Last Wednesday, April 19, I sat spellbound in a classroom in New Canaan, Connecticut, listening to ninth-graders talk about ways to address bullying, exclusion, and social cruelty at their school.

The next day, I sat stunned at the news that five teenagers in Riverton, Kansas, had been arrested for plotting a school massacre to commemorate the shootings at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999. Then on Sunday came the news that six seventh-graders in North Pole, Alaska, had been arrested for hatching a similar plot.

In an odd way, I felt I knew both sets of students. Decades ago, while I was pursuing my graduate studies, my wife and I lived in New Canaan for a year while I commuted to New York. For ten years that followed, we lived in Wichita, Kansas, where as a professor of English literature I regularly visited high schools large and small around the state, recruiting for our university’s honors program.

The news from the public schools in Riverton, a rural community of 1,000 on Route 66 not far from the Missouri border, and from North Pole, a community of 1,600 not far from Fairbanks, is deeply troubling. But what I saw that day at the independent New Canaan Country School — despite the affluence, the parental attentiveness, and the faculty culture of deep, steady engagement with the students — may hold the seeds of hope for a nation again anguishing over the threat of student violence. Let me explain.

Earlier this year, the student-elected Leadership Council of the ninth grade (the “senior” students in this K-9 school) had set themselves a project. They had noticed that sixth-graders weren’t treating each other very well. So with permission and guidance from the faculty, the ninth-graders laid plans to intervene.

Their premise was simple. “When we were sixth-graders,” one of them recalled, “we looked up to the ninth-graders and thought they were so cool.” She explained that “our saying that [social cruelty] is not cool carries a lot of weight” with the younger classes — perhaps more weight, they suspected, than the same message coming from adults. So they worked throughout the year with the sixth-graders to get that anti-bullying, anti-exclusion message across.

It not only changed the sixth grade. Along the way, their own class also grew increasingly cohesive. One of the ninth-graders, describing the result, said she now has a small group of “close friends” in her class, as well as a larger circle of what she called “community friends.” As a faculty member later remarked, she never identified any third group. In her mind, there appeared to be no additional category — no losers, jerks, wimps, nerds, or any of those knife-edged words that students use to exclude and isolate the out group from the in group.

The day I was there, with less than two months of the academic year to go, the ninth-graders had asked to meet with the faculty. They had seen progress in the sixth grade, but they were now growing concerned about the seventh and eighth grades. Could they have permission, they asked, to bring this message to them — and thereby leave a legacy to the school that might carry on after they graduated?

They knew what they were up against — a more mature and insidious kind of social backstabbing among otherwise good kids who, as one girl put it, were beginning to be “stealthy in their meanness.” They knew that wasn’t right. They knew the faculty and parents cared. And they knew they might be able to make the case for a broader community of caring that could bring everyone inside the perimeter of moral concern.

How is that relevant to the Riverton/North Pole/Columbine syndrome? If there’s a thread running through these incidents of student violence, it seems to be a sense of vengeance for social exclusion. A fellow student described one of the Riverton ringleaders as “an oddball,” observing that “everybody picked on him.” In North Pole, according to the Anchorage Daily News, police speculated that the boys may have been seeking revenge because they had been “picked on.” In each case, tips from concerned adults alerted school authorities and broke up the plot.

School violence remains a complex problem. It draws some of its copycat aspects from sensationalist entertainment and news media. It operates in a matrix that includes websites like myspace.com, which figured in the Riverton story after one of the arrested students divulged plans for the massacre on that site. It is nested in an educational arena where budget constraints have forced cuts in the very extracurricular activities that can help build character and teach responsibility. No single intervention, either in the form of an externally designed anti-bullying program or of a homegrown intervention by ninth-graders, will be the silver bullet.

But that didn’t stop those Connecticut students. They were brimming with enthusiasm, filled with trust that their efforts could make a difference. I’ve seen enough of that kind of sheer good-heartedness — both in affluent Eastern suburbs and in the rural Kansas heartland — to know that it can rise up anywhere to make hope practical and trust tangible.

These days, we all need to hear that message. Maybe we, too, will pay more attention when it comes not from adults but from ninth-graders.

©2006 Institute for Global Ethics

“We need to do everything to fight against AIDS. And certainly the use of condoms can, in certain situations, constitute a lesser evil.”

– Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, the retired archbishop of Milan and the head of the Roman Catholic Church’s liberal wing, in an interview published last week by the Italian magazine L’Espresso. Martini’s remarks sparked renewed debate over the Vatican’s opposition to condoms, especially in light of the ongoing toll taken by the HIV virus. (“World Briefing,” New York Times, Apr. 22)

VARIOUS
Ethical issues involving China and the Internet were prominent in U.S. and world headlines last week. Among the stories:

• The New York Times profiled Chinese computer scientist Lee Kai-Fu, the new head of Chinese operations for Google, a man who has become something of a cult figure in China for his prediction that the Internet will level the playing field for remote areas of his nation, allowing students in the most isolated villages to access course material from M.I.T. or Harvard. But as the Times noted, the introduction of the Internet to China has encountered myriad problems, including Google’s decision to launch a version of its search engine that is censored according to the demands of party authorities and police. Searchers using the Chinese version find their results purged of most references to “democracy,” “Tibet,” or “Falun Gong,” the Times noted. While the Times was not allowed to ask about the free expression as a condition of the meeting with Lee, he did offer an unsolicited opinion on the matter: “People are actually quite free to talk about the subject [democracy and human rights]. I don’t think they care that much. I think people would say: ‘Hey, U.S. democracy, that’s a good form of government. Chinese government, good and stable, that’s a good form of government. Whatever, as long as I get to go to my favorite Web site, see my friends, live happily.’ “
• Underscoring the sensitivity of the issue of Internet freedom, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates welcomed visiting Chinese president Hu Jintao to Seattle last week with a cryptic remark that Microsoft has yet to clarify. According to the Agence France-Presse, Gates said: “It is my belief that industry and government around the world should work even more closely to protect the privacy and security of Internet users, and promote the exchange of ideas, while respecting legitimate government considerations.” As the AFP noted, the statement seems to urge China to respect the rights of Internet users, but also implies that undefined “legitimate” government issues must be taken into account. A company spokesman refused to clarify the statement and would not comment on whether Gates discussed censorship issues with Hu, the Reuters news agency reported. Microsoft, along with Google and Yahoo, has faced withering criticism in the United States for altering its content and operations to suit Chinese government demands.
• The Toronto-based Globe & Mail reported that on the eve of the meeting between Hu and President Bush, it was revealed that evidence used to convict a Chinese dissident who tried to form a “freedom and democracy” party there was furnished by the Internet firm Yahoo. The firm reportedly provided authorities with information about an email address the dissident used to further what China called “a plot to subvert the people’s democratic dictatorship under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.” According to information furnished by the press-freedom group Reporters Without Borders, Jiang Lijun was sentenced to four years in prison. A Yahoo spokesperson said the company was unaware of the details of this incident, but the firm had said on previous occasions that it has no choice but to comply with Chinese law when asked for information about users.
• Delegates at a conference about free Internet expression in Asia have warned that despite the claims of some Internet firms, high-tech communication technologies could be used to suppress free expression as well as to foster it. The AFP reported that representatives from China, Myanmar, and Vietnam noted that communication technologies are routinely used for surveillance and often allow for centralized government censorship. An interview transcribed and published by the U.S. Public Broadcasting Service last week also noted that the Chinese government, in particular, has been quick to develop and adopt new software to foil attempts by Internet users to remain anonymous.

OTTAWA
Canada has accused China of industrial espionage, starting an exchange of denials and counterclaims.

Canadian Foreign Affairs minister Peter MacKay said in an interview with CTV News that the government is “very concerned about economic espionage” and said it was an issue he wanted to “continue to raise with the Chinese at the appropriate time.”

According to a report form the Globe & Mail, various news reports in recent months have raised the possibility that there may be up to 1,000 economic spies in Canada, among them students, scientists, and visiting business delegations, who allegedly feed back information such as supplier lists, technical drawings, and research and development data. Affected industries are said to include information technology, nuclear energy, and the oil and gas sectors.

The accusation drew a harsh response from Chinese ambassador Lu Shumin, who told the official Chinese news agency Xinhua, “I can say responsibly that the so-called Chinese economic espionage against Canada does not exist at all…. It [the accusation] is not conducive to the friendly relations and cooperation between our two countries.”

But Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper brushed aside that denial, according to the CBC, saying the suspicions had good foundation and that he would continue to probe the allegations.

The CanWest News Service reports that Harper’s attitude seems in contrast with former prime ministers Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin, and Brian Mulroney, all of whom were concerned primarily with building trade ties.

WASHINGTON
A new study has confirmed what most of us suspected all along: We endanger others and ourselves by distractions we choose to indulge in when driving, including dialing cell phones and eating.

A federal study that tracked drivers in a hundred vehicles wired with cameras and other sensors found that distractions, as well as plain old drowsiness, contributed to about eight out of 10 crashes, CNN reported.

The study also showed that chatting on the cell phone or eating breakfast behind the wheel increased the chances of a crash by a factor of three.

According to a report from the Chicago Sun-Times, police say they aren’t surprised by the findings, and routinely handle such events as rear-enders caused by a driver looking for his French fries or fumbling with the car radio.

Dr. Charlie Klauer, a researcher from the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, which conducted the study with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said several factors conspire to make a distracted driver and his or her car into a deadly weapon. “We’re very concerned about the fact that not only are we drinking our coffee and we’re disciplining our children and we’re eating sandwiches in the car, but the proliferation of technologies in the vehicle have just exacerbated the amount of time that drivers are distracted,” CTV reported.

According to the Detroit Free Press, the videotapes showed an astounding array of driver inattention, including putting on makeup, changing shirts, flossing teeth, and inserting contact lenses.

HOUSTON
Federal prosecutors completed their cross-examination of former Enron chief executive Jeff Skilling last week, accusing him of violating his company’s ethics code and cheating on his taxes.

The Washington Post reported that prosecutor Sean Berkowitz claimed that Skilling falsified the dates on checks in order to skirt tax liabilities and personally invested $180,000 in a firm that later received $450,000 in contracts with Enron. Skilling characterized both issues as too “small” to remember years later, but did admit that he should have been more diligent in following Enron’s ethics code, which required him to notify the company in writing of his investment.

Berkowitz also attempted to show that Skilling misled investors about Enron’s shaky health by obfuscating financial data, the Houston Chronicle reported. Skilling claimed that investors were fully informed because Enron had published “value-at-risk” data, information that “everybody in the industry understands.”

But Berkowitz played a tape in which managers form Alliance Capital, which manages almost $580 billion in investments and was one of Enron’s biggest shareholders, could not interpret the “value at risk” data. Skilling countered that Alliance had some “new guys” who didn’t understand the business, according to the Chronicle.

According to coverage from Time magazine and the Los Angeles Times, Berkowitz also attempted to force Skilling to admit that he was responsible for his company’s public statements. But Skilling repeatedly referred to lawyers, accountants, and junior executives who furnished him with information on which he relied.

Former Enron chairman Kenneth Lay is expected to take the stand this week.

Skilling and Lay each face multiple fraud and conspiracy counts and each could each serve 20 years in prison if convicted.

DURHAM, North Carolina
The arrest of two Duke University lacrosse players on charges of raping and kidnapping an African-American exotic dancer continues to raise questions about the culture of college athletics.

According to a report from Voice of America correspondent Bill Rodgers, the problem is not new: “In recent years,” he writes, “allegations of rape and improper sexual conduct have been leveled at rugby players at San Diego State, basketball players at South Dakota State, football players at Penn State, the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Colorado.”

A report from Bloomberg quotes Richard Lapchick, director at Central Florida University’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, as saying the events at Duke are “reflecting what’s going on in society. You can pick up any other section of the paper and read about the Enron scandal, drugs and abuse…. It would be naive to think the world of sport would be free of that.”

According to ABC News, 15 of the Duke lacrosse team’s 47 players have court records for drunken and disorderly behavior. The university recently announced that it had appointed a committee to investigate “the extent to which the cumulative behavior of many [players] over a number of years signifies a deeper problem,” ABC reported.

Duke president Richard Brodhead has announced a “campus culture initiative” to change attitudes on campus, and has called for students, faculty, and staff to address issues related to the alleged rape, noted Durham’s Herald-Sun.

In other ethics-related events stemming from the Duke rape allegations, prosecutors and defense attorneys are accusing each other of improper behavior in pre-trial leaks of emails, photos, tapes, and bank records, USA Today reported. Each side is using the leaks to cast either the Duke lacrosse players or their alleged victim in an unfavorable light.

“They’re trying their case in public,” John Wesley Hall, an attorney and author of a book on legal ethics, told USA Today. “In an ordinary run-of-the-mill case, you’d never hear of it … but (in the Duke case), it’s a question of fighting fire with fire.”

LONDON
Britain’s government is opening up a full-scale probe of political party funding in the wake of a recent series of ethics scandals.

The Constitutional Affairs Committee of Parliament will open an inquiry into funding mechanisms and is expected to call Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor, as a witness in the so-called cash for honors controversy, according to ITV News.

The probe involves allegations that the Labour and Conservative parties gave seats in the House of Lords to backers who lent money to parties or contributed to favored projects, such as the funding of semi-privatized schools. Among other issues to be put to Falconer, the nation’s top lawmaker, is why the names of several wealthy businessmen allegedly involved in the affair were not released by a public watchdog agency, London’s Daily Mail reported.

Meanwhile, the Guardian and the Independent reported that former government adviser Des Smith, who was arrested last week as part of the probe, has denied any wrongdoing.

Smith was taken into custody for interrogation over allegations that he intimated to undercover journalists posing as prospective donors to “city academies” — controversial semi-privatized schools — that they would be recommended for peerages in return for their contributions.

The Times of London reported that Smith’s lawyers say that in light of the probe he cannot make any statement other than to state he “categorically denies the allegations and will be contesting them vigorously.”

According to a report from the Herald of Glasgow, Scotland, prime minister Tony Blair intends to go on the offensive in disputing the claims that his government sold peerages for cash. The Herald reported that an aide to Blair, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the prime minister will campaign to make it clear that “we are very positive about people who have given their money and expertise and time being recommended for seats in the House of Lords…. We want these people to be in the House of Lords…. It is something we are prepared to celebrate.”

NEW YORK
Britain’s chief financial official said there is an “ethical dimension” to the battle against global warming, but said that the effort must be balanced with economic needs.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown said last week that the moral imperative to cut greenhouse gases must be balanced with the United Kingdom’s economic needs as well as the burden to businesses and individuals, the Guardian reported.

While contending that the developed world has a moral duty to tackle climate issues, Brown said he will not endorse higher fuel taxes, the BBC reported, saying that high oil prices already pose a burden for drivers.

The Scotsman newspaper noted that Brown appeared to echo the words of the archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, who last month said governments had a “moral duty” to tackle climate change.

Environmental issues as well as the economy are key factors in Britain’s upcoming elections, with a fierce battle raging between the Conservatives and Labour for the so-called green vote.

London’s Daily Mail reports that the politicking is coming down to the smallest of details: Critics tallied up how much petroleum was used by Brown’s trip to New York, where he made his remarks, and an opposition publicity stunt featuring a dogsled on an Arctic island was calculated to have created precisely 30 pounds of carbon dioxide from the government car that drove to the airport.

WASHINGTON
Various immigration-rights groups that have staged nationwide rallies for illegal immigrants find themselves at odds over the practical and ethical considerations involved in a planned economic boycott on May 1.

According to United Press International, some groups have expressed support for the boycott, called “A Day Without Immigrants,” and hope to disrupt operations in restaurants, hotels, and construction sites. But others fear the boycott, which is designed to put pressure on Congress to pass immigration reform that will clear the way to eventual citizenship for illegals, may risk the jobs of immigrants by keeping them off worksites for another day.

They also worry that some plans to boycott classes will send the wrong message. It “just adds fuel to the argument that we don’t care about our children’s education,” Jose Lagos, a community organizer with Honduran Unity in Miami, told the Associated Press.

In addition, some groups say they are opposed to the boycott because they fear it may anger non-immigrants and instigate a backlash, the Washington Post reported.

Instead, many organizers are urging such activities as planned discussions of immigration issues during work time, taking families to an after-work or after-school vigil, and talking to children about immigration before dropping them off at school, Time magazine reported.

“People need to channel their energies in a positive direction,” Juan Carlos Ruiz of the National Capital Immigration Coalition in Washington, D.C., told Time. “If other groups decide they want to do a boycott, we respect their strategy, but it is not one we chose.”

The Financial Times, published in London, noted that the planned boycott is garnering some support in other nations, with residents of some countries — Mexico in particular — planning not to do business with the United States on May 1.

WASHINGTON
Several U.S. federal judges have violated ethics rules in recent years by presiding over lawsuits in which they have a vested financial interest or by taking free trips, an investigation by the Washington Post claimed last week.

The Post investigation, which involved a series of interviews and document reviews, claims that in 2003, federal appeals court judges issued rulings in at last seven lawsuits in cases where they or their spouses owned stock or had some financial tie to a company involved in the case, putting then at odds with federal requirements.

On at least six occasions from 2002 to 2004, the Post contends, federal judges accepted travel, food, and lodging from a libertarian foundation called the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE), but did not list the gifts on their annual disclosure statements as required by law.

Thomas Hogan, the chief judge for the District of Columbia and chair of the committee that oversees judicial ethics issues, said in a statement that the cases are regrettable but represent isolated incidents.

Other judges questioned by the Post indicated they missed catching conflicts involving subsidiaries of firms in their portfolios or were unaware of a spouse’s holdings.

SAN JOSE, Calif.
Technology has imposed yet another ethical dimension on controversies over television advertising: the possibility that someday you might not be able to switch channels when the commercial comes on.

The Netherlands-based Royal Philips Electronics Company has filed for a patent that would allow broadcasters to freeze a channel during a TV commercial or prevent fast-forwarding if the program has been digitally recorded, Radio Netherlands reported.

According to the Associated Press, the technology could be built into a television or a set-top box.

Apparently surprised by the negative reaction to the public filing of the patent, Philips issued a statement saying, “We developed a system where the viewer can choose, at the beginning of a movie, to either watch the movie without ads, or watch the movie with ads. It is up to the viewer to take this decision, and up to the broadcaster to offer the various services.”

According to CNET, the device could be activated at the beginning of a program, with the viewer choosing to watch commercials or allowing commercials to be zapped if the viewer pays a fee to the broadcaster. CNET also notes that reaction on its reader forums has been unsurprisingly universally negative.

In the age of TiVo-like devices that allow easy avoidance of commercials, advertisers often contend that it is unfair that they pay for the airing of a particular program only to have technology nullify their message.

From the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press:

“The American public is angry with Congress, and this is bad news for the Republican Party. The belief that this Congress has accomplished less than its predecessors is markedly higher than at any point in the past nine years, and by a wide margin Republican leaders are blamed for this. Many more voters than in the recent past say the issue of partisan control of Congress will be a factor in their vote in November. And as has been the case since fall, voters are significantly more inclined to vote for Democrats than Republicans — by a 51 percent to 41 percent margin.

“The public’s strong appetite for change in Washington is seen both in the majority of voters who say they would like to see most members of Congress defeated in November (53 percent), and in the sizable minority who wants to see their representative turned out in the midterms (28 percent). Both measures reflect anti-incumbent sentiment not seen since late in the historic 1994 campaign, just before Republicans gained control of Congress. In recent elections, far fewer voters evinced a desire for change; in October 2002, just 38 percent said they did not want to see most members reelected and 19 percent said that about their own representative.

“The latest national survey … finds that the Democrats maintain a large advantage in voting intentions for the fall. The Democrats’ current 10-point lead is little changed from February (50 percent-41 percent)….

“As was the case in February, the Democrats’ edge in the ballot test stems largely from its strength among independent voters. Roughly half of independents (51 percent) say they favor the Democratic candidate in their district, compared with just 31 percent who say they will vote Republican. And compared with recent elections, far more independents say the issue of which party controls Congress will be a factor in their vote this fall….

“President Bush’s sagging poll ratings are hurting GOP fortunes. Fully twice as many voters view their ballot this fall as a vote against Bush rather than as a vote for the president (34 percent vs.17 percent). But the party’s prospects also are being undermined by the fairly common view that the 109th Congress has achieved little to date….

“In general, people who fault Congress for accomplishing little say they blame Republican leaders for this (58 percent vs. 13 percent who blame Democratic leaders)….

“Thematically, negative terms about the Republican Party largely address its perceived support for business and the wealthy, while those for the Democratic Party tend to highlight the perceived weakness and disorganization of the party. The GOP is associated with being ‘greedy,’ ‘rich,’ ‘business,’ ‘crooks,’ ‘corrupt,’ ‘money,’ and ‘for rich people.’ The Democrats are seen as ‘weak,’ ‘disorganized,’ and ‘confused,’ with a few mentions of ’slow’ and ’struggling’ tossed in….

“With a growing number of Americans dissatisfied with what Congress has accomplished in this term, and most of them blaming the Republican leaders in Congress, the Republican Party is facing an electorate looking for change this fall. For the first time since 1994, a majority of voters (53 percent) say that they would not like to see most members of Congress reelected. This is 15 percentage points higher than in October of 2002, just prior to the midterm elections that year that brought significant Republican gains. The increase is even greater among independents and liberal Democrats (up 24 percentage points in each group). Even among moderate and liberal Republicans, nearly half (46 percent) now think most members of Congress should not be reelected — an increase of 12 points since the fall of 2002.

“Historically, voters have been happier with their own member of Congress than with Congress as a whole. But compared with the fall of 2002, there has been a nine-point increase in the percentage of voters who say they do not want their own U.S. representative reelected. Currently, 28 percent say this compared with 19 percent in October 2002. The largest increases in anti-incumbent sentiment are seen among moderate and liberal Republicans (up 15 points, to 25 percent today), and among independents (up 13 points, to 36 percent).

“Most Americans (75 percent) say they are at least somewhat concerned about the influence of lobbyists and special interest groups in Washington. However, fewer than half say they are very concerned about this issue (46 percent). The public is divided over whether bribery and corruption in Congress is more common today (47 percent), or no different than it has been in the past (49 percent)….”

“Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shame, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.”

– Aldous Huxley (English novelist and critic, 1894-1963)

The other night, when we turned on the TV in our rural Maine village to get the evening news, every channel had nothing but speckles and white noise. So I called our local cable provider.

Surprisingly, given the late hour, someone picked up. I explained the problem, and he began taking down my information — phone number, name, street address. Then he asked for the town, since our little company serves several villages.

But then he asked for the state.

“Where are you?” I replied with some astonishment.

“I’m in Great Falls, Montana,” he said. But he assured me he’d send the work order to the Maine tech staff by computer right away.

It’s not that I hadn’t been warned: Tom Friedman describes this kind of off-shoring in his book The World is Flat, noting that companies can sometimes handle customers’ phone calls more efficiently by routing them through Bangalore than by picking up right next door. And last week the New York Times reported on a call center in Santa Maria, California, that handles drive-though orders from McDonald’s customers in Hawaii, Mississippi, Wyoming, and some 50 franchises in other states — taking the order through a car window a thousand miles away, and returning it in seconds to a computer screen in a kitchen just a few yards from the driver. So we’d seen it coming.

Now, I’m no techie, but I don’t think I’m a Luddite, either. For someone educated in an age when chips were what you ate with hot dogs or found on your teacups, I’ve become a reasonably early adopter of bytes and bits. Yet I found myself puzzling over this experience. Why didn’t I cheer at this evidence that global efficiency had finally reached the northern New England coast? Why, instead, did I find that call to Great Falls mildly disconcerting?

It’s not that I feel any particular pride of place or culture: Montana, like Maine, has lots to offer the world. Nor do I harbor any protectionist sentiment, worried about jobs that ought to go to in-state kids rather than to outsiders 2,591 miles (I checked) away. And it certainly isn’t that I hanker after antiquity, longing for the days of telephone operators at manual switchboards.

So was it the daffodils? Several weeks before, from a hotel room in Albany, New York, I’d called Carol, our local florist, and ordered six bunches sent to my wife on a darkish late-winter day. Carol told me they were five dollars a bunch, plus delivery. When the bill finally came — for $230 — I called her back. She’d got the invoice wrong — put the total amount ($30) in the column that said “unit price” — and never noticed when her computer dutifully multiplied its way into extravagance. We got it sorted out with no difficulty — in large part, I suspect, because she’d known us for years, remembered the order, and knew I wasn’t trying to pull a fast one.

Could my florist, like my cable company, hire a call center in Montana, or even India, to handle calls like mine? Of course. And with a sophisticated system, a remote phone answerer probably could have traced my order, confirmed the real price of the daffodils, and emailed me a new invoice. Why isn’t that a sign of true progress?

Because, I’m coming to realize, the point is not just the daffodils, nor is it just their price. The point is the creation of moral communities — of people who become neighbors, who share a context and a history and, to some extent, a commitment to reciprocal responsibility for the neighborhood. It isn’t just that I, as a customer with a complaint, want satisfaction. It’s that I want more out of life than a set of serial transactions. I want a set of relationships that engage me in a larger whole.

But in an odd way, the largest whole we can imagine — the world itself, delivered to our doorsteps in this era of globalization — may militate against these very relationships. When everything is our neighborhood, then in fact we have no neighborhood — no proximity of relationships where, repeatedly and over time, others care for us because we also care for them. Yes, we may have fleeting, highly effective conversations with order takers and complaint handlers. Within seconds they will know reams about us — though, typically, we never even learn their last names. In that lopsided interchange, they can’t help us build or save a neighborhood. All they can save us is money and time.

And not always that. As it happened, I didn’t need the young man from Great Falls. The next morning, as I pulled out onto the main road around the corner from home, I found three cable-company linemen and their service truck parked at the intersection. I’d seen them working overhead at that corner the day before, so I stopped and described our problem. I never even mentioned my name — just told them where our house was.

“Sounds like the fuse,” one of them said, pointing toward the top of a nearby pole. “Sorry — I’ll get right on it.”

Sure enough, one of his colleagues showed up at our door later than morning to ask my wife if everything was OK. She checked the TV, and it was.

Don’t get me wrong: I admire the willingness of my cable company to go global. It needs a voice that answers the service line after normal business hours. I know I can’t always count on tripping over three linemen just when I need them. But they’re part of this community. They know where I live, even when I don’t give them my name.

©2006 Institute for Global Ethics

“This young woman, who loved life, was a victim because she lived life as she saw fit, and that’s why she was shot by her brother right here among us.”

– German judge Michael Degreif, sentencing a man of Turkish origin to nearly 10 years in prison for the “honor killing” of his sister. The 23-year-old woman was shot to death for leaving a forced marriage in Turkey and moving to Germany to raise her son. The case has highlighted an ongoing and tense debate over how immigrants with orthodox or fundamentalist views assimilate into Europe’s Westernized culture — and over the limits of tolerance for some cultural and religious traditions — reported the Reuters news agency. (“German Court Jails Man for ‘Honor Killing,’ “ Reuters, Apr. 13)

MEERUT, India
At least 55 people died last week in an inferno at a consumer-products show in Meerut, India, and the disaster has spotlighted ethical issues related to India’s tangled bureaucracy, according to press reports.

The New York Times reported last week that the site of the fire — a huge three-pronged tent arrangement with only one entrance, one exit, and electrical wires strung next to the canvas — was not inspected by local fire officials. When a fire department official arrived to check the site, he was turned away and shown authorization papers from another local official.

“Organizers said, ‘We have the clearance from the district magistrate, so who are you?’ ” Arun Chaturvedi, the city’s fire chief, told the Times.

Reuters reported that after the fire, police in Meerut, a city about 50 miles north of New Delhi, issued arrest warrants for the organizers of the event, but they had fled and as of late last week remained at large, according to the Times of India.

Several local political officials have already been fired in the aftermath, including the district magistrate who had given the clearance for the event, according to the Daily News & Analysis, a publication affiliated with Zee TV and the Dainkik Bhaskar newspaper.

The firings came after crowds ransacked local political offices, demanding action against the organizers of the event and compensation for victims’ families.

In an April 14 story titled “Map of a Trap,” New Delhi’s Indian Express reported that the original map of the trade fair tent submitted by organizers showed a maze of aisles and corridors that in some cases directed visitors more than 200 meters from the entrance or the only exit — a four-foot-wide door.

An emergency exit included in the plans, according to the Express, led not to the outside but to another wing of the tent complex, and was in fact blocked by organizers who claimed some vendors were losing business when visitors took a shortcut through the emergency exit.

New York Times reporter Hari Kumar wrote that the fire is viewed as a “painful paradox” of India’s economic miracle. “The hunger for brand-name goods — a Toshiba television, a Whirlpool washing machine, an LG air-conditioning unit — has spread to middle India,” Kumar wrote. “But that hunger has only exposed the raw and yawning gaps that remain: a disregard for health and safety measures in many places, combined with a deep public suspicion that corrupt officials turn a blind eye to the need to enforce standards in these areas.”

LONDON
Britain’s controversial Terrorism Act of 2006 went into effect last week, prompting protests by some who claim the new laws stifle free speech.

The measures, enacted after the July 7, 2005, terror bombings that killed 52 commuters on the London subway system, make it a crime to do or say anything that glorifies terrorism, the London-based Independent reported. In addition, the Terrorism Act also gives the government wide power to ban groups that publish material deemed to support terrorism.

Britain’s House of Lords rejected the imposition of the “glorification” offense five times before finally approving it last month, according to the U.K. Guardian.

Gareth Grossman, policy director of the human rights group Liberty, told the London Telegraph that “these new powers make us not only less free, we are also less safe when we drive dissent underground and alienate minorities…. Swept up in this new anti-terror safety net could be those who protest against dictators, like Zimbabwe’s Mugabe, or North Korean dissidents. “

The Scotsman noted that some previous anti-terror legislation had been signed into law but subsequently dismantled by the courts, such as a measure passed after the 9/11 attacks that allowed detention of foreign suspects without trial.

What will probably be the most controversial element of the Terrorism Act of 2006 — a provision allowing terror suspects to be detained without charges for up to 28 days instead of 14 — is scheduled to come into effect later this year.