday troops poses a dilemma for peace
17 June 2010 - The Sydney Morning Herald
There can be justice or there can be peace, but rarely can there be both.
How do you measure the impact of a word that was 38 years in coming? Some have tried to weigh it, noting that Lord Saville's report into the Bloody Sunday massacre in Northern Ireland is a full 20 kilograms on the scales. Others have tried to measure it in time, pointing out that it took 12 years for the Law Lord...
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Abandoning Andy Muirhead: ABC's act of betrayal
15 June 2010 - ABC: The Drum - Unleashed
The ABC's reaction to the news that one of its employees Andy Muirhead has been charged with an offence allegedly involving child pornography is disturbing on a number of levels.
On Friday the national broadcaster issued a statement indicating Muirhead "will not present the Collectors on ABC TV or the breakfast program on ABC Local Radio in Tasmania pending the outcome of the legal...
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NSW ethics blue (not State of Origin)
7 June 2010 - The Sydney Morning Herald
In NSW, traditionally religion has been taught in state schools through an optional opportunity to attend an hour of tuition in various religions taught by volunteers.
Sounds excruciating to me, but evidently it is quite popular, presumably with parents. The anecdotal evidence is that 75 per cent of kids do the Special Religious Education (''SRE''). I think this is a great thing as...
Catholics try new tack in ethics row
8 June 2010 - The Sydney Morning Herald
The Catholic Church has joined the chorus of religious voices opposing the trial of ethics classes in schools.
It has organised a petition arguing that the classes should not be held ''in competition'' with scripture because it means religious children miss out on ethics.
This latest protest, which the Baptist and Uniting churches have also joined, takes a different tack to...
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Anglicans take ethics course battle to P&Cs
9 June 2010 - The Sydney Morning Herald
The Anglican Church is encouraging Christians to join school P&C committees in order to ''branch stack'' them with people who will speak up for religious education over the secular ethics classes being trialled in NSW primary schools.
The Anglican website created to argue the case for scripture classes includes a page entitled ''Whose P&C is it again?''. It states P&Cs may...
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Class: the issue no one wants to talk about
1 June 2010 - The Sydney Morning Herald
Class is the hidden issue in the mining tax battle.
The Rudd government is yet to collect a cent from its proposed mining profits tax, but by raising the spectre of class before the election, it's sure to pay dividends.
There was a time when class distinctions were simply part of political reality in Australia. Many people identified as "working class" or "middle...
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World must take a stand against Israel
2 June 2010 - The Australian
Israel's murder of the human rights activists on the MV Samoud on Monday brings into focus its policy of disregard for human lives and disrespect for international laws and conventions. This policy has been a product of world apathy to the plight of the Palestinians and US blanket support for Israeli actions.
The policy, best described as "shoot first and explain later", is...
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Grotesque theatre succeeded brilliantly
2 June 2010 - The Australian
This may turn out to be a pivotal moment in the Middle East.
Not because of the loss of life, which was tragic, but alas not uncommon in the Middle East.
Not because of the public relations disaster for Israel.
The Jewish state was sucker-punched by demonstrators determined to provoke an ugly Israeli reaction and international PR disaster.
By beating Israeli sailors...
Military might not all Israel needs to survive
2 June 2010 - The Australian
The Jewish state must reassure the world it wants peace.
In boarding vessels intent on breaking the Gaza blockade the Israeli military has done the Jewish state a great deal of harm. Hamas, the terrorist organisation that controls Gaza, cannot hope to destroy Israel by military means. But by isolating Israel diplomatically it can weaken its ability to defend its interests everywhere...
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A cynical and politically motivated media stunt
2 June 2010 - The Sydney Morning Herald
The tragic events off Gaza remind us there are still those who seek to manipulate humanitarian needs for extremist ends. The situation is ongoing, but several facts are clear. The flotilla organisers' intent was violent, the methods employed were violent and, regrettably, the result was violent.
The attack on the Israeli soldiers aboard the Mavi Marmara was premeditated. The number of...
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A deadly act of state-sponsored terrorism
2 June 2010 - The Sydney Morning Herald
Dov Weisglass, an adviser to a former Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, once compared the approach to Palestinians as like putting them on a diet. Israel needed to make the Palestinians lose weight, but not starve to death.
He wasn't wrong. Successive Israeli governments have done their best to ensure the Palestinians, particularly in Gaza, continue to suffer immeasurably.
...
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Gaza flotilla: Why the blockade makes sense for Israel
1 June 2010 - Christian Science Monitor
Until Hamas accepts Israel’s right to exist and stops launching rocket attacks, Israel may have to continue the Gaza blockade.
The activists aboard the Gaza flotilla that was raided by Israeli security forces Monday may have believed that breaking the Gaza blockade was at its core forcing Israel to address an issue the activists see as moral blindness. Yet the situation is far...
Israel reveals its true face
31 May 2010 - The Guardian
This will count. A flotilla of relief boats attacked in international waters. Armed commandos boarding a vessel carrying supplies for a besieged civilian population. More than 10 peace activists reported killed. This has to be made to count.
The dead have joined Rachel Corrie, Tom Hurndall, James Miller and Brian Avery in giving up their lives for the Palestinians. None of these young...
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Gay rights need to be universal
1 June 2010 - The Sydney Morning Herald
As Western gays fight for marriage rights, some in less accepting countries are fighting for their lives. The two young men from Malawi sentenced to jail for the "crime" of loving each other were pardoned at the weekend after intense international pressure and a personal plea from UN Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon.
The episode highlights the ideological divide between...
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We have little tolerance for gays seeking asylum
25 May 2010 - The Sydney Morning Herald
Last week a court in Malawi sentenced a gay couple who staged a same-sex wedding to 14 years in prison with hard labour for "violating the natural order". Magistrate Nyakwawa Usiwa told the two men that he was handing down a particularly "scaring sentence so that the public [would] be protected from people like you, so that we are not tempted to emulate this horrendous example...
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Calls for internet access to be enshrined as a fundamental right
30 May 2010 - The Sydney Morning Herald
Internet use has become so woven into everyday life that some technology experts say online access should be legally protected, even to the point of considering it a human right.
''It's a social inclusion question,'' said Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre executive director David Vaile, who is alarmed film and music companies have sought to require internet service providers to...
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Why the News of the World was right to expose the Duchess of York
24 May 2010 - The Guardian
After two stories built around subterfuge without a genuine public interest (John Higgins and Lord Triesman) comes a third that, on balance, justifies the use of entrapment.
I refer to the News of the World's exposure yesterday of the Duchess of York, who may well gain yet another nickname, this time as the Duchess of Pork Barrel.
The NoW tale, Fergie 'sells' Andy for £500k...
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Why shouldn't Fergie sell access to Prince Andrew?
24 May 2010 - The Guardian
Flogging influence for cash is an ancient practice in business, and the Windsors have hardly paid for the Duchess's silence.
Fergie's in trouble again. She's reliable like that, more so than other members of the royal periphery, and a good target for a sting. When she's in the news, the news is bad news. And bad news for royalty means good news for newspapers.
As usual, she has...
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