Conniptions

Why Australia is the happiest country

Fri, 25 May 2012 06:38:54 GMT

Hi there, Yesterday I read that Australia is the happiest country in the OECD, thanks to being quite a long way from Europe and its financial woes, somewhat closer to China, which consumes much of the Lucky Country’s booming mineral production, and having nearly full employment, which has a lot to do with mining and China. There are other factors too. An interesting one is that Australian men, believe it or not, spend nearly three hours every day cooking, cleaning or caring—one of the highest scores across the OECD's 34 member countries and ahead of men in the U.S., Germany and Canada. But the most important reason of all -- scandalously overlooked in the OECD Better Life survey -- is all the New Zealanders living in Oz, more than 600,000 of us. And they like us so much over there that they’ve been over here the past week or so recruiting more of our workers to dig up iron ore etc. I shouldn’t repeat this, but a former Prime Minister once said that the Kiwis who went to Australia raised the IQ on both sides of the Tasman. Sorry, sorry, it’s not true. I lived over there myself for a few years, so it can’t be. I mean it can't be true that it lowered the IQ in NZ... Oh, never mind. Take-home message: Kiwis and Aussies are absolutely best friends; we just have a funny way of showing it sometimes. George Friedman has an interesting analysis of Australia this week. This is one of the things he says: Think of Australia as a creature whose primary circulatory system is outside of its body. Such a creature would be extraordinarily vulnerable and would have to develop unique defense mechanisms. This challenge has guided Australian strategy. Sounds weird but makes a lot of sense if you read the article. Also today: Stephen Heaney, an American philosophy professor, conducts an intriguing “thought experiment” that is very helpful in explaining why same-sex “marriage” doesn’t make sense. Michael Cook asks some pertinent questions about using high-risk technology to save the environment. And Margaret Somerville finds the sacred unexpectedly bubbling up through the Canadian press. Sheila Liaugminas is away for a break in the mountains but if you are not yet aware of the Catholic Church’s big lawsuit against the Obama administration, check her blog. On Conjugality Michael Kirke notes that David Cameron may have to allow a conscience vote on the definition of marriage. A post on Tiger Print, “The norm of cohabitation”, has drawn a lot of interest. On Demography, Marcus Roberts writes about a wonderful programme in India that is making a real difference to women’s lives. And on Reading Matters Jennifer Minicus reminds us of a classic children’s book set in the Middle Ages -- the sort of thing I just loved as a youngster. Happy reading, Read more...

Editorial demands

Tue, 22 May 2012 07:12:53 GMT

Hi there, When I cannot think of pertinent and pithy observations to make in the newsletter about nature, society and stuff that happens, I fall back on common threads in the week’s stories. Often these appear by accident rather than by design, as editing is an inexact science. Regimenting contributors is like herding cats, at least the way we do it. The New York Times has some faults, but at least it manages to line up five distinguished writers on a single topic! So this week’s first theme is the natural law and morality. Douglas Farrow, from Canada, argues that the attitude of the Canadian parliament to abortion suggests that the link between law and morality has been severed in public discourse. And from South Australia, Zac Alstin makes a persuasive argument for the existence of an objective morality by drawing on the writings of the ancient Chinese sages. You may have noticed a slight (and temporary) derangement of the MercatorNet layout. I have made my film debut in a short YouTube video. As you might suspect, I am rattling the tin cup for MercatorNet as part of our May fund-raising drive. It is a good cause, I believe, so please consider a donation. Another of our articles is a review by Harley J. Sims of two movies by Joss Whedon. One of them, “The Cabin in the Woods”, he says, is a groundbreaking horror film. Is there a thread here? No doubt some readers will say there is… Finally, Mary Cooney reviews a warm-hearted book about a Jewish family with four children who adopted five more from Romania and Ethiopia. Cheers, Read more...

Murphy’s law strikes again

Fri, 18 May 2012 09:53:26 GMT

Hi there, It's a version of Murphy's Law, I believe. You are running late with something and then the technology lets you down as well. That’s what happened when I tried to send this newsletter last night; the website we use for mailing has changed the user interface and I couldn’t make head or tail of it. So, with the editor’s help, here we go again… There is a theme running through several of our most recent articles -- communication. It’s partly because there has been one of those “World Day of…” anniversaries that the UN sprinkles liberally through the calendar, and because communicating is our core business at MercatorNet. In fact, it’s our only business. Kevin de Souza, an educator who lives in Mumbai, has written a great, practical guide to using the social media, and I have ruminated on the need for silence to enrich our verbal exchanges -- a theme I owe to Pope Benedict in his Letter for World Communications Day (Sunday). Denyse O’Leary surveys the sport of psychologising political opinion, something in which certain scientists and media hacks seem to be in cahoots. Perhaps I shouldn’t say “hacks”; as Sheila Liaugminas reminds us in her post on interviewing Rwandan genocide survivor Immaculee Ilibagiza, when we belittle others in word we don’t do ourselves any favours either. Still, a brouhaha over Filipino boxer Manny Pacquiao this week came down to a combination of inaccurate reporting and reckless blogging and tweeting that showed how easily the media can destroy a person’s reputation. See Michael Cook’s post on Conjugality. George Friedman this week asks whether France’s new Socialist president Francois Hollande will play the Gaullist hand. (Isn’t it odd that a French president should be called “Holland”…) In other blogs: Demography has Bollywood coming to the rescue of Indian girl children; Tiger Print gives the thumbs down to political point scoring over First Lady fashion; and Reading Matters has more good books. Cheers, Read more...

101 books Gen Ys must read before they die

Tue, 15 May 2012 14:27:22 GMT

Hi there, I have a confession to make which I have struggled to keep secret for a number of years. It is this: for a long, long time, Moby Dick was The Best Novel Ever Written. With animal rights activists sabotaging the activities of the Japanese whaling fleet nowadays, it’s no longer a fashionable opinion. But I think that I read it seven times before finishing up as an undergraduate. The opening and closing sentences are etched on my memory and I still dream about “Call me Ishmael” and “I alone am left to tell the tale”. An important qualification is for a TBNEW is bulk. You can hardly describe a 256-page book as a TBNEW. No one in their right mind is going to believe that. So after falling out of love with Moby Dick, I moved from oceans to heaths and Wuthering Heights became TBNEW, followed by Kristen Lavransdatter, Crime and Punishment, David Copperfield, Dr Zhivago, The Leopard, I Promessi Sposi, The Third Policeman and Brideshead Revisited. I am currently battling my way through The Magic Mountain, but despite promising back-cover blurbs, I don’t think that it will make the grade. I say all this to give some perspective on our lead article this week – a list of the 101 books that Gen Y must read. I have been cursed with a liking for long and boring novels, but our list contains only short and interesting ones. So we’d appreciate your advice and comments. Pass it on to your friends and see what they think. Another article this week also deals with literature. In a thought-provoking review of Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel The Marriage Plot, Mark Bauerlein asks if the decline of marriage is paralleled by the decline of the novel. Finally, Anthony J. Caruso, a former IVF specialist, warns that IVF is not necessarily the answer to women’s fertility problems and Michael Coren reviews a nasty exhibit in Canada’s premier science museum. Cheers, Read more...

Happy Mother’s Day!

Fri, 11 May 2012 05:33:17 GMT

Hi there, On Sunday a large swathe of the world’s nations, from Anguilla to Zimbabwe, celebrate Mother’s Day. It is a day on which ageing baby boomers such as myself can’t help feeling a little orphaned as we remember mums who have gone to their eternal, and richly deserved, rest. It’s almost 10 years to the day since my own mother died at the age of 94 and still, on such days, I miss having her around to make a fuss of. Sometimes, it’s only when our parents have gone that the enormous truth of what we owe them fully dawns on us and we wish we had more years in which to show them affection, more appreciation of the hardship they endured for us, and more gratitude. At the same time I am glad my mum checked out of Planet Earth (and even earlier, the evening news) before the same-sex marriage movement reached its present ascendancy. I’m sure it would have shaved a few years off her life to see a couple of gay men carrying “their [baby] twins” down the street, as we saw in a bulletin last night. What will Mother’s Day mean to these poor little mites as they grow up? Will their surrogate still be around? Will their lesbian “aunties” do the honours? And have President Obama’s daughters, for whom, he says, the “denial of marriage rights to same-sex couples ‘doesn’t make sense’”, been asked to imagine what it would like to have two guys as parents? Remember, "after marriage the baby carriage" -- and even before. Let’s hope all those who secretly consider this sort of thing madness begin to speak up and vote on this critical issue for the future of marriage and family life. In our articles this end of the week, Robert Reilly follows the twists and turns of Obama’s “evolution” on this question. Zac Alstin looks calmly at the “reductio ad Hitlerum” argument. George Friedman looks at how President Putin needs to operate in Europe now that the days of being buddies with people like Silvio Berlusconi are over. And David Cortman deals with some common arguments against the public role of religion. Don’t forget, there is much vital information and incisive comment in the blog posts -- see in particular Sheila’ Liaugminas’ post on First Lady fashion, and Clare Cannon’s latest video review of children books. Happy Mother’s Day to all concerned (you know who you are -- until the marriage-parenting perplex evolves further). And thanks again, Mum. Read more...

The paradoxes of abortion

Tue, 08 May 2012 13:52:33 GMT

Hi there, This week’s Tuesday newsletter deals largely with abortion. This outburst has been provoked by a ground-breaking paper in a leading journal by a Chilean academic who studies medical statistics, Elard Koch. He reaches two very interesting conclusions after dissecting the figures for maternal health in his country. First, that the figures for maternal mortality do not rise if abortion is illegal. Second, paradoxically, they do rise when women are better educated. This shatters two sacred cows: that abortion is a necessary component of women’s health and that “having it all” – an education and a career followed by 1.5 children – comes without a big price tag. It is a controversial study which deserves to be widely reported and commented on. I believe that we are the first publication in the world to report the findings. Carolyn Moynihan has written a commentary and Elard Koch explains some of the results in an interview. On a similar note, Margaret Somerville discusses the peculiar state of Canada’s abortion law – there is none. And I review a book by a Canadian philosopher which asks whether it is ethical to have children. Finally, Constance Kong argues that the Obama Administration’s handling of the two Chinese who recently asked for asylum has been shameful. Cheers, Read more...

Eyes on Chen

Fri, 04 May 2012 12:08:54 GMT

Hi there, I have been writing today about a dark kind of picture created a century ago and sold this week for US$120 million, possibly to Middle Eastern royalty. But the thing I am really interested in right now is what is happening to the blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng and his family. The Economist asks in an editorial today, “did America’s best diplomats let a brave man down?” The paper says Mrs Clinton boasted that Mr Chen left the US embassy “in a way that reflected his choices and our values”. I hope she did not mean her government’s values regarding unborn life and fertility, because that would spell doom for Chen. Our lead article today is by a new contributor, Canadian Harley Sims, who makes a very interesting comparison between two different approaches to the fantasy genre. Alex Perrottet writes from Fiji about the way even democratic governments cramp the style of journalists (it was World Press Freedom Day yesterday); Mariette Ulrich fires off a salvo against those who don’t think mothers at home work; and George Friedman points out that Britain is nicely positioned to jump either way should the US or Europe prove to be the better bet. We are appealing for funds this week and the initial response has been good. Thanks for your support, and enjoy the weekend. Read more...

Local heroes

Tue, 01 May 2012 14:31:33 GMT

In a land of a billion people, there are sure to be many heroes. But it must be hard to find anyone who beats Chen Guangcheng, the blind campaigner against China’s draconian one-child policy, for sheer grit and intelligence. He has defied jail, beatings, and thuggery to defend the rights of women who are forcibly aborted and sterilized. We salute his courage in today’s lead article. Chen is making world headlines at the moment, even though both the Chinese and US governments probably wish that that he had stayed in his village weaving baskets. Less well-known are local heroes who are prepared to go to jail for their ideals. Liz Preston’s husband Graham is one of those. She writes about his experience in our second feature. In our other two articles, Phil Elias discusses the bizarre world of justifications for same-sex marriage and Martin Shaw asks whether the Obama Administration is sincere in its vow to fight atrocities around the globe. Throughout May we will be running a fund-raising campaign for MercatorNet. Please consider whether you can help out! Cheers, Read more...

Recurring themes

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 10:52:33 GMT

Hi there, There are two things I would like to stop writing about, at least for a few weeks; they are the United States of America and sex. America, because it seems presumptuous to sit in Auckland, New Zealand, and opine on problems (usually) that only Americans themselves can tackle. Sex, because, well, my ideas on the subject are quite limited and I don’t like to repeat myself. Today, alas, I found myself writing about both subjects again -- in the same article! My excuse is that US news dominates the global village, and often, as in the present case of the Secret Service agents misbehaviour in Colombia, it is only NZ/Australian/British issues writ large. Still, next week I will have a go at oil fracking in the North Sea (or wherever they do it) or the first wedding anniversary of Prince William and Kate, or the question of whether Peter Jackson’s new digital technique for filming The Hobbit is a success or a flop. I do hope it’s a success because that would be one Important Thing that happened in New Zealand rather than you know where… Actually, our other articles at this end of the week extend our scope considerably. Phillip Elias looks at the question of Anders Breivik’s sanity and George Friedman writes about Russia’s plan to recover its lost dominance on the world scene. (I was looking at a map yesterday to locate Lithuania -- see Family Edge post -- and could hardly believe how small Russia appeared.) And Zac Alstin takes us into the realm of philosophy where he explains the finer points of the argumentum ad hominem. I hope you enjoy today’s reading. Read more...

The darkness of Anzac Day

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 13:51:25 GMT

Hi there, Tomorrow, as assiduous readers of this newsletter all know, is Anzac Day in Down Under. I would love to go, as it is the quintessence of Australian patriotism and no rain is forecast. But tomorrow begins in five minutes and attending a Dawn Service at 4.25am will take more energy than I can muster. Sorry about that, guys. However, let me recall a Dawn Service I attended in Hobart a few years ago. As always, I walked with hundreds of others through the dark to the Cenotaph on a frosty morning. There was silence as people listened respectfully to a memorial service delivered by an elderly Protestant minister. He gave a short and eloquent address about the heroes who had died for Australia which managed to make everyone, both religious and secular, happy. There was something quite eccentric about his delivery, though. Every couple of paragraphs there was an pause. It only lasted long enough to remind all of us how cold we were, but it was slightly embarrassing. Then he would embark upon another burst before lapsing into silence again. Finally, he concluded with an Amen and a reverent silence. He added a personal note. In a quavering voice he said that this had been his last Anzac Day service. He was 85 now and had done it for 30-odd years. Time to pass the baton on to someone else. And then he apologised for those pauses. “It was so cold,” he said, “I had to blow on my fingers so that I could keep on reading.” Suddenly it dawned on me: the old minister was blind and had been reading in Braille with his frozen fingers. You find heroism in the most unexpected places… Before I forget, along with MercatorNet in Spanish, there is also MercatorNet in Italian. Only a few articles have been translated, but I am delighted that someone esteems them enough to bring them to the attention of speakers of other languages. So far this week we have posted three articles. I have made some comments about the trial of Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian mass murderer. David J. Peterson analyses how Mitt Romney managed to secure the Republican nomination, and Jennifer Roback Morse argues that the state needs to be involved in marriage to protect the rights of children. On the blogs, Marcus Roberts has a hilarious deconstruction of lamentations in the New York Times about Nigerian over-population. Sheila Liaugminas reflects upon the inspiring legacy of Chuck Colson, the Nixon aide who went to jail and became a born-again Christian. And in Family Edge there is a stirring Proctor & Gamble ad about “the hardest job in the world”. Not surprisingly, it is timed for Mother’s Day. Cheers, Read more...

More books for the bin

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 06:21:58 GMT

Hi there, I have to apologise for the rather unpleasant subject matter of the article I posted today. When I read in my local paper last Saturday that 10,000 copies of a porn novel called Fifty Shades of Grey had gone on sale in mainstream New Zealand bookshops I felt my hackles rising. I then thought about ignoring it; then again it seemed important to strike a blow against what appears to be a concerted effort to drag women en masse into the global multi-billion-dollar porn industry. So there it is. Sorry. Thankfully, we have something really edifying to close the week as well -- an interview Michael Cook conducted with Chicago doctor Anthony J Caruso, who quit working in the field of IVF after 15 years because of a change of heart. Leaving one’s professional niche for moral reasons must be very difficult, especially today when everything, including porn, is tolerated except a person’s conscience. So, good on you Dr Caruso. George Friedman writes this week about the re-emergence of Turkey to a significance it hasn’t had for a hundred years - since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. There are new posts, too, on Conjugality (David Cameron copping flak from left and right), Family Edge (Melinda Gates’ crusade for global contraception), Reading Matters (The Yearling), Demography (ageing) and Careful! (Mickey Rooney on elder abuse). I think that’s all. See links below. Cheers, Read more...

My excursion to Macquarie Park

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 06:24:35 GMT

Hi there, Once a month I take the train for 18 relaxing minutes to Macquarie Park, a railway station which services a large industrial estate. Politicians once promised that this would become the fourth largest business district in Australia. Fortunately, promises and politicians seldom mix. I nearly always have the vast, spotless, brand spanking new underground station to myself. No one is entering. No one is exiting. The attendants sit in their cubbyholes and chat quietly on mobile phones. Business at the kiosk is quiet. Everything is quiet. I have sung the praises of this station before and I am no longer bruised by derisory “get a life” comments. I do not shrink from admitting that I look forward to taking the Macquarie Park escalators. If I have time to spare, I go up and down twice. There are two sets of them placed in serene symmetry on either side of Lane Cove Road. How often do you get a chance to be the only person on two-stage escalators slowly ferrying you up, up and up 10 storeys to the distant sunlight? I get a thrill out of pretending to be the solitary figure dwarfed by those towering angular buildings in Jeffrey Smart’s paintings. But it’s time to insert a moral somewhere to justify rabbiting on like this. At MercatorNet we do tend to grumble about how technology can dehumanise society. This is even a theme that I touch upon briefly in my article on the Pope’s birthday. But technology can project a haunting beauty as well, a beauty that too often is overlooked. Much to my surprise, no one else has ever rhapsodised about Macquarie Park Railway Station. Once again, you read it first in MercatorNet. In our other articles, Suzy Ismail explains Islam’s respect for unborn life and Alistair Nicholas asks whether Hollywood really has a sense of corporate responsibility. Cheers, Read more...

What to do with an old book?

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 05:06:03 GMT

Hi there, Recently I made one of my periodic attempts to purge the collection, or rather, accumulation of books occupying a significant portion of the basement and other parts of our house. These efforts usually come to a standstill as soon as I discover one of those tomes I have always meant to read but never have. This time it was -- I almost blush at its irrelevance to the issues of the day -- Antonia Fraser’s Mary Queen of Scots, a thick, yellowing paperback printed more than four decades ago -- when it cost a mere 75p in the UK and $2.25 in New Zealand. It is not a handsome volume by any standard and the small print is rather hard on the eyes, but the content is fascinating. What happens to it next, is the question. I fear there is no future for an old paperback other than the recycle bin. Anyone still interested in MQOS can get in on their very reader-friendly Kindle for US$9.99 from Amazon -- or from the library stacks for nothing. The e-reader is clearly the future for accessing books both new and old and I feel myself about to be swept up by this juggernaut. The price alone is compelling -- and let me remind you that MercatorNet’s own first e-book, a collection of articles on same-sex marriage, is available on Amazon for only $2.99. Buy now, and hone your arguments for this ongoing debate! Musty paperbacks we can certainly do without, but beautifully produced volumes of classics? Surely we can still find space for some of these works of art in our homes -- and there are still people who love the craft of book making enough to produce them. Matthew Mehan, our US contributing editor, discovered a lovely short film of a book being made the traditional way at a bindery in England, and, since the video is not in a format we can show on MercatorNet, you may like to view it on the Telegraph site. It’s a real treat to see something being produced with such precision and loving care. From books to articles, roast dinners to packed lunches (but very nutritious ones): James Cole today wonders why President Obama’s concern about judicial activism vis-à-vis his health reforms does not extend to much more important examples; Jennifer Roback Morse has figured out why it is so difficult to debate with gays and feminists; Mariette Ulrich suggests that over-stretched parents make some tough decisions; and George Friedman looks at Iran’s regional role, including in Syria. Cheers, Read more...

Easter holiday special

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 12:04:32 GMT

Hi there, Sorry about this, but in mad rush. Slept in over holiday and all that. Wanted 2 hit Easter button w. comments on Richard Dawkins debating Australian cardinal, but got so interesting it morphed into article. No good 4 newsletter. Found replacement: “Why We Should Call Ourselves Christians: The Religious Roots of Free Societies” by philosopher Marcelo Pera, former president of Italian senate. Atheist, BTW. Interesting contrast with RD. “If we remove the Christian underpinnings from human rights, not only will liberal doctrine collapse, but Western civilisation will fall along with it.” Similar sentiments from atheists here and here. Dawkins & Co sounding more & more isolated, extreme & eccentric. Oh well. Other gr8 MNet articles: G. Friedman on Israel’s strategic dilemma; José H. Gomez on America’s forgotten Hispanic heritage; Nathan Schlueter critiques libertarianism. Most impressive & must read: a fresh look at origins of autism by Matt Hanley. Must run. Enjoy! Read more...

Springtime in Burma

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 07:04:21 GMT

Hi there, It’s not often that the foreign pages feature good news. But the April 1 election in Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) may herald a new beginning for a country which has suffered for decades under an secretive military dictatorship. The heroine of this is the graceful and dignified leader of the opposition, Aung San Suu Kyi, a woman who has endured imprisonment and house arrest without rancour but with indomitable perseverance. She won the Nobel Peace Prize as long ago as 1991. But she has had to wait until now to see significant progress. Her party, the National League for Democracy, has won at least 40 of the 45 seats it contested in a by-election for the nation’s parliament. Although this is only a sliver of the 664 seats, the result suggests that the retired generals who run the country are doomed if they hold a fair and free general election. Even in victory Aung San Suu Kyi has been restrained and modest. She told her cheering supporters to "take special care that the success of the people is a dignified one." In a world where commitment is in crisis, she is committed, passionately, to her country’s freedom. I found her words in last year’s BBC Reith Lecture, very moving: “Passion translates as suffering and I would contend that in the political context, as in the religious one, it implies suffering by choice: a deliberate decision to grasp the cup that we would rather let pass. It is not a decision made lightly -- we do not enjoy suffering; we are not masochists. It is because of the high value we put on the object of our passion that we are able, sometimes in spite of ourselves, to choose suffering.” There will be no second newsletter this week because of the Easter holiday. We wish all our readers a very happy Easter! We will continue to post articles, so stay in touch. So far this week, Francis Phillips wonders if Alain de Botton’s new book on spirituality for atheists is an aesthete’s joke; a British psychiatrist, Pravin Thevathasan, asks why his colleagues are ignoring post-abortion trauma; and Derek Miedema urges governments to get out of the gambling business. I almost forgot. Because same-sex marriage is such a big issue in so many countries, we have published an anthology of MercatorNet articles on Amazon. You can download it for only US$2.99. Just click here. A special thank-you, too, to Nicci Loader, who retired this week after working hard behind the scenes as MercatorNet’s marketing manager. She has been a great help in drawing much more traffic to the website. Happy Easter! Read more...

Down with the revolution!

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 09:29:29 GMT

Hi there, All revolutions, it seems to me, have an aura of heroism about them, whether they deserve it or not. The French revolution, the American revolution, the Russian revolution, the Prague Spring, the Arab Spring… Even the industrial revolution, despite all the nasty things it did to people and the countryside, retains the character of a great leap forward in human development. Despite the terrible blood-letting that came with the French and Russian upheavals, for example, the end -- getting rid of tyrants -- is held to justify the means. It is a bit like that with the sexual revolution that began with the advent of the contraceptive pill -- the subject of my article today. Feminists seized on the opportunity to escape the tyranny of their own bodies but soon they found it necessary to claim the right to kill the children who were “misconceived” anyway. Other, ongoing human misery can be traced to this revolution as well, but still it retains its heroic status in the minds of leading men and women. Luckily for Americans events in the US have lifted the lid off this taboo subject, but it’s a debate we need to have everywhere. One important reason for that can be seen in the article by David and Amber Lapp, a young American couple who are doing qualitative research (for the Institute for American Values) into how working class young adults in one small Ohio town form families. It is a sadly haphazard process, as you might guess, although the young men and women have some good values. The sexual revolution has not done this class any favours. In our other articles, Margaret Somerville writes on a report from a legislative committee in Quebec that reads like a pro-euthanasia manifesto, not an unbiased study. And George Friedman writes about the US’ policy regarding North Korea - a strange policy for a very strange country. On the blogs: Conjugality has some positive news from Slovenia. Family Edge focuses on thrift. Sheila Liaugminas has updates on resistance to the White House contraceptive mandate. Reading Matters has new book reviews. Demography has some incisive observations on the Population Under Pressure Conference held this week in London. Tiger Print has a great series going on social media. Careful comments on the Quebec report on euthanasia. And BioEdge reports that sperm donors must soon have to identify themselves in Victoria, Australia. Golly, that’s quite a list. Cheers, Read more...

Your humble servant

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 12:18:34 GMT

Journalists and politicians are normally at loggerheads but one quality they share is scads of humility. I’m something of an expert myself and I recognised it in Campbell Newman, the man who led the Queensland Liberal National Party to one of the biggest victories in Australian history over the weekend. He reduced the governing Labor Party from 51 to 7 seats -- in the state which gave the world its first Labor government back in 1899. And he had never even been a member of Parliament. It was quite an achievement. True to form, he declared in his victory speech that “we will conduct ourselves with humility, grace and dignity”. The odd thing about political humility is that it is more evident at the beginning of a term than at the end. President Obama, for instance, was “humbled by the task before us” in his inaugural speech. Not many months later it was with “great humility” that he received a Nobel Peace Prize. As their careers draw to a close, however, most politicians feel more humbled than humble. Good luck to Mr Newman and Mr Obama. One exception to this was Joseph Stalin. I have been reading a history of Communism and I stumbled across this gem. Apparently the “Gardener of Human Happiness” and “Father of Nations” was asked to edit his own biography late in his life, a task which he did with great relish. He even added the following paragraph: "Although he performed his tasks as leader of the party and the people with consummate skill, and enjoyed the unreserved support of the entire Soviet people, Stalin never allowed his work to be marred by the slightest hint of vanity, conceit or self-adulation." On second thought, perhaps the really dangerous politicians are the ones who begin as men of humility and end as paragons of humility. Only journalists are allowed to do that. So far this week, we have posted four articles. Béatrice Stevenson reviews the state of Christianophobia in Europe. In a special feature on the regulation of abortion, Margaret Somerville questions whether most women have truly given informed consent and I ask whether the British government is taking its regulatory task seriously. Finally, Denyse O’Leary reviews a best-seller which gives a dark picture of America’s white working class. Cheers, Read more...

My fair country

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 04:50:52 GMT

Hi there, Stories featuring New Zealand in the international press are usually about one of three things: football, a natural disaster like the Christchurch earthquakes, or a change of government. So it was a pleasant surprise to find an article in the Washington Post that drew attention to a more elevated aspect of our national life. It was a review of a book by American historian David Hackett Fischer in which he compares the core values of New Zealand and the United States, finding that, while Americans cherish freedom above all else, we Kiwis have organised our society around fairness. To be honest, you don’t have too many options when you are a couple of islands adrift in the South Pacific with a total population (currently 4.4 million) about the size of a medium sized city in global terms. For most of our history we have been like a big family where the members have to look after each other if we are all going to have a fighting chance of survival. I mean, the alternative is a take-over by Australia, a country quite a few of us like to live in with the proviso that we can always toddle off home when we are tired of it. However, there are many Kiwis right now -- mainly academics, journalists and politicians -- who would hotly contest the idea that ours is still a fair society. The papers are full of complaints about growing inequality, the stinginess of those running our fabled Accident Compensation Commission, the government’s ingratiating attitude to Russian and American billionaires who want to build galumphing great mansions in remote and pristine bays… In the end, though, there’s a certain amount of fairness we simply can’t avoid. We all have a very good chance of getting thoroughly wet when we go out because the rain falls not only down but horizontally, driven from every quarter by the wind, and rendering umbrellas completely useless. We are all about the same distance from Disneyland and Buckingham Palace - i.e. a very long way. And none of us (well, almost none) can afford to eat New Zealand lamb any more. Fair go! Our articles at this end of the week: Zac Alstin asks whether critics of slippery slope arguments have a point; Paul Adams reviews an important new book on the sexual revolution; Carson Holloway looks at the ethics of voting when the major parties both promote grave evils; Dominic Perrottet, an Australian MP, calls for a change of heart towards people with Down syndrome; and George Friedman clarifies the issues at stake in America’s long wars against terrorism. Since this letter is overlong, just one highlight from the blogs -- an important post on Conjugality about a European Court of Human Rights decision on same-sex marriage. Cheers, Read more...

No appetite for The Hunger Games

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 11:44:50 GMT

Hi there, We have an innovation this week – our first video article. Clare Cannon, of Portico Books, in Sydney, analyses The Hunger Games, a film which could be bigger than Twilight or Harry Potter. However, Clare is not impressed with its violence, cruelty and sensuality and explains why she doesn’t recommend it in her YouTube video. We hope to post more video talks and lectures on MercatorNet, as they are a pretty effective way of making a point. If anyone out there is a dab hand at editing film and wants to volunteer, please get in touch. In other features this week, ethicist Margaret Somerville discusses the “amazement, wonder and awe” with which we should experience life. This is actually a controversial position, as many philosophers think that nothing is mysterious and nothing deserves to be treated with awe. Chief among these are utilitarians, a crowd whom I criticise in my own contribution. Utilitarian bioethicists have recently been responsible for two embarrassingly loopy academic articles which have brought the whole profession of bioethics into disrepute. Rounding off this week’s newsletter is some good news from Washington state, where a court has protected pharmacists’ freedom to refuse to sell contraceptives. It was a small but significant win, writes Cristina Alarcon. Cheers, Read more...

Kony 2012 revisted

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 10:32:10 GMT

Hi there, The Kony 2012 video remains, to date, one of the wonders of the cyber-world, so we thought it deserved a more diverse treatment than it received in Michael’s newsletter on Tuesday. Today we have the results of a 24-hour exercise aimed at getting perspectives from Uganda, the scene of the Kony drama, and from younger people where possible. I can’t vouch for the age of all three contributors to our Kony forum, and none of them live in Uganda. But Nwachukwu Egbunike lives in Nigeria, which is certainly a lot closer to pulse of African response to the video, while Alex Perottet and Nicole van Heerden, both of whom live in Auckland, have youth on their side. I think you will find their views well worth pondering. Controversies over religious topics surface in Joanna Bogle’s piece on a mad decision by the British government to lend its weight to the petty persecution of Christian employees who want to wear crosses, and in my piece on a rather nasty advertisement in the New York Times attacking the Catholic Church. Stephen J Heaney’s essay, published in partnership with The Public Discourse, looks at these disputes from the point of view of politicians who dither and warns that they won’t always have dither-room. And George Friedman raises the spectre of a German-Russian alliance. (Perhaps “spectre” is too pessimistic; it might do Russia a lot of good.) There are lots of good things in the blogs, about books, feeding the world, fashion, silence, and yes, same-sex marriage and the HHS mandate. Can't get away from those two, I'm afraid. Cheers, Read more...

Slacktivists, unite!

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 11:50:36 GMT

I am a bit addicted to anniversaries so I rejoiced to discover that 2012 marks the 800th anniversary of the Children’s Crusade. Reliable accounts of this incredible adventure are few, but it appears that a couple of charismatic teenagers gathered tens of thousands of children in Germany, France and Italy and led them towards the Holy Land where they would convert the Muslims. The Mediterranean was to part before them, allowing them to march dry-shod to Jerusalem. By some serendipitous coincidence, I also watched Kony 2012, a 30-minute YouTube video which has been viewed by about 75 million people in a single week. It was produced by an American lobby group, Invisible Children, which tries to protect and rehabilitate Ugandan kids who have been kidnapped, raped and maimed by a mysterious warlord named Joseph Kony. As a marketing gimmick, it’s little short of miraculous. This is a genuine humanitarian disaster. Tens of thousands of children have been enslaved by Kony over the past 20 years, although nowadays his forces, some of them child soldiers, have shrunk to a few hundred. He was one of the first persons indicted by the International Criminal Court. The video shows American college students chanting demands to stop Kony’s senseless war and to arrest him for crimes against humanity. There are shots of brutalised Ugandan children and of local politicians agreeing that he should be caught. But the director’s adorable blonde 3-year-old son generates most of the moral outrage. What’s the purpose of this noble-white-guys-save-backward-blacks video? Ostensibly to pressure the US government to provide troops to catch Kony. How? That’s the cool part: all you have to do is forward the video and click on Invisible Children’s website to buy some merchandise. It’s a classic case of self-indulgent slacktivism: feeling good about yourself by feeling sad about others. Meanwhile, back in the real world, little of the video makes sense. The crocodile tears of American college students are unlikely to drown Joseph Kony. He wanders around in Uganda, Sudan, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo, an area as large as France. In any case, he is largely a spent force, thanks to the Ugandan government. And his victims are but a small fraction of the 5 million who have died in the neighbouring DRC. But the college students may not even know where the DRC is. The barminess of Kony 2012 is painfully similar to the barminess of Children’s Crusade 1212. But there is a difference. Most of the youthful crusaders died en route to Brindisi, on the Adriatic coast, where the survivors were sold to Muslims by enterprising locals. At least there is no danger of that for slacktivists. Read more...

Uplifting art

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 08:41:01 GMT

Hi there, One afternoon this week I escaped from the desk and joined a couple of friends at the movies. It was not a frivolous outing, though, more in the line of cultural enrichment since the film in question was Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan, a documentary about an extraordinary exhibition of the great man’s paintings and drawings at the National Gallery in London. Seeing a few close-ups of such famous works as The Virgin of the Rocks (both versions) and the Madonna Litta, as well as the recently restored Christ as Salvator Mundi -- a portrait which, to my mind, has some of the mysterious power of the image on the Shroud of Turin -- on high definition film is as close as I will ever get to the originals, I figure. The film confirmed for me the idea that Leonardo could be a great artist because he had a high view of both his art and his subjects. As the exhibition website says: “As a painter, Leonardo aimed to convince viewers of the reality of what they were seeing while still aspiring to create ideals of beauty -- particularly in his exquisite portraits -- and, in his religious works, to create a sense of awe-inspiring mystery.” In other words he saw art as something that discovers the nobility in human nature and raises our minds towards the divine source of human dignity. How different to the earthbound and cynical view of man that is so evident in much of contemporary “art”. But how similar to the vision of Jose Antonio Abreu, founder of the Venezuelan musical education programme, El Sistema, which has raised the aspirations of hundreds of thousands of poor children and their families by placing free instruments in their hands, providing them with free tuition and forming them into orchestras where they learn the importance of striving, co-operation and solidarity. “From the minute a child’s taught how to play an instrument, he’s no longer poor,” says Abreu. “He becomes a child in progress heading for a professional level, who’ll later become a full citizen.”My article today notes how this idea is catching on in other parts of the world. One bad idea that is spreading is examined carefully by Zac Alstin in his article on “lying for the cause”, another by James S Cole who looks at the trend in the US of state and federal executives ruling by decree. Kevin Ryan has had enough of bad ideas in education and suggests that Florida is heading in the right direction with school reform. And George Friedman gives us a Stratfor view of China which I found particularly helpful in understanding both its problems and its influence in the world right now. I can’t close without making a plug for our Reading Matters contributor, Clare Cannon, and her amazing new website, The Good Reading Guide. Clare, who is also manager of Portico Books in Sydney, has posted a video review on Reading Matters, the first of many we believe, adding a lively personal touch to the blog. After you view the video I highly recommend taking a tour of The Good Reading Guide and subscribing. Cheers, Read more...

Same-sex marriage: America’s Weimar moment

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 23:14:12 GMT

For a decade or so, much of Australia was in the grip of a terrible drought because of global warming. Now climate change has brought the rain. The other day, tourists were huddling under umbrellas watching the Warragamba Dam, which supplies most of Sydney’s water, spill over for the first time in 14 years. Residents of Wagga Wagga, an inland city, are being winched off the roofs of their cars and houses. I discovered the reason for the downpour the other day when I paid a quick visit to the local church. Christine, the local Chinese bag lady (possibly Australia’s one and only Chinese bag lady) grabbed me by the sleeve and announced that she had been praying hard for rain for the last five months to help the farmers. “Well done, love!” I said, “but don’t you think it’s time to stop?” Christine obviously didn’t. “Can I have five dollars?” she said. I demurred and she wandered off looking for someone who wanted to see the roofs of Wagga disappear under her prayers. That’s what I like about churches. They are full of Christines. Well, full of all sorts of people, including the crazy people: academics and council workers; bank managers and home managers; restless toddlers and bored teenagers; young fathers shushing their kids and shuffling old men. It’s the ultimate democracy; everyone there knows that they are all equal in the sight of God. Most environments are elitist, segregating the wealthy from the poor, the educated from the uneducated, the well-connected from the unhinged -- but not churches. This is one reason why marginalising Christianity, as the US and UK governments seem determined to do, is a pretty dumb idea. It would only heighten our natural tendency to live in gated communities. There would be no place where we could chat with Christine. So far this week, the MercatorNet home page is a bit sombre, but very informative. Oliver M. Tuazon and Angelo S. Porciuncula explain why the Philippines has such a low rate of AIDS, even though conditions seem ideal for an epidemic. Two leading bioethicists, Trevor Stammers and Margaret Somerville, discuss a proposal to make infanticide “ethically permissible”. And Robert Reilly argues that extending the privileged status of marriage to homosexuals would undermine its foundation. Our new blog on same-sex marriage, Conjugality, by the way, is bursting with new posts. Please check it out. Cheers, Read more...

Values for life

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 05:36:57 GMT

Hi there, It took no time at all for Professor Steven Schwartz’s lecture (“The dangers of knowledge without wisdom”) to reach the top of our most-viewed list this week. Readers love an article that stands back from the madcap and dangerous ideas of many newsmakers to talk about topics like wisdom and how to cultivate it in an increasingly pragmatic world. For the same reason I was delighted to meet (online) Louise Kirk, Oxford graduate, mother of four and UK co-ordinator of a values education programme called Alive to the World. At the time, she happened to be making a lengthy submission to the British government on a curriculum that includes sex education, and I invited her to talk to us about that. Today’s interview is the result. It is a fact of life that some things have to be criticised because they are simply no darn good, and Louise thoroughly pans what they call PSHE in Britain. But, more importantly, she gives us a glimpse of a programme that looks very good and that has succeeded in places as unpromising as a Venezuelan school that was in the grip of endemic violence. I recommend a visit to the UK website and also to an article (online) in the current issue of Philanthropy magazine about Alive to the World -- links in Louise Kirk’s article. Obviously there are other good programmes around, but we just happen to know about this one. In other new articles: Michael Cook finds it difficult to swallow the idea of a morality pill; Izzy Kalman returns to the subject of bullying; and George Friedman argues that the US will have to come up with a more purposeful foreign policy. I am off now to prepare for the “weather bomb” that is supposed to strike New Zealand tomorrow -- straight from Eastern Australia, much of which seems to be under water as I write. NZ’s Maori name, Aoteroa, means “Land of the long white cloud” and we are used to that turning grey and dumping on us, but Oz is meant to be the land of blazing sun and bushfires. Climate change strikes again… Cheers, Read more...

The dangers of knowledge without wisdom

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 12:59:41 GMT

Hi there, Last week Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum said American colleges “indoctrinate” students with secularism. “I understand why Barack Obama wants to send every kid to college, because of their indoctrination mills, absolutely,” he said. “The indoctrination that is going on at the university level is a harm to our country.” To tell the truth, although I like Mr Santorum’s views on life issues, this seemed rather exaggerated. No wonder New York Times columnist Frank Bruni heaped ridicule Santorum’s “obstacle course of unsavory influences”. After reading Carolyn Moynihan’s article about America’s most famous university, perhaps Santorum’s on to something. Some academics are unsavoury influences upon impressionable college students. It appears that the House Master of one of Harvard's twelve undergraduate residential communities, Erika Christakis, a woman who is responsible for the well-being of 400 young adults, is campaigning for “a Porn housekeeping seal of approval”. This is a way for students to rate their favourite pornography so that they watch only the stuff which was made ethically. “We don't need more Rick Santorums policing our fantasies,” she writes. Well, maybe we do. Erika Christakis is one of those unsavoury influences. With people like her running Harvard, no wonder Mr Santorum is convinced that some colleges are indoctrination mills. In other articles so far this week, I have written about developments on the abortion front. David J. Peterson reviews a lively book on the defects of capitalism and the head of an Australian university, Steven Schwartz, defends the value of a liberal education. Don’t forget to check out Conjugality, our new blog on the true nature of marriage and the challenge posed by same-sex marriage. We’ve had rave reviews. Cheers, Read more...

Launching our blog on same-sex marriage

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 09:26:29 GMT

Hi there, This week we have fulfilled another of our New Year’s resolutions: to launch a blog on same-sex marriage, Conjugality. Check it out – it’s chock full of fresh stories. We will be topping it up regularly with articles from a range of contributors. The editor is Michael Kirke, an Irish journalist who writes from Dublin. Although same-sex marriage, or if you want to know my true feelings about it, same-sex so-called marriage, is an immense challenge, we do want to be constructive in our criticism. Another purpose of Conjugality is to highlight the dignity and joy of genuine marriage between one man and one woman. There are many reasons why SSM has captured the imagination of “progressives”, but one is that respect for the traditional variety has been eroded by decades of divorce, infidelity and contraception. Have a look. Leave some comments. We’d love to hear from you. We close the week with four compelling essays. Anne Morse, a college student at Berkeley, makes a fascinating critique of contraception. George Friedman traces the conundrums of today’s international affairs to the dramatic years 1989, 1990 and 1991. And in two articles from Canada, Rebekah Hebbert (another college student, at McGill) asks why Quebec parents are being forced to send their children to an objectionable ethics program and Peter Jon Mitchell asks whether Ontario will ever succeed in stamping out bullying. Cheers, Read more...

Apocalyptic language

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 03:51:55 GMT

So much apocalyptic news nowadays. Will Israel bomb Iran’s nuclear sites? Will Obama’s healthcare act crush conscientious objectors? Will the Eurozone collapse? These are global or national apocalypses, of course, but they remind me of a personal encounter. Some time ago, as I walked to work in a leafy suburb of Sydney, I often crossed paths with Geoff. He was English and had been a teacher of something or other. In retirement, he looked like the dishevelled younger brother of Neville Chamberlain, with a grey moustache hiding his upper lip, a frayed and funereal black suit and wispy grey hair combed back and matted down over his pate. On the back of his head there was an enormous wen, as big as an egg. He was unmistakable. We greeted each other now and then on the footpath, discussing the weather mostly, nothing remotely personal. One day, to my surprise, he accosted me in a lather of distress. “Michael,” he said. “Never in my whole life have I been so insulted.” “Ah, is that so?” I responded cautiously. “I was just in the dry cleaning shop,” said Geoff in a fury, “and the young woman there was dressed all in black.” “Ah,” I said. I recalled the lass – she was probably a university student working part-time. “She looked quite charming in black and I said, my dear, I am deeply grateful and I would like to invite you to dine with me. No one else has ever acknowledged that I am the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse.” “Ah-ha,” I said. Geoff’s real identity was news to me and no doubt to the young lady as well. It may not have inclined her to accept Geoff’s invitation. “And do you know what she said to me? Do you know how she responded to my kindness? She told me to…” and here Geoff uttered an expression which sounded even more incongruous on his lips than on the young lady’s. “Ah, Geoff,” I said. “I really am quite busy. I’ll have to run.” And that was nearly the last I saw of him, although one of my friends was on a train when Geoff spied a woman in a red dress. “Behold the Scarlet Woman,” he shouted. “Behold the great whore of Babylon.” There was a certain lack of tact about this which probably impeded further discussion of this interesting theological point. I suppose that the lesson is that excessively apocalyptic language can shut down communication. It is advice which we have always tried to follow at MercatorNet. Anyhow, enough of the personal stuff. So far this week we have posted three articles. Zac Alstin discusses a new book by Alain de Botton under what may be the best headline we have ever had in MercatorNet: “God is dead. Can I have his stuff?” (His headline, by the way, not ours.) Ronan Wright reviews Carnage, a new film by Roman Polanski about parental pride. And a distinguished new contributor, Angelo Codevilla, detects a shift from rule of law to rule by decree in the controversy over the health care act. Cheers, Read more...

When life begins (keep reading)

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 05:02:21 GMT

Hi there, What a busy week! So much happening and people popping out of the woodwork with articles and ideas. It’s wonderful and a bit dizzying at the same time. The blogs look after themselves thanks to Sheila, Marcus and Shannon, Katie, Jennifer and the Reading Matters team but pretty well everything else goes through the brain and computer of Michael Cook or myself before it gets published. Golly, we could do with some more staff on this site, and money to pay them -- a thought for when you are revising your will. Or sooner. Michael has dashed off to another commitment this afternoon but not before posting a brief but moving comment on the winner of the 2011 World Press Photo. From the Muslim subjects of the photograph to a Muslim British Baroness: unlikely as it sounds, there is such a person. Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, born and bred in Britain, is co-chairman of the British Conservative Party and the first female Muslim to serve as a minister in a UK cabinet. Even more surprisingly, she spoke at a conference at the Vatican this week saying “Europe needs to become more confident in its Christianity”! Do read what she has to say; it’s very encouraging. In other articles at this end of the week: Thomas Patrick Burke, a libertarian born in Brisbane and living near Philadelphia (but very sane for all that) tackles the idea that the government should get right out of marriage. William West looks at research on the effects of regular date nights among couples, and Mary Rice Hasson is indignant at a new development on university campuses. We are always grateful for tips, especially if they involve humour. Washington resident Matthew Mehan, who is keeping a close eye on the Obama “contraceptive mandate”, found this video in which there’s a great line about the president’s definition of when life begins. You probably won’t want to watch the whole thing so just go to the 4 minute mark… Cheers, Read more...

Happy Valentine’s Day

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:52:46 GMT

Happy Valentine’s Day! As I took the train after work today, it was charming to see all those young women cradling bouquets of long-stem red roses from their sweethearts. However, I’ve got to be honest and confess that there is no day in the year that hones out my killjoy instinct more keenly. In elementary school, this was a day of dread. I could never make sense of the annual ritual of cutting hearts out of coloured paper, sticking them down with liberal lashings of non-toxic paste, sprinkling them with glitter, and composing gooey messages. Not for one or two friends, but for everyone in my class, plus everyone at home. It was real drudgery. Besides it doesn’t seem to do a lot of good. So many millions of Valentine’s Day cards and so little genuine, lifelong romance, as new contributor Shirene Urry points out in her feature on love among college students and Carolyn Moynihan suggests in her article on on-line dating. Anyhow, I must be wrong. On this one I get outvoted year after year. The US National Retail Federation estimates that Americans will spend US$17.6 billion today on Valentine’s Day gifts – more than the GDP of Afghanistan. This figure includes $630 million on Valentine’s Day gifts to pets, something that never actually entered my head as a child. That is, by the way, more than the GDP of East Timor. It does seem a bit excessive, doesn’t it? If we donated half of the pets’ share of gifts, we could build a splendid hospital for poverty-stricken East Timor. Our lead story examines some hollow statistics used by the Obama Administration to bolster its push to force contraceptive coverage onto all health insurers, including conscientious objectors. Another new contributor, Thomas Clark, discusses the ethics of parking – why should people who can afford a Prius get priority parking? And Rebekah Hebbert examines a tragic “honour killing” in Canada. Enjoy! Read more...

The human dignity barometer, rising

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 03:38:29 GMT

Hi there, If you are not American and spend most of your time absorbed in the things that the majority of ordinary people do, such as holding down a job and caring for your family, you may not have noticed how the mercury is rising in the US human dignity barometer. In the five or six years since I began paying close attention to the United States I don’t think the pressure has ever been higher. I don’t mean the roller-coaster of the Republican primaries, which are almost a sideshow right now to what used to be called the culture wars but now seem more like civilisational wars: the mammoth struggles going on over marriage and human fertility. Dr Jennifer Roback Morse, who is right in the thick of the action and whose instincts about this I mightily respect, describes the infamous White House “contraceptive mandate”, for example, as not only an attack on freedom of conscience but the establishment of a new state religion. (And remember, there is no old state religion in the US.) Read her powerful piece on our front page and see if you don’t agree. Even if this attempt falls over it won't be the last one. What’s just as important as the current political struggle for human dignity is passing on the attendant values and virtues to the younger generation. This is the challenge Tom Lickona outlines in the conclusion of his review of a book about young adults and their tenuous grasp on moral principles. Mary Santangelo suggests that parental nagging, judiciously applied, can help. Rebekah Hebbert, from within the young adult camp, defies the gender equity brigade and finds that “Lego cupcakes totally rock”. That’s the spirit! War, particularly as conducted nowadays, is a thorny moral issue. Jacob Shively, a PhD candidate in political science and a new contributor, examines the US campaign against al Qaeda in Pakistan and throws some light on the justice (or otherwise) of the cause. We await your comments on these issues, whether heavy or lightweight. But just to end on a nice note I recommend the video we currently have up on the front page. The Military Wives Choir (sent by Mary Cooney - thanks) is another perspective on war, and very moving. Happy reading, Read more...

Tightening the screws on religious rights

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:42:48 GMT

Hi there, Today, February 7, is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens. England is full of Dickens festivals and debates in the newspapers over whether 11-year-olds should be required to read his novels. His most recent biographer, Claire Tomalin, says that he is “amazingly relevant” – but feels that he is too demanding for schoolchildren. "Today's children have very short attention-spans because they are being reared on dreadful TV programmes. They are not being educated for long attention-spans." Is this the problem? For the past decade schoolchildren have been devouring volumes of Harry Potter, books which swelled to incredible lengths. As far as I can see, Charles Dickens was probably the single most important literary influence upon the series, with its immense gallery of grotesque characters, lively language and convoluted plots. Exuberance is the first of Dickens’ great virtues, an Olympian quality shared by few other writers in English. He created characters with the cheerful prodigality of a drunken sailor. A Dickensian sentence is bursting with joy at the wrestle with language. He is credited with scores upon scores of new words, like flummox, rampage, butter-fingers, tousled, sawbones, casualty ward, footlights, dustbin, fingerless, squashed, seediness, Scrooge, Gradgrind, tousled and tintack. The second is his anger. Most of his books are seething over the injustice dealt out to innocents by petty tyrants and the implacable law. He was unafraid to take sides, to be committed, to dream of a kind and juster world. In fact, you cannot read Dickens – whether you are weeping or laughing or seething with indignation -- and fail to feel that being alive is an exhilarating vocation to slay the giants of injustice. There is no lack of giants today: abortion, euthanasia, the scandal of starvation in a world of consumerist waste, overflowing prisons, the drugs trade… Would that today we had novelists who combined Dickens’ vitality with his righteous anger. So far this week we have published four articles. Jennifer Roback Morse reviews a stunning book about the consequences of China’s one-child policy; Frances Kelly asks whether language is being hijacked in the same-sex marriage debate; Joanna Bogle salutes Queen Elizabeth on the 60th anniversary of her coronation; and Jim Cole detects hostility to religion in the Obama Administration’s recent decisions. Enjoy! Read more...

Face values

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:11:57 GMT

Hi there, While I was waiting for a fairy godmother to come and do this newsletter I read an article in the local paper (yes, a real newspaper) about Facebook’s US$100 billion public float, the basis of which I do not quite understand, even though I am one of the 800 million users who made it possible. The figure is quite astonishing for a Kiwi -- I mean, the value of our whole economy is only about $135 billion. Perhaps the government could do an IPO and raise the funds to make us top of the South Sea Island Paradise market… What caught my attention more than all the facts and figures, though, was a sidebar with the five core values that Mark Zuckerberg has set out for investors: Focus on impact -- by always solving the most important problems. The difficulty I see with this is knowing which are the most important problems. For example, in my article today about a Harvard Business School report, I find that business leaders seem to be unaware of the most fundamental problem of the US economy. “Move fast and break things” -- If you never break anything you are not moving, ergo learning, fast enough. Personally, I find I break things by moving too slowly. If you listen carefully you may hear the sound of my New Year’s resolution to send this newsletter out before Kiwi and Aussie workers leave their desks on Friday shattering. Be bold -- Building great things means taking risks. This I agree with completely; publishing your opinions to the world is along those lines. Be open -- “A more open world is a better world because people with more information make better decisions,” says Zuckerberg. Hmmm. Disagree. Quality rather than quantity is what counts in information as in all areas of life, “and the wisdom to know the difference”. FB tests that wisdom to the limit; indeed, someone has suggested that TMI would have been a more fitting stock ticker symbol than the FB the company chose. Build social value -- Facebook expects everyone to focus every day on how to build real value for the world in everything they do. Agreed, one hundred per cent. A high ideal but very much in sync with MercatorNet’s aims. We may have a slightly different idea of “value” but then, that is what the business of communication is all about. I am sure you will find added value in Tom Lickona’s second article on emerging adulthood, and George Friedman’s interesting analysis of Germany’s role in the eurozone crisis. Among the blogs I have to say that Sheila Liaugminas is going gangbusters on the American political scene. Quite fascinating. Cheers, Read more...

Announcing MercatorNet’s new mobile site!

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:38:47 GMT

Hi there, In my ceaseless search for distractions from Real Work, I moderate comments obsessively, surf for article ideas and post items on the MercatorNet Facebook page. These are demanding and time-consuming tasks, but somebody’s got to do the heavy lifting around here. Otherwise Real Work could fill up the whole day. I confess that I had always avoided Twitter. Coming to grips with its appeal sounded more like Real Work than a genuine distraction. But after a dinner table conversation with @Blazes92 the other day the penny dropped. I had never actually met anyone who used MercatorNet’s Twitter feed (even though there are nearly 1000 followers – feel free to join them!). But he showed me how brilliantly useful it can be to keep up to date. Thanks @Blazes92! This led me to visit MercatorNet’s Twitter page and I discovered that people have actually been messaging @MercatorNet. The good news is that this is seriously distracting, but the bad news is that tweets from Twitterers like To@IdaFlo, @Grimkjell, @dennygirltwo and @OLVKAmsterdam have been ignored. My apologies. Now you know the score. Twitter is mostly a smartphone and tablet phenomenon. Up to now, it has been a bit painful to read MercatorNet on a smartphone. So I have the pleasure to announce that we have launched a mobile version of MercatorNet. Please check it out – m.mercatornet.com. It’s straightforward and easy to navigate. If you have ideas about how to improve it, we’d love to hear from you. Thanks very much, Debasish Mondal, of Encyclomedia, for pushing this through. So far this week, we have posted three articles. Peter Saunders writes from the UK about the nature of homosexuality. Francis Phillips reviews a history of World War II. And Margaret Somerville argues that the controversy over gendercide shows that abortion is not just a matter of choice. Cheers, Read more...

Movies: we have a little list

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 03:14:18 GMT

Hi there, Round about this time last year I announced a New Year resolution to see more movies as they came out. Well, I did, although it’s not hard to move up from zero. Looking at Michael Cook’s list of the best films of 2011, however, I find I haven’t seen one of them. Never mind; at least I have a better idea of what to spend my time and money on. Of course, the list is by no means the last word on the subject. As Michael says: You can never get complete agreement on lists of movies. In this annual feature, we try to select films which are worthwhile, entertaining and reasonably family-friendly. If you would like to nominate others, please make a comment. From movies to morality. Young adults in Occupy Wall Street camps might be railing against greedy capitalists, but the moral constitution of youth is also under the microscope. Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith has written up a study of emerging adulthood (18- to 23-year-olds) focusing on its “dark side”, and the picture certainly doesn’t look good. We asked Professor Thomas Lickona, an educator who has vast experience in the field of moral development and character, to review what seems an important book and you can read the first part of his article on the front page. The rest will be published in subsequent weeks, and it is important to follow the series through since the picture might be better than first drawn. By the way, take a look at the blog posts by Katie Hinderer on Tiger Print and Marcus Roberts on Demography (wonderful time-lapse video to view there) about the huge annual pro-life march in Washington on Monday -- with hundreds of thousands of young people. If there’s one place where we would all fervently hope to find moral integrity it is on the bridge (or whatever they call it these days) of a ship carrying 4000 souls. But we cannot make its captain a mere scapegoat for the Costa Concordia disaster, Constance Kong decides in her article. Moral consistency is also highly desirable in the command of such important organisations as the United Nations. From that point of view Vincenzina Santoro challenges us to write to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. As for US policy towards Iran -- I’ll leave that horribly complex issue to George Friedman. Happy reading, Read more...

Georgie Porgie, Pudding and Pie

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 04:59:03 GMT

Hi there*, Shackled once again to the keyboard. Fingertips callused. Holidays now a distant memory. However, over the weekend I did manage to escape to Hobart and scored a bargain at my favourite second-hand bookshop. Just $1 for a nearly mint copy of N'Heures Souris Rames! I will battle to persuade most of you that this was a bargain rather than an indulgence by an egghead with scrambled brains. The technical term for the contents of this precious volume is homophonic verse – the same sounds make sense in two languages. Thus, N'Heures Souris Rames (French) = Nursery Rhymes (English, about 30 of them). “Georgie Porgie, Pudding and Pie / Kissed the girls and made them cry” = “Georgie Port-régie, peu digne en paille / Qui se dégeule sans mais. Dame craille”. Ha ha, quite hilarious. Of course, the French suffers a bit and elaborate footnotes are required. Nonetheless, in both languages the words make sense, even if they are most meaningful in English. Hang in there. There is a point to this carry-on. We have run several articles in MercatorNet over the past few weeks on same-sex marriage. After moderating hostile comments from critics of natural marriage, I have come to feel that we are speaking, so to speak, homophonically: the words of our articles make sense in English, but some people are reading them in a different language. There’s almost no communication going on. I feel at a loss when commenters post comments like: “good and evil? Get over it.” Or “what so special about being natural?” Or “the purpose of sex isn’t about having babies anymore. What about IVF?” Or “you have your morality and I have mine.” To my mind, these suggest not just two different views of the same problem, but two different universes of logic. It’s important to deal directly with the issue of same-sex marriage – and a host of other issues which put human dignity at risk – but until we have reached agreement on fundamental issues of logic and meaning, we will be talking homophonically. Anyhow, so far this week, we have posted three articles. Bryce J. Christensen decries a loss of freedom of speech in debates over same-sex marriage. James S. Cole explains a unanimous decision of the US Supreme Court which defended religious freedom. And Izzy Kalman has some advice for President Obama about anti-bullying strategies. Cheers, * Sorry, reverrting to old habits. Read more...

Two cheers for The Iron Lady

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 03:28:18 GMT

Hi there, (Just thought I’d give the old greeting an airing.) During the week I went to see The Iron Lady, thinking I might write a review for MercatorNet. In the end there did not seem to be much to say. It’s always fun watching Meryl Streep impersonate historical figures, real or stock, whether the mother superior of a 1960s convent, cookery supremo Julia Child or, as in the current instance, Margaret Thatcher. (Although you can never quite forget that it is MS being awfully clever, this time she is brilliantly aided by make-up artist Marese Langan.) Still, I had rather hoped to learn a little more about Mrs T (or MT as her husband Denis affectionately calls her in the film), to get a look behind the political clichés about her grocer’s-daughter love of hard work and thrift, her belief in purging the body politic (“The medicine will be harsh…”), and the jingoism that led her to go to war with Argentina over some bleak islands at the bottom of the inhabited world. But, after an hour and three-quarters of hallucinations and flashbacks, I found myself complaining, “Is that all?” If there was more to the Western world’s first female head of state in her heyday you are not going to learn it from this movie. Nevertheless, I can’t leave the subject of Margaret Thatcher without repeating a joke that largely sums up the mother-knows-best way she is portrayed in the film: The cabinet goes to dinner at a swish restaurant. The maitre d' asks Mrs Thatcher what she would like. A steak, she says. Thick. Rare. And the vegetables, madame? They'll have whatever I have, says the PM. We do have a film review this week -- Ronan Wright finds War Horse good in parts. Also on the media trail, Philip Elias wonders exactly what the 24-hour shutdown of Wikipedia was meant to prove. With the world economy still front and centre of the global stage, we reproduce a paper by Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, examining the moral roots of the current crisis, while David Peterson takes another look at a controversial economic proposal from some Catholic scholars. Looking at the US debt, Vincenzina Santoro asks why conscience-smitten millionaires don’t put their money there their mouth is. George Friedman keeps an eye on the Middle East and oil supplies. Finally we have two articles on aspects of sexual politics. Susan Moore writes about the complementarity of the sexes and, in an article reproduced in partnership with Public Discourse, Angela Franks reviews a life of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger which glosses over her ideological commitment to eugenics. A lot of reading there! Next week we will be back to two newsletters and a more normal routine, though some of us are still in partial holiday mode Down Under. Cheers, Read more...

What I did during the holidays

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 04:19:47 GMT

Happy New Year! And since this is a time for fresh starts I might as well get something off my chest straight away: I have not been lovingly tending MercatorNet while Michael Cook has been having a richly-deserved holiday. Observant readers will have noticed that Michael, with his uncanny ability to do everything at once, has been tending the website while on holiday and I have only reappeared on the scene this week. What have I been up to? Mainly, enjoying the company of younger relatives avoiding the European winter by taking an extended holiday Down Under (Australia and New Zealand). Unfortunately they ran smack into the worst summer we have had in a while, featuring copious rainfall interspersed with brisk winds. Still, we managed to have a good time. During a few days stay at the beach they took to the water with stoical determination and swore they enjoyed it. We did a day trip to an offshore island, a native bird sanctuary, and got soaked to the skin but came home very happy with sightings of the rare Kokako as well as an Oystercatcher and her newborn chicks -- among other winged wildlife. I read a very nice book, Irene Nemerovsky’s All Our Worldly Goods, and made a start on a small classic, One Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovich (catching up with Solzhenitsyn is an ongoing project of mine) but had to put it aside after a few pages as it seemed almost indecent to read about people being ground to powder in the gulags while sitting on the beach. No time for any New Year resolutions yet except to learn to use my new smartphone. But I sense another one forming right now: getting this Friday newsletter out by 4.30pm. Little by little… I hope you enjoy this week’s articles: Kevin Ryan on the apparent mental health crisis in US colleges; Ronan Wright on the new Mission Impossible movie; Robert Reilly on the dangers of wishful thinking about the Arab Spring; Thomas Reeves on digital natives and what the experts are saying about them; William West on what’s passed for adolescent viewing by film censors; Paul Rogers on US-Iran relationships; and Peter Smith on British Conservatives and same-sex, ahem, marriage. In the blogs: Sheila Liaugminas has important updates on the US elections; Tiger Print features a great video of an adolescent facing death with serenity; our Demography bloggers are back and up to the minute; Reading Matters continues to roll out its guide to good reading; and Family Edge has unwittingly stirred up a debate on male circumcision (when we were really trying to talk about marriage). Cheers, Read more...

My New Year’s Velleities

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 01:30:53 GMT

Hi there, The editorial staff of MercatorNet is still on light duties (supervising beaches, digesting Christmas cake and reading Russian doorstops) at the moment, so this is the first newsletter of 2012. However, much to my relief, MercatorNet’s contributors are not taking the same lackadaisical attitude and we have an impressive line-up of reading for you. At the top are Zac Alstin’s New Year’s resolutions, all of which are quite sensible, even if they do not involve eating and exercise. In that spirit, I’d like to share my own, although I think that they are better described as velleities rather than resolutions. Velleities (an extremely useful word) are feeble wishes or inclinations which do not necessarily lead to action. But, you never know, they might. Feel free to remind us about them during the year. We would like to launch a focus blog, tentatively named Conjugality, about the same-sex marriage debate. We are looking around for the US$5,000 needed to support it. You are welcome to search for donors with us. We would like to hold a couple of seminars in Sydney for students and young professionals on hot-button issues like same-sex marriage and refugees. Any other ideas? We would like to reach 10,000 MercatorNet fans on Facebook, assuming I figure out how to use Facebook properly. You can help here! Disclosing New Year’s Velleities to all and sundry is not a smart idea because I might actually have to do them. But MercatorNet is all about the exhilaration of life on the edge. Meanwhile, back at the home page, Canadian economist Doug Allen discusses the economics of same-sex marriage in an exclusive interview; Tom Reeves asks whether China offers a model for higher education in the West; Pat Schloss comments on Rick Santorum’s campaign for the Republic nomination; Martin Shaw makes New Year’s predictions; Lord David Alton critiques a sham UK report on assisted suicide; and Sue Alexander-Barnes reviews a documentary about an influential New Age writer. Please check out the blogs, too. Cheers, Read more...

The Christmas Issue

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 05:12:30 GMT

Hi there, Merry Christmas, We would like to send all of our readers best wishes for Christmas and the New Year. We’re very grateful for all your support during the past months. We often receive kind words from readers and they really buoy us up. We’re especially grateful to our contributors. We could not have produced MercatorNet or any of our blogs without a lot of very professional help from dozens of writers around the world. A very special thank-you to them. May Santa fill your stocking to the brim! We will be closing down the site for a couple of weeks and this will be the last newsletter for 2011. I’ll be on holidays for three weeks after Christmas and the indefatigable Carolyn Moynihan will be at the tiller. Since this is the only newsletter this week, we have produced a bumper issue. Jeremy Prichard, an Australian criminologist, has a new strategy for combating internet pornography. W. Bradford Wilcox and Elizabeth Marquardt ask why parents with four-plus children are happier than those with just a couple. And I compare the reputations of two eminent public intellectuals who recently passed away, the controversialist Christopher Hitchens and Czech philosopher-king Vaclav Havel. On a Christmas theme, we have reproduced a stirring speech by British Prime Minister David Cameron in which he declares that Britain is a Christian nation. However, Joanna Bogle questions this in a typically insightful piece. And finally I have discovered seven reasons why it’s better to say Merry Christmas than “Season’s Greetings”. A very happy Christmas to all of you and your families. Read more...

The Higgs boson is no match for Christmas

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 05:10:24 GMT

Scientists, or at least physicists, thought all their Christmases had come at one when they caught a tiny glimpse of the Higgs boson recently. Nobody else has the faintest idea what this so-called “God particle” is, but the team who have been anxiously brooding over the Large Hadron Collider for several years were thrilled to bits when they announced on Tuesday that it probably exists. I am sure we are all very happy for them. It means that their ideas about how the universe works make sense, and that is always a comforting thing. As one scientist said, “Because it fits together so beautifully with everything else we know … I’m certainly inclined to believe it.” When I first heard, a couple of years ago, about this project located underneath central Europe it struck me as a scandalous waste of money (billions have been spent on it) on a quest which spins out into infinity and seems to have no practical benefit to mankind. Now I am not so sure; the drive to understand creation is built into human nature and there is no gainsaying it. And who knows what any genuine search for the truth may bring? But that is only to speak of the physical universe. Where is Europe’s effort in the moral sphere? That is the question that Alejo Sison deals with in his article today, drawing on a marvellous address by Pope Benedict to the German parliament a few months ago. In a way it links up with the Higgs boson business because it is in part about “listening to nature” and respecting its laws -- our own human nature above all. If politicians and various experts took up the challenge Benedict has issued it would be much easier to resolve the bioethical debates that Margaret Somerville and Tracey O’Donnell deal with in their pieces on euthanasia and abortion politics. In other new articles Peter Cowan asks whether pigs will usher in the next medical revolution -- something George Orwell might have been interested in. And Paul Adams thinks it is a pity that a cherished part of a child’s Christmas should be publicly mocked. Which brings me at last to what is really on our minds these days: the beautiful feast of Christmas, which makes sense of our human longing to understand the world and ourselves in a way that the secrets of sub-atomic matter, no matter how fascinating, ever can. That’s my faith and I’m sticking to it. So, adding sincere thanks for your loyalty, feedback and support these past 12 months, I wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Catch you again in 2012! Read more...

The MercatorNet popularity contest

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 11:54:19 GMT

Someone asked me this evening which articles had been the most popular on MercatorNet this year. After poring over Google Analytics, I thought that I would share the results with you. The results are a bit surprising, because the best-read articles aren’t necessarily the ones with the most comments or the most Facebook Likes. Here they are, in order of popularity. It’s great to see that posts from our great blogs Family Edge and Sheila Reports are among them. Abuse allegations: true, false and truthy, Rick Fitzgibbons and Peter Kleponis Family Edge: Marriage statistics for dummies, by Carolyn Moynihan Gender bending: let me count the ways, by Babette Francis Sheila Reports: Garvan Byrne and redemptive suffering, by Sheila Liaugminas Oh well, people die, by Michael Cook The woman behind the icon, by Carolyn Moynihan Why Islam is in as much trouble as the West, by Denyse O'Leary Same sex adoption is not a game, by Rick Fitzgibbons 7 reasons for good cheer after Madrid, by Michael Cook Are we sleepwalking through the great infanticide, by Lea Singh Conclusion? Our readers like very good news and very bad news. Sometimes I feel that we have dished out too much bad news this year, so my New Year’s resolution is to radiate positive vibes. On to this week’s reading! Paul Hunker warns about the dangers of internet pornography and Francis Phillips reviews the latest, very entertaining biography of Dickens. Then we have two articles on same-sex marriage, which is on the boil in Australia, England, Scotland and the United States at the moment. Zac Alstin draws some lessons from Chinese philosophy and Nwachukwu Egbunike gives an African perspective. Cheers, Read more...

Christmas, festival of lights

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 09:37:58 GMT

With only a couple of weeks to go until Christmas, decoration fever is sweeping the city, and now that technology is in the driving seat things are getting pretty serious. There’s a street called Franklin Road in central Auckland which has become famous for its lights, with pretty well everyone in the street seeming to do their bit and people coming from far and wide to gaze at the magical show. I guess they have it all on the road again by now, so I must drive by there soon. In my own neighbourhood Indians are setting the pace: our good neighbours from Mumbai have multi-coloured flashing lights in their windows and around the garden since last weekend, making us look very drab. But it was when I was out for a walk at dusk this evening that I realised what an impossibly high standard these folks are setting. One family have festooned the eaves on the two prominent sides of their neat bungalow with a frill of white -- or rather, golden -- lights and outlined all the windows with sapphire blue. Quite entrancing. I think we are going to have to review our modest collection of baubles and try to hold our end up a bit better. There was a fellow of a puritanical cast of mind complaining about it all in the paper the other day, but he might as well shout into the wind. People love the chance to add a bit of magic to their lives, and even if it goes no further than that, if we keep up the custom long enough the younger generation may eventually ask what it is all about. Hopefully, there will still be folks who can tell them. We have a very mixed bag of articles this end of the week. Two pieces about Egypt and the Arab Spring: one by Stratfor’s George Friedman and the other by Robert Reilly, who is worried about an Islamist future. Then we have two pieces on bioethics, more or less. Paul Russell expostulates on the latest thing from the Dutch euthanasia lobby, and Alex Perrottet dissects some “nunsense” about the pill. My piece picks up on a tragic story from Melbourne and describes a model of care -- perinatal hospice -- that would have prevented that calamity. Cheers, and send us your feedback about the various newsletters (see your inbox!) Read more...

Shame, bigots, shame!

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 13:38:51 GMT

On Saturday I went to a modest political rally. The governing Australian Labor Party was debating same sex marriage at its annual conference a few blocks away and this gathering was intended to give family-friendly delegates some encouragement. Unfortunately I missed some of the interesting speeches because a noisy band of gays and lesbians and companions were standing on the sidelines behind a cordon of police chanting “shame, bigots, shame” with megaphones. To tell the truth, I felt no shame whatsoever for supporting marriage between a man and a woman. However, the intensity of the protesters’ anger and abusive tactics mean only that the battle will be hard fought, not that it will be successful. I was reminded that tomorrow is the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the “day of infamy”. The Japanese were ingenious and well-trained but they had no long-term strategy for holding their conquests after an enraged America inevitably bounced back. It was one thing to dream up a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere; quite another to implement it. Something similar is happening with same-sex marriage. Its relentless supporters want to trash the wisdom of thousands of years without any thought as to how it will affect society. In this context, Secretary of State Cordell Hull’s response to the Japanese Ambassador is quite apposite: “In all my fifty years of public service I have never seen a document that was more crowded with infamous falsehoods and distortions -- infamous falsehoods and distortions on a scale so huge that I never imagined until today that any Government on this planet was capable of uttering them." I hope that MercatorNet will help expose some of these falsehoods and distortions in the months to come. In the current set of articles I have commented on Australia’s situation. Also, Lord David Alton rings the alarm bell about a possible human rights disaster in Iraq; Francis Phillips reviews Christopher Hitchens’ new collection of essays; and Juncal Cuñado and Alejo Sison conclude their analysis of happy Europeans. Cheers, Read more...

Lest we forget

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 09:14:38 GMT

Sometimes, said GK Chesterton, a fact can be too big and too close to be seen, so that to appreciate it properly we have to get some vantage point where we can see it from the outside, in perspective. Abortion is somewhat like that. Living in a culture permeated with it, even those who vehemently reject the practice can lose sight of how thoroughly and detestably inhuman it is. Perhaps that is why there has been such a huge response (over 500 “likes”) to Lea Singh’s article, published earlier this week, about the horrific Philadelphia clinic where, in her words, “second and third trimester babies that were breathing, moving and even crying were slaughtered by having their necks slit or their spines severed.” I came across a picture of one of those babies on the internet and the incredible cruelty of it made me ashamed of the human race. Hundreds, if not thousands of articles are published weekly about abortion. There are countless websites dedicated to the subject. At MercatorNet we try to cover all the life issues and to see them in the context of wider cultural developments in areas such as marriage, fertility and population ageing. But thanks to Lea for putting in front of us again, with such a balance of reason and passion, the greatest moral issue of our time. There’s another sombre issue in our list today: the HIV/AIDS epidemic that is being so crazily mishandled even while World AIDS Day boffins suggest they know how to end it. Moving to the media ethics inquiry going on in the UK, Joanna Bogle argues that, in the era of the internet, all the inquisitions and rules in the world will not make up for personal ethics. Bullying expert Izzy Kalman draws some lessons on that subject from the film The Wizard of Oz; and Josh Fear urges fellow Aussies to stop letting work addiction pollute home life. Which is what I am about to do right now. Cheers, Read more...

Afflicting the comfortable

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 05:16:12 GMT

MercatorNet has a “creative commons” republication policy – nearly all of our articles may be reproduced so long as the original source is acknowledged. This is what Rebekah Hebbert, the managing editor of a Canadian site based at McGill University, the Prince Arthur Herald, did with a recent article on same-sex adoption by Rick Fitzgibbons. (She is also an occasional contributor.) The outcome was explosive. At least four editors and ten writers resigned from the staff and Rebekah appeared on national television explaining her decision to run what was described by her critics as garbage and bigotry. I trawled through the comments, mostly abusive. My favourite was "’Adults do not have a right to deprive children of a father or a mother.’ This is actually considered an argument by the author of this piece. This is actually a thing that got published. I don't even know where to begin.” I don’t know where to begin either. Do Canadian university students regard the normality of homosexual relationships as an article of faith and the need for a mother and a father as a vile heresy? Perhaps so. Rebekah’s impression was that her colleagues had resigned because of fears that their careers would be tainted by homophobia. It looks as though MercatorNet needs to publish more well-researched, temperate, and hard-hitting articles on same-sex marriage. Congratulations to Rebekah for her fearless and controversial stand. If her colleagues are looking for less stressful positions, there may be vacancies writing copy for the Korean News in Pyongyang. As another Canadian gadfly, John Kenneth Galbraith, once wrote: “one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong.” Speaking of congratulations, we’d like to offer our very best wishes to the editor of our splendid blog Demography Is Destiny, Marcus Roberts, who is marrying Shannon Buckley (also a contributor!) on Saturday in Auckland. Gosh, that’s enough, isn’t it? Our lead story (by another Canadian) is even more controversial. Check it out. Read more...

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 05:19:23 GMT

I wonder if anyone will ever propose the abolition of Thanksgiving, the holiday which American readers are about to celebrate this week. Thanksgiving, which I rattled on about once before in this newsletter, is one of the few happinesses in short supply in Australia, along with snow on Christmas Eve and scrumptious cranberry anything. But it does seem inconsistent to make a big deal out of the fourth Thursday in November and to insist that religion should be expunged from political life. A little bit of historical research suggests that the thanks is being directed to someone whose name happens to be God. It is quite moving to read George Washington’s first Thanksgiving proclamation in 1789: "Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor… I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be -- That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks… for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence." Thanksgiving is an important virtue which a thorough-going secular society risks losing. Thanksgiving implies neediness and community, but a secular society stresses autonomy and self-reliance. These are wonderful qualities, but not ones which foster gratitude. What would have happened if Washington had proclaimed a “Day of Self-Esteem” or a "I Did It My Way Day"? Would we still be celebrating it 200+ years later? Probably not. Which brings to mind how grateful we at MercatorNet are to everyone who generously donated during our pre-Christmas appeal. We did not quite make our goal, but we appear to have make quite a dent into it. Thanks, and if you live in the US, Happy Thanksgiving! This week’s newsletter features reflections by Tracy Mehan on leaving a legacy for the next generation – more to be thankful for! Finnish economist Oskari Juurikkala poses the thought-provoking question of why we need social security if we have families. On a bioethics tack, an Australian, Damian Adams, admits that he doesn’t find movies about sperm donation very amusing. And Turkish journalist Mustafa Akyol argues that the Qur’an is being misinterpreted by misguided fanatics. Cheers, Read more...

Mercator rules - OK?

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 09:01:32 GMT

As you may know, MercatorNet is named for the 16th century map-maker, Gerardus Mercator, whose projection of the world on a flat surface was good for navigation, accurate at the centre though distorted at the top and bottom. An alert reader, however, has found a comic strip on the Web -- “What Your Favourite Map Projection Says About You” -- alleging that a predilection for Mercator shows “You’re not really into maps” unless, perhaps, they are set in a circle. On the contrary, our name suggests a sophisticated grasp of the science of cartography and the art of metaphor, which, if it is not immediately obvious, can be read about with profit on our website. Personally, I do not care for any of webcomic’s pictures of the world because they all have New Zealand sitting at the extreme eastern edge, about to drop off into nothingness, which we have no intention of doing any time soon. There are many serious ethical issues to navigate at present. Psychiatrist Dr Rick Fitzgibbons tackles one of the most serious of all in his article on same-sex adoption. His experience, clinical and personal, and his knowledge of the research in this area make his survey extremely helpful. We have two articles on euthanasia: Michael Cook comments on the peculiar ethical sensibilities of doctors in the Netherlands, and Barbara Kay on professional views in Canada. Behind wobbly ethics there are usually shaky philosophies. Dr Alma Acevedo has written a timely reminder that the scepticism favoured by many university teachers can go too far and leave the young with nothing but doubts and questions with which to tackle life. Not knowing what life means or how we should live it does not stop some scientists talking about extending it indefinitely. Zac Alstin waves his ethical divining rod over the movement to turn us all into Methuselahs -- with interesting results. Europe’s continuing crisis, on which George Friedman reflects, has a lot to do with issues like the above, one feels. Happy reading, Read more...

Bicycles or tricycles?

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 05:25:35 GMT

Today we are wading into the turbulent waters of climate change. In the lead story, Canadian journalist Donna Laframboise examines the credentials of the authors of the highly-praised “Climate Bible”, the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. To quote one randomly selected rave review it is “The greatest feat of global scientific cooperation ever seen... utterly unique and authoritative”. I’d like to make it clear than I do not pride myself on being a climate denialist or a global warming sceptic. I think of myself as an agnostic. Odd weather patterns do seem to be happening and these need to be explained. However, with governments exhorting us to change our lifestyles and accept higher taxes, we need an open and transparent study to justify public sacrifice. This, says Ms Laframboise, is precisely what the report is not. She discovered that some of the lead authors are mere graduate students. She discovered that the report contained no conflict-of-interest guidelines. She discovered that the “lead authors” of the report were chosen for their national and gender diversity, not necessarily their expertise. As she says in her just-published book, “it is dishonest to tell the world you've assembled a group of competitive cyclists when many on your team are actually riding tricycles.” Of course, this does not prove that global warming isn’t happening. But it does suggest that more openness is needed. In other stories this week, Max Torres and Vincenzina Santoro discuss the #OccupyWallStreet movement and Ronan Wright reviews the spine-tingling film Contagion. This is a film guaranteed to make you wash your hands 100 times a day. Cheers, Read more...

Wars, and how to make them look better

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 07:18:08 GMT

As Michael Cook foreshadowed earlier in the week, today is Armistice Day -- or rather, has been DownUnder, is under way in Europe, and has yet to dawn in the United States. Without planning anything special, we happen to have two articles that tie in with this theme. In Tiger Print, Katie Hinderer has a personal reflection that will strike a chord in the hearts of many readers. Earlier this month her younger brother set out for boot camp with his sights set on joining the Marines. Katie shares with us her sisterly advice and mixed feelings about this venture, which leaves many families torn between pride and anxiety about the future. The numbers of those killed in the First and Second World Wars (roughly 20 million and 55 million) are appalling, and the way many of them died, especially during WWII, is unspeakable. It is disconcerting, therefore, to read, in Zac Alstin’s review of a new book by Steven Pinker, that the Harvard wunderkind compares these numbers favourably to the human cost of earlier wars, so that the twentieth century, instead of being the bloodiest as we thought, comes out looking relatively benign. I am inclined to agree with Zac that there is “a utilitarian conceit” buried in this sweet-smelling memorial wreath. I was pleased early in the week to hear from Josephine Quintavalle, director of the UK pro-life group, Comment on Reproductive Ethics (CORE), who has good news and bad about the situation of the unborn child in Italy. Which brings us to Europe and George Friedman’s analysis of what the eurozone crisis means for European unity from here on. Two prime ministers have bit the dust this week, and in one case I can’t say that I am sorry. I don’t mean the Greek one, either… My own article wonders why the White House and the New York Times would want to undermine respect for conscience at precisely the moment when we are throwing people into prison for disregrading it. Cheers, Read more...

The 11th of the 11th of the 11th

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 05:37:11 GMT

Friday is the eleventh of the eleventh of the eleventh and naturally Hollywood is cashing in on this sinister coincidence with a supernatural horror movie called (no prize for originality) 11-11-11. The trailer looks pretty exciting, with spooky churches and dark figures walking in flames at the end of very long corridors. I suspect that these are the only exciting moments, which is what usually happens with low-budget horror films. Which makes me wonder why there aren’t more films about the real-life horror commemorated on Friday, Armistice Day? On November 11, 1918, World War I ended, after killing somewhere between 15 and 65 million people. The waste of men in battle is still appalling, mowed down by machine gun fire, pounded into the mud by big guns, gassed, dying of disease and cold. Then there were the epidemics, and famines and genocides to kill civilians. Historians still can’t explain the madness which set the scene for the terrors of the 20th Century. Men and women were melted into gigantic state machines indifferent to the lives of their own citizens, let alone the lives of their enemies. World War I accelerated the decline of the family and the corruption of moral standards which we take for granted nowadays. There is a custom of observing a minute’s silence at 11am on November 11. It’s a paltry tribute to the sorrows of the Great War, but worthwhile. I recommend it. This week we have published two fascinating articles by Tawfik Hamid, a one-time trainee terrorist for al-Qaeda who is now campaigning (in the United States) for a peaceful version of Islam. In one, we have interviewed him about his hopes for a non-violent interpretation of the Qu’ran and in the other he analyses the different responses to the violence in Islam. In an article which you could easily link to the tragedy of World War I, Paul Rogers reflects on the fact that Nato conducted over 9,000 sorties over Libya yet has not released casualty figures. Did anyone die? And I have written an historical piece about the doctor who euthanased King George V. Did he also kill his sister, Queen Maud of Norway? Cheers, Read more...