Ethics Newsline®

In the drama of the terror attacks, Jo Moore played only a bit part. But her blunder as a government press officer in Britain exemplifies a new and troubling issue: the opportunism of those taking selfish advantage of the September 11 events.

Ms. Moore is still, as of this writing, a special political adviser to the Secretary of State in the Department of Transport. She was seasoned in the art of political spin. She knew the game, played by governments everywhere, of releasing bad news on a day when it would be overshadowed by more important stories.

So at 2:55 P.M. on the day of the attacks — 9:55 A.M. in New York, as the public was transfixed by television images of the burning World Trade Center tower that would collapse within five minutes — Ms. Moore emailed fifteen words to her staff that she wishes she’d never written. “It is now a very good day,” she typed, “to get out anything we want to bury.” Translation: Issue a press release today, and you can guarantee it won’t be noticed. But you won’t be guilty of hiding anything, because if anyone asks you later, you can honestly say, “Yes, we publicized that bad news.”

Earlier this month her memo came to light. The outrage was palpable even within her own party. “An attitude like this,” noted Tony Wright, a leading Labour Member of Parliament, “is completely incompatible with any idea of public service.” Her boss, Transport Secretary Stephen Byers, issued a reprimand but stood by her. So did Prime Minister Tony Blair, citing her good work in the past.

She apologized, first in writing and then last week in a televised statement. But the damage was done. Those fifteen words will haunt her career.

What was her mistake? Perhaps nothing more complex than a lack of moral awareness.

In each of us, it seems, there’s a trigger mechanism that operates at some threshold of moral limitation. When events around us cease to be “as usual” and become “something different,” we take notice. Below that threshold, unusual events call forth responses within an ordinary (though often creative) context. But when that threshold is crossed, even our most creative responses give place to something else. We interrupt the general routine. We experience fright, heightened focus, increased care for others, a greater willingness to endure normally unthinkable hardships, or various other reactions. Those responses are fundamentally moral. They don’t impel us to ask, “What’s expedient?” or “How can I make the most of this?” Instead, they cause us to ask, “What’s right?”

In Ms. Moore’s case, the fault was not her instinct to manage the news. That’s what press officers do — though more frequently by trying to make a splash than by seeking to remain in the shadows. No, her fault lay in not knowing when to override that instinct. And in that failure lies the difference between making proper use of opportunity — a very good thing — and the opportunism that turns every occasion into a self-serving venture.

The line between opportunity and opportunism can be hard to discern. Already, however, uncomfortable signs of opportunism are beginning to surface in the wake of September 11:

• Did U.S. airlines need to lay off as many thousands as they did, or were they seizing the moment to accomplish something long wanted but difficult to implement?
• Is Congress pushing through more draconian security laws than are needed, using terrorism to justify a tilting of power away from people and toward government?
• Are corporations glad to ban travel in the name of protecting their employees, since they’re also saving huge amounts of money?
• Are protest marches being cobbled together a little too quickly, suggesting that a network of professional activists has seized this particular tragedy as the vehicle for a range of off-the-shelf, tangentially related concerns?
• Are fundraising organizations scrambling aboard the “now more than ever” bandwagon, even when their missions have little to do with responding to these recent events?

In each of these cases, what matters is motive — as is so often true in ethics. Downsizing, terrorism laws, travel restrictions, protests, fundraising — these can be good or bad, depending on the desire to take up an opportunity versus the opportunistic lust for selfish gain.

One thing is sure: Opportunism of the Jo Moore variety will never find favor. But it may be hard to spot. As September 11 recedes farther into the past, opportunism can come to look a lot like opportunity. We need to polish our skills in moral awareness, sharpening our ability to discern the good from the bad motive. And if, in her words, it’s “a very good day” to do anything, it’s to practice distinguishing the exceptional from the ordinary. Now (it seems right to say) more than ever.

(c)2001 by the Institute for Global Ethics

“There’s a general fear now that we may be attacked again or the lights may go out, so people think they should go to the people who know how to handle survival and weapons. This is as good a time as any to recruit.”

WASHINGTON
The Bush administration last week lifted a short-lived clampdown on congressional briefings concerning the war on terrorism, agreeing to resume full briefings following a dispute over information leaks.

Two weeks ago, Bush slashed the number of Congress members allowed to attend such briefings from 30 to eight, after sharply reprimanding legislators for leaking information from a previous briefing.

Bush’s punitive stance failed to sit well with many members of Congress, who complained that they could not perform their constitutional oversight duty if deprived of wartime information, reported the Washington Post.

Responding to such concerns, Bush said he would not return to normal operations unless the members of Congress understood their obligations to secrecy and took “their positions very seriously.”

“I want Congress to hear loud and clear it is unacceptable behavior to leak classified information when we have troops at risk,” Bush said at the White House.

Assured of such by House and Senate representatives, Bush last week lifted his ban on full briefings.

LUXEMBOURG
The European Union last week moved to strengthen laws against money laundering, demanding cooperation from a wider web of industries and ordering nations with a poor record of enforcement to improve quickly.

The EU action follows more than two years of debate on beefing up the bloc’s anti-laundering laws, a campaign that gained momentum following last month’s terrorist attacks on the United States, reported the BBC.

In last week’s action, the EU agreed to require more industries to report suspicious financial transactions. Under the new rule, accountants, bankers, lawyers, casino operators, and gem dealers, would be required to watch for and report questionable transactions.

Also, foreign nations, especially the Philippines and the island nation of Nauru, were ordered to improve their anti-laundering laws or face sanctions.

“We call on the rest of the world, including offshore centers, to implement regulations requiring institutions to report suspicious assets,” said U.K. representative Gordon Brown. “We should stand shoulder to shoulder to root out the financial lifeblood of terrorism.”

Other issues that were discussed without resolution include freezing terrorists’ assets, reinforcing security measures, creating EU-wide arrest warrants, and accelerating the extradition of terrorists, according to the Associated Press.

CINCINNATI, Ohio
An Ohio firm that markets financial services to disaster victims last week faced withering criticism for sending cash, prepaid calling cards, and lawyers’ names to the families of people killed in the September 11 attacks.

The leather-bound portfolios from Providence Inc. invited at least 76 families to contact a list of law firms with “extensive experience in major airline and other similar mass disasters,” after which they could apply for Providence loans to cover needed expenses, reported the New York Times.

The company’s actions prompted a stream of complaints and threatened lawsuits — both from victims’ families and from the proffered law firms, most of which said Providence had no right to use their names in such a manner.

The Times reports that lawyers are barred from soliciting disaster victims for 45 days following an accident. Providence, which has no attorneys in its employ, is not bound by similar restraints, an executive insisted last week.

“This is one of the worst things that any business organization could be sending to these victims,” Robert Clifford, a Chicago lawyer who is chairman of the American Bar Association’s task force on terrorism and the law, complained to the Times. “It does by indirection what lawyers are prevented from doing directly.”

Stung from the backlash against its behavior, Providence last week sent a letter of apology to the law firms it listed, a move that could keep the company clear of lawsuits, the Times reported.

Special to Newsline from Canadian correspondent Errol P. Mendes

TORONTO
The Globe & Mail is reporting that it has obtained a secret report written two years ago that reveals safety lapses at the world’s largest nuclear facility.

The report on the Bruce Nuclear Power Station, which is located on the shores of Lake Huron, was compiled by a U.S.-based team of independent experts from the World Association of Nuclear Operators. It claims that the safety violations could have increased the likelihood of a nuclear accident.

The document was presented in 1999 to the owner of the facility, the provincially owned Ontario Power Generation.

The Globe & Mail is reporting that the experts who wrote the report fought the newspaper’s attempt to obtain the secret report under the Ontario access to information laws, claiming that nuclear operators are more likely to report and deal with mistakes if their errors are kept confidential.

Included in the list of serious safety failings were lack of knowledge about water cooling systems; warning alarms being disconnected because they were too noisy; operators who had their backs turned to critical instrument control panels, which would slow down critical response times in an emergency; modifications to the power plant that had not been incorporated into design manuals; and a backlog in preventative and corrective maintenance work, with some such work being poorly done.

A consultant with the Sierra Club of Canada, David Martin, is reported to have stated that failures in a cooling system of a nuclear reactor could lead to a meltdown. The Ontario government subsequently negotiated a long-term lease of the Bruce facility to a unit of British Energy earlier in 2001.

LUXEMBOURG
An activist group last week accused British oil giants Premier Oil and TotalFinaElf of human rights abuses in Burma, where locals are allegedly beaten and bullied into building pipelines for the firms.

Earth Rights International (ERI) last week blasted the British firms before the European Parliament, accusing the companies of sponsoring violence and suppression of local peoples, reported the Guardian.

ERI claims security forces hired by Premier Oil and TotalFinaElf are abusing Burmese civilians, forcing them into labor, and even using them as human landmine sweepers.

Representatives for both firms denied any wrongdoing, according to the Guardian.

“There are no international sanctions that do not allow our operation to go ahead there,” Premier Oil’s corporate social responsibility officer, Richard Jones, said in an interview with the BBC.

While the firm insists it has improved human rights in Burma, Jones told the BBC that his firm recognizes “that we just do not have the capacity ourselves at this point in time to give everybody a full assurance that we understand exactly what is going on in the pipeline area.”

DAKOTA CITY, Nebraska
Meat-packing giant IBP Inc. last week agreed to pay more than $14 million to settle charges that the South Dakota-based firm violated environmental laws at three meat plants in Nebraska and Texas.

Under terms of the deal, IBP will spend $10 million to improve its treatment of waste water at a Nebraska plant, where the company was accused of discharging ammonia into the Missouri River.

Water-quality complaints at two Texas plants were also resolved in the settlement, reported the Associated Press.

IBP will also pay $1.85 million to the state of Nebraska, and $2.25 million to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which filed suit against the company in January 2000.

The firm, which was also accused of emitting illegal levels of hydrogen sulfur into the air, was not required to admit any wrongdoing when agreeing to the settlement, according to the AP.

LONDON
While British women are making progress in climbing the corporate ladder, they still face steep odds when trying to break into the business world in the first place — a problem due largely to traditional sexism, according to a new report from the U.K. Industrial Society.

The group’s study, “Unequal Entrepreneurs: Why Female Enterprise is an Uphill Struggle,” examines the experiences of working women in Britain, where self-employment is still a domain dominated by men.

Only 26 percent of the nation’s self-employed entrepreneurs are women — a figure nearly unchanged since 1990, reported the BBC.

That stagnation seems anomalous in light of the gradual progress women are making in breaking into the corporate boardroom and executive ranks, the report notes.

While such high-level hurdles are widely acknowledged, “less well documented is the discrimination women entrepreneurs encounter when it comes to establishing themselves in business,” Industrial Society head Will Hutton told the BBC.

Val Singh of the Cranfield School of Management says that women often are excluded from the vital small-business networks that help fledgling firms survive their early days. The problem is not women’s skills, but sexist attitudes that prevail in many business circles, Singh told the BBC.

The Industrial Society report calls on the U.K. government to help women overcome such hurdles by forming agencies tasked with assisting female entrepreneurs, and by encouraging legal, banking, and finance firms to treat women better.

LONDON
The British government last week adopted a new code of ethics designed to keep its agencies and others from unfairly recruiting foreign nurses to work in the United Kingdom — a process dubbed “poaching” by the British press.

The legislation bars public and private firms from exploiting foreign nurses, according to a report from the Reuters news agency. British officials say that despite a crippling nurse shortage, the National Health Service will cut all ties with “commercial recruitment agencies who do not work to high standards of ethics in keeping with the code.”

The code calls on firms to provide foreign nurses with the same wages, learning opportunities, and support provided to British nurses, and to only hire workers who can communicate effectively in English.

Whether other European nations facing similar nurse shortages, including the Netherlands and Sweden, follow suit remains to be seen, noted Reuters.

Poorer nations around the world have long complained that Britain and other European countries are luring away their top talent not only in health care, but in academia and business as well, creating a devastating “brain drain” in the region.

According to a report released last week, Africa has lost one-third of its highly skilled professionals and academics to Western countries in recent decades, costing the continent $4 billion a year, reported the BBC.

While many say the mass emigration is the result of slick marketing and recruitment, others argue that the professionals are simply seeking greater political freedom and more affluent living standards.

NEW YORK
People who use illegal drugs on a casual basis are just as likely as non-users to look for work or hold down a job, according to a new study that suggests workplace drug policies should shift their attention to chronic users.

Casual drug users — defined as those who used drugs once a week or less over the past year — were just as ambitious in landing and holding jobs as non-users, according to Dr. Michael French of the University of Miami, Florida.

French’s study, published in the current Southern Economic Journal, recommends that employers turn their attention to chronic drug users, echoing conventional policies toward workers’ alcohol use, reported the Reuters news agency.

The study, which used figures from a 1997 survey of drug use, received a cool reception at the White House, where a spokesman suggested that any drug use — casual or chronic — by workers is dangerous.

“I don’t think any parent would want their child’s school bus driver to use drugs whether it was casually or chronically,” White House Office of National Drug Control Policy spokesman Rafael Lemaitre told Reuters.

Noting that one-sixth of workers involved in fatal accidents test positive for alcohol, cocaine, or marijuana, Lemaitre warned, “In terms of workplace accidents, it does not matter if the drug user is hardcore or casual. The damage has already been done.”

LONDON
Nearly 70 percent of British people would defraud their insurance company if they thought they could get away with it, according to a new survey from the Association of British Insurers (ABI).

Three-quarters of the U.K. public believes people regularly pad or fake their insurance claims — a statistic backed by industry estimates claiming that fraudulent claims account for between 10 and 15 percent of all pay-outs.

“Honest policyholders pay the price for insurance cheats, which is why the industry is committed to redoubling its efforts to reduce the scale of the problem,” ABI director general Mary Francis pledged to the BBC last week.

The ABI said it is instituting new measures to detect insurance fraud, including resource pooling and data sharing, developing a single antifraud database, and improved methods for evaluating claims.

From the Online News Association:

“While journalists across all media say they’re concerned about the standards and credibility of digital news, the online public says it’s not an issue. In fact, 13 percent of online readers say the Internet is their most trusted source for news.

“That’s among the findings of the Online News Association’s (ONA) Digital Journalism Credibility Project….

“Directed by ONA and funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the credibility survey raises a key question about the gap between readers’ and journalists’ perceptions of online news: ‘Are the media’s standards for evaluating credibility higher than the public’s?’ asks the study. ‘Or is there something the media perceives or knows about the ethics and practices of online news that the public does not know?’

“Findings of the yearlong study also show younger members of the public and younger members of the media are more likely to say online news is credible than their older counterparts.

“‘The results of the study are fascinating,’ said ONA President and Wall Street Journal Senior Editor Rich Jaroslovsky. ‘They suggest that while the importance of this medium continues to grow, we have a big job to do in our own newsrooms — making sure our standards of accuracy, fairness, and integrity are high, and educating our colleagues in other media about that fact.’…”

Lord Phillips founded the law firm Bates, Wells & Braithwaite, London, in 1970, and is a specialist in charity law, business law, and defamation. Cofounder and first chair of the LAG, a legal aid charity; founder and president of Citizenship Foundation, an education charity; cofounder and president of the Solicitors’ Pro Bono Group; and on many charitable and business boards, Lord Phillips is also a working Life Peer. In addition, he is a freelance journalist, a regular panelist and occasional presenter on Anglia TV programs regarding current affairs, and legal adviser (”Legal Eagle”) on BBC2’s “Jimmy Young Show.” Rushworth Kidder spoke to Lord Phillips at his office in London on October 11, 2001.

Kidder: As a result of these attacks, what do you hope will change for the better in our country and the world over the next decade?

Phillips: I think September 11 was unprecedented. The nearest parallels don’t come close: Pearl Harbor, a distant island military hit; the London blitz, a declared war where people were expecting to some extent what they got, horrible and defenseless as it was. [On] the scale of pure evil, I think it comes as near to 10 out of 10 as you’ll get, particularly because there was no warning and there was no war.

What also marks it, of course, is that it was against America, which has a superiority of power, economic and military, unparalleled in the history of the world. It was unique for America, a country in the full flush of its unprecedented power that was suddenly exposed to something beyond imagining.

So what good comes out of it? As one deeply worried about the materialism of the West, deeply worried about the subjugation of spiritual values to material selfishness, I would like to think that it would give us all pause. We don’t lack intelligence. We may lack wisdom, we may lack spirituality, we may lack common sympathy, but we don’t lack intelligence. Our consciences have not been wholly anesthetized.

So the greatest obligation we have to those who suffered is to ask these difficult questions. I hope there will be a real self-examination that will go far beyond the traditional sources of self-examination — the churches, the intelligentsia, a certain part of the liberal community — and embrace the financial, professional elites. There is a massive need for collective reflection on where we’re headed.

Kidder: Do you see that kind of question happening in financial circles?

Phillips: I think this is something that will show itself, if it does, in the next few months or even year or two. I think one of the terrible things about materialism is that it actually coarsens the mind and heart of those who are grabbed by it. You don’t come out of it the same as you went in to it. But I suppose I’m an eternal optimist. I’ve got a sense that a lot of people will start to use their wonderful intellectual talents and energy in a slightly different direction. So a great richness could come out of this — a sort of metaphysical richness.

Kidder: As a result of September 11, what do you fear will change for the worse in the next ten years?

Phillips: That’s easy: The fear is that my optimism is misplaced! That it’s business as usual, and that the intense animosity that our economic and commercial imperialism has created — not just [in] the Muslim world — [is] an animosity that runs so deep that it merges into hatred. I was in Syria and Lebanon in February, and I had meetings with the foreign secretaries of both countries and the prime minister and president of Lebanon. I saw the effects of the Palestinian and Israeli wars in 1967 and 1973, and went into one of the refugee camps. I think particularly [that on] Wall Street and [in] the City [of London] — two of the symbols of an aggressive, hypercompetitive commercialism/mercantilism — we underestimate those feelings. [We] tend to make life easier for ourselves by saying that it’s just the envy of incompetent, illiberal, undemocratic societies, in the face of this wonderful Western superiority gained by energy and application and intelligence. I mean, there’s some truth in that, but not much.

So what I fear is that the divide has opened up between the Muslim world and the post-Christian world. I don’t think we should just look at the dangers in terms of the prospects of us getting on the wrong end of a terrorist bomb. There are other dangers that are different but serious. So if this [terrorist attack], far from giving rise to a reexamination of some aspects of our culture, instead reinforces the rift — [with] people saying, “You’re not going to knock me off my perch! It’s business as usual, with a vengeance!” — then I get very depressed indeed.

I don’t have any faith in the notion that we can deal with this by intensifying security. I think that is completely self-delusional. A man or a woman determined to inflict terrorist damage [and] prepared to die in the process is unstoppable. If we make security on planes so effective that [this kind of attack] doesn’t work there, then they’ll do it somewhere else.

There’s a strange paradox about security, in that in some ways it actually increases the prospect of terrorism. That which is locked is much more attractive to the would-be predator than that which is open. I think that’s also true of cultures. The psychology of openness and freedom is one which is in itself benign [and] sends out ripples that are generous and trusting. We are apt to suspect [these things] as being inadequate to the terrorist threat. And I’m not being silly about this — you’ve got to inspect people going on the planes. All I’m guarding against is the popular clamoring for identity cards and all the rest of it.

Kidder: How do you feel, then, about funding the intelligence services?

Phillips: I’m not very convinced by any of it. Again, I think it can create the very thing it seeks to guard against. You need some level of knowledge of who is in your midst and what, broadly, they’re up to. Soviet Russia didn’t suffer internal terrorism, apart from Chechnya, but collapsed in a great heap. And I don’t think the collapse and the level of security were disconnected, because a certain level of security becomes an expression of a cultural or social malaise, a neurosis on the part of the community.

Kidder: What two or three indicators will you be watching in the coming months to judge whether your hopes or your fears are more accurate?

Phillips: The number one indicator is what happens in Israel and Palestine. The biggest source of poison towards America and Britain is the lack of even-handedness over the Israel/Palestine problem. I think we kid ourselves if we say that bin Laden is a phenomenon [that has] to do with Saudi Arabia from which he came and Afghanistan to which he went. The seedbed of his support is much more wide and deep than we would like to admit. From the Palestine point of view, they’ve got more refugees registered with the United Nations [since] their removal in 1948/49 than there are inhabitants of Israel — 3.7 million. And 1.2 million of these [are in] 59 camps which are unbelievably degrading, dreadful places. How many people in the West know about those? How many people really look at the history of this tragic quarter of the globe in an even-handed way?

Don’t get me wrong: I am totally behind the existence of the state of Israel. In 1973 I offered to fight for the Israelis — I believed that strongly in [their cause]. [But] unless we are seen to be even-handed, I don’t think we can expect terrorism to stop. Worse than that, there could be a real instability in several of those [Islamic] countries which could be devastating, with a capital D, to world economics and world peace. It could inflame a series of countries across the world, and it could spread into Africa, where there are large Muslim populations [with] a lot of feeling against the West.

The second indicator is whether we’re prepared to look at all the world trade organizational structures in order to seriously re-jig things in a way that is less favorable to ourselves. We are the economic colossi. The multinational is broadly an instrument of the Western democratic countries. I think we need an even-handedness in our view of the commercial and economic realities of the globe that is not currently present. I think I understand the American point of view, and I’m about as pro-American as they come. [But] I think a great deal [of the problem] comes back to America, because it is at this moment in such a position of power and influence, militarily, politically, and economically. Unless America does a number of things in a far-sighted, generous way — [like] the Marshal plan after the last world war — and unless it decommercializes its own appreciation of some of these problems, I think we’re in for a very uncertain and probably very dangerous decade, or two, or three.

Mr. Kidder —

Thank you for the insights on the potential motives of the terrorists. It is clear that the tragic events that unfolded [last] month are the byproduct of more than just “religious fanaticism.” While it is true that one positive element of this tragedy is that it has renewed a spirit of patriotism that I have not witnessed in my generation, my concern is that this loyalty is somewhat superficial and will soon wane.

For example, it was fun sitting in Fenway Park [on a] Monday night with some friends and listening to the crowd break out into chants of “U.S.A, U.S.A.” I then began to wonder if this is how most Americans view this current conflict. Is this “war on terrorism” simply a game with a winner and a loser? Do we view the terrorists as a bunch of poor sports or sore losers? If so, then we will be less likely to invest the energy needed to “engage our collective non-consent.”

The prosperity of the 1990s may have lulled us into a state of apathy towards the traumatic challenges that have hit other parts of the world. Regardless of the motives behind the recent attack, we all realize now more than ever that we are an integral part of the world community and are not immune to the plight of others.

Regards,
Steve Kenney
President, Maine Taxpayers Equity Alliance
Scarborough, Maine, U.S.A.

“Fear is an insidious virus. Given a breeding place in our minds, it will permeate the whole body of our work; it will eat away our spirit and block the forward path of our endeavors. Fear is the greatest enemy of progress…. Again and again, when the struggle seems hopeless and all opportunity lost — some man or woman with a little more courage, a little more effort, brings victory.”

– James Ford Bell (U.S. businessman, 1879-1961)