Ethics Newsline®

It’s no secret that Washington these days is a deeply polarized place. So the bipartisan cordiality that recently greeted Michael Mukasey — President Bush’s nominee to succeed Alberto Gonzales as attorney general of the United States — was a rare and remarkable respite. At his October 17 hearing, the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee were clearly impressed with Judge Mukasey’s record as a New York federal judge pursuing high-profile terrorist cases. They also were comforted by his assertions about civil rights and the need to avoid the politicization of a Department of Justice still staggering from the district attorney dismissal scandal.

These are important points. But far more significant was a pointer in his opening statement about his judicial philosophy. He agreed with the millions of Americans who, following 9/11, understand as never before the importance of “the gathering of intelligence to defend us from those who believe it is their duty to make war on us.” But he also agreed with the millions who, following the outcry about the detention and rendition of terrorist suspects, understand that “protecting civil liberties, and people’s confidence that those liberties are protected, is a part of protecting national security.”

That liberty-versus-security standoff — the need to protect individuals while defending the nation — might strike many observers as a paradox, a conundrum, an intellectual cul-de-sac. For Mukasey, it is part of a larger concept of right versus right. To make his point, he drew from the writings of Supreme Court justice Robert H. Jackson, whom he called “a great attorney general, perhaps the greatest to serve in the modern era.” Jackson, who served as the chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crime Trials, noted in a 1951 speech that “the issue between authority and liberty is not between a right and a wrong — that never presents a dilemma. The dilemma is because the conflict is between two rights, each in its own way important.”

In those words Mukasey puts his finger on one of the greatest challenges of our times. At issue is not simply the liberty-versus-security debate — although for Mukasey, as for Jackson before him, that’s an effective example. No, the ultimate challenge is the mindset that imagines all problems to be conflicts between “a right and a wrong.” What paralyzes Washington these days isn’t terrorism. Nor is it immigration, abortion, subprime loans, health insurance for children, poppies in Afghanistan, nuclear power in Iran, or anything else on the nation’s agenda. The inertial down-drag in the system comes from a conceptual framework that sees every issue as a black-and-white, right-versus-wrong problem. When you see the world through those glasses, the disharmony and polarization of politics is not only predictable but inevitable. After all, if I’m absolutely right and you’re dead wrong, why should I bother talking with you?

The irony of last week’s hearing, then, is that the senators, as if on cue, took their tone from Mukasey’s insistence on seeing life as “the conflict between two rights, each in its own way important.” This simple framing conception — seeing life through the lens of right versus right — has a long lineage. These are the conflicts Henry Clay had in mind. “All legislation is founded upon the principle of human concession,” the great orator asserted a century before Jackson’s speech. “Let him who elevates himself above humanity … say, if he pleases, ‘I never will compromise’: but let no one who is not above the frailties of our common nature distain compromise.” These are also the conflicts that Jackson’s contemporary, John F. Kennedy, described when, quoting Clay in his book Profiles in Courage, he concluded that there are “few if any issues where all the truth and all the right and all the angels are on one side.”

Why is it, then, that such conflicts are so glibly misread today as right-versus-wrong? Is it the influence of talking-head TV and rant radio, where high-decibel diatribe passes for debate? Is it the pressure of a pervasive fundamentalism — not only theological but political and economic — that camps out in self-satisfied confidence on one side of a complex issue and proclaims itself the possessor of all truth? Is it a fear of the unknown, causing citizens to cling to whatever smacks of certainty and authority? Is it the lure of an information culture, content with the fuzzy intimations of a visual media rather than an exacting verbal clarity as practiced by Clay, Jackson, and Kennedy? Is it the overlay of a scientific framework that, seeing reality as a polarity of positive and negative charges, seizes that analogy to describe the intricacies of human relationships?

Whatever the reason, Mukasey’s simple comment may help click the right-wrong frame into its proper right-right perspective. If he were to bring into the upper reaches of government that one idea — that right versus wrong “never presents a dilemma” — his tenure as an attorney general in the waning months of the Bush administration will have been well worth the effort.

©2007 Institute for Global Ethics

“I like to compare the U.S. to the European settlers of the past century. The European settler said, ‘I am coming to liberate, to develop, to modernize.’ But after a while he stumbled upon realities and facts that he did not know before and that could not be ignored. This is what is happening to the U.S. today, hence the change in its policies, from an ideological agenda to a pragmatic one. They are looking to protect themselves and their interests.”

– Sateh Noureddine, a columnist at As-Safir, a pro-Syrian newspaper in Lebanon, talking to the New York Times in a piece examining the criticism that the United States ignores human rights abuses in Egypt due to the country’s strategic value as a political ally

WASHINGTON
What may be the dominant ethics issue of the year resurfaced again last week during the confirmation hearings of Michael Mukasey, the nominee for U.S. attorney general, when he was quizzed on the limits and definitions of torture.

While Mukasey contended that torture is unconstitutional and he would not endorse it as attorney general, he would not comment on specific “harsh” interrogation techniques such as waterboarding, a procedure that involves pouring water over the face of a prisoner, simulating the effect of drowning, UPI reports.

Mukasey’s responses during his confirmation hearings before a Senate panel are being closely watched worldwide, reports the Christian Science Monitor, because the appearance that the United States has relaxed standards governing the treatment of prisoners since September 11 has damaged the nation’s reputation abroad.

Mukasey said he was not familiar with the nuances of waterboarding, and said it is difficult for him to define which specific techniques should be classified as cruel, inhumane, or degrading, reports the McClatchy newspaper syndicate.

“We have to also recognize that when we’re talking about coercive methods of interrogation, this is not a matter of choosing pleasant alternatives over unpleasant alternatives,” he said, according to the McClatchy report. “It’s a choice among bad alternatives.”

Mukasey also raised eyebrows when he suggested that President Bush could ignore statutes on government surveillance during wartime, reports the Washington Post.

The Post notes, however, that while several of the exchanges during the second and final day of Mukasey’s hearing were tense, most observers predict he will have little trouble being confirmed once the nomination moves to the floor for a full Senate vote.

PHOENIX
In a case that raised First Amendment, privacy, and legal-ethics issues, two news executives were briefly jailed after their paper published an article disclosing details of a grand jury subpoena.

Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, who published a story in last Thursday’s edition of the Phoenix New Times that described details of a subpoena they received from a local grand jury, were arrested and later released, according to the newspaper trade journal Editor & Publisher.

Charges against them were dropped later.

The case centered on the Maricopa County grand jury’s investigation into the newspaper’s decision three years ago to publish the home address of sheriff Joe Arpaio, reports USA Today. The story dealt with the sheriff’s real estate holdings.

The Phoenix New Times, part of a chain of weeklies that includes New York’s Village Voice, was subject to a possible felony claim under a state law that criminalizes publishing the home address of a law enforcement official on the Internet, reports Tucson television station KVOA.

The law does not prohibit publishing the same information in print.

The case took an ominous turn, according to the Village Voice, when the grand jury investigating the publication of the sheriff’s address asked not only for information on documents and witnesses involved in the original story, but also for the Internet protocol (IP) addresses of the site’s visitors. IP addresses generally are traceable to individual computers.

The Arizona Republic reported that in addition to dropping the original case as well as the subsequent charges of releasing grand jury information, the special prosecutor handling the case has been fired.

VARIOUS DATELINES
A recent report on how companies worldwide are victimized by some sort of economic crime — from bribery to accounting fraud — says that the situation remains one of the most problematic issues for business and that levels of economic crime generally continue to hold steady or increase. The report figured in headlines from three continents:

• Corruption in Russian business has worsened over the last two years and is draining the economy rapidly, according to the survey from the accountancy group PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Reuters’ Moscow bureau notes that the report comes shortly after the announcement of a new anti-graft initiative by president Vladimir Putin and prime minister Viktor Zubkov, part of the run-up to a parliamentary election in December and a presidential election in March.
• The same survey indicates that Canadian companies fell victim to economic crimes at a surprisingly high rate, with the nation’s increase outpacing the global average. About two-thirds of the Canadian firms surveyed have strengthened existing controls or created new procedures to fight corporate crime, reports the Toronto Star. One expert interviewed by the Star speculated that the apparent increase in crime may be the result simply of better reporting in the wake of intense press coverage of recent corporate misdeeds.
• In the United Kingdom, corruption and bribery continue to cost business millions of dollars, reports London-based Accountancy Age. In fact, the incidence of corruption and bribery has doubled in the past two years. The rate of economic crime in the Britain was twice the global average and more than three times the average in Western Europe.
• South Africa saw one of the steepest increases in corporate crime, with reported incidents nearly tripling since 2005, reports the Port Elizabeth Herald. The PriceWaterhouseCoopers report adds to the nation’s woes, according to the Herald story, because South Africa also has one of the world’s worst murder rates and spiraling violent crime.
• Economic-crime losses in the United States showed only modest increases, but one striking finding, notes the PriceWaterhouseCoopers report, is a sharp increase in incidents of intellectual property theft U.S. companies claim are perpetrated by China.

KARACHI
A long-term political squabble that started over allegations of corruption evolved into bloodshed last week as Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan’s main opposition leader, returned from exile to a homecoming parade — only to confront a bomb attack that killed more than 130 of her supporters.

Bhutto was unhurt.

While stopping short of blaming the military-backed government of plotting the attack, Bhutto urged general Pervez Musharraf, the country’s current ruler, to clamp down on militant groups, the Financial Times reports.

TIME magazine’s Karachi correspondent Aryn Baker reports that many international leaders say they believe that al Qaeda was behind the attacks. But Baker’s report notes that many in Pakistan are speculating about why the government provided such poor security for Bhutto’s homecoming.

Bhutto was deposed as prime minister in 1996 and fled the country in 1999 to escape prosecution on a variety of corruption charges, all of which she denied. Many of the allegations involved her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who became known as “Mr. Ten Percent” during his wife’s rule because of rumors that he extorted that amount from anyone who wanted to do business with the government, according to an analysis from National Public Radio.

The still-popular Bhutto eventually brokered a return to the country after Musharraf’s popularity plunged and his control of dissidents eroded, according to the London Daily Telegraph.

LONDON
A controversy over free speech, sensitivity, and sensibility has engulfed a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, who was suspended from his research post in the aftermath of his racially charged remarks.

James Watson, who was instrumental in discovering the structure of DNA, questioned the intelligence of Africans in an interview with a London newspaper.

According to a report from Bloomberg, Watson said he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really.”

Watson apologized for the remarks, saying, “I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said,” according to a report carried by Scientific American.

He did not show up for London-based events related to a tour for his latest book and took a flight back to the United States. London’s Science Museum cancelled Watson’s appearance saying his views “went beyond the point of acceptable debate.”

CNN reports that the board of trustees at New York’s Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory suspended Watson’s administrative role pending a review of the remarks.

The 79-year-old scientist, known as someone who relishes debate, is no stranger to controversy, reports the BBC. He previously has stated that a woman should have the right to abort a fetus if tests could determine it would be homosexual, and implied that darker-skinned people have a stronger sex drive.

NEW YORK
An ethical and legal debate over a little-known technical practice of Internet service providers (ISPs) assumed larger proportions last week after the Associated Press said its tests found that a major service provider does not treat all traffic equally.

The AP charges that Comcast Corp. actively interferes with attempts by some subscribers to share online files. According to the AP report, Comcast, the nation’s second-largest ISP, uses technology that interrupts transmissions of peer-to-peer file-sharing programs, a form of Internet communication that allows users share files among themselves.

While peer-to-peer transmissions have been linked to illegal sharing of copyrighted intellectual property, there are many legitimate applications for the technology, reports the AP.

A Comcast spokesperson told the AP only that the firm does not “block access to any applications,” but refused to specify what the company means by “access.” The AP claims that while file downloading was not blocked, uploading was blocked or delayed.

The technology news service ZDNet reports that the tests involved sharing a version of the Bible using a file-sharing program called BitTorrent. No problems were detected on two other cable systems, leading the testers to conclude that Comcast had sent surreptitious technical instructions to interfere with the transfer.

According to an analysis from technology news network CNET, ISPs dislike file sharing for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that sharing large media files chokes bandwidth and slows communication for everyone.

At the heart of the issue is a complex concept called Net neutrality, a tenet embraced by many industry leaders and lawmakers who say all Internet traffic should be treated equally, reports the Toronto Globe & Mail.

But an emerging technological and business framework often referred to as bandwidth shaping would vary the prices that ISPs charge based on the type of communication being transacted. Critics say the end result of bandwidth shaping could be providers selling priority access based on a user’s activity — such as those who use the Internet for phone calls being charged an extra fee to ensure a good connection.

Recently developed technologies allow ISPs to detect characteristics of customers’ usage, including whether they are transferring large files. While the technology could enable ISPs to interfere with large file transfers, it also could enable customers who pay extra to be put in the fast lane.

Those issues have moved the controversy into the realm of ethics because critics argue that ISPs have no right to inspect content and give preferential — or punitive — treatment to certain digital information.

Some in the industry counter that intervention is necessary to keep Internet traffic moving.

LOS ANGELES
Ethics issues involving treatment of adopted pets rocketed to prominence in an unexpected and, some say, bizarre venue last week, as comedian Ellen DeGeneres broke down during her daily talk show after giving away her adopted dog to another family — a violation of the pet adoption agency’s policies.

The animal rescue agency said that for the protection of pets it does not allow adopted animals to be given away to other families, reports ABC News. It retrieved the dog from the hairstylist to whom DeGeneres had given it.

DeGeneres said she gave away the dog because if fought with her cats and she believed her hairstylist’s family would provide a better home for the animal.

In the aftermath, outrage over the incident swelled to the point where managers of the private animal rescue facility received death threats, according to NBC News.

On Thursday of last week, DeGeneres tearfully implored people to calm down, and while pleading that the dog be returned to her hairdresser’s family, she also took responsibility for the row, noting that she violated the terms of her original pet adoption even though she was unaware of the restrictions, according to a report from Sky News.

Los Angeles Times reporter Carla Hall notes that the incident, though unusual in its high visibility, “reveals something that pet lovers have known for years: Private rescue groups are legendary for their stringent requirements and hurdles for prospective adopters.”

“Long applications, home visits, and strict diet regimens are the hallmarks of some rescue groups’ adoption processes,” Hall writes. “To some, it can rival the complexity of adopting or fostering a child.”

The Times report quotes Betsy Saul, who runs an Internet-based service for pet seekers, as noting there are many legitimate reasons for restrictive policies, most of which center on the welfare of the animal and the psychological assurance offered to those who give pets up for adoption.

Saul told the Times she was perplexed by the right-versus-right nature of the dilemma. “I think in a case like this, it’s shocking how everybody can be so right, you know?”

As this issue of Newsline went to press, the dog remained with a new family at an undisclosed location.

TOKYO
While much of the sports news in the United States has focused on scandals involving steroid use in baseball and track, gambling in pro basketball, and dog fighting sponsored by a pro football quarterback, the New York Times reports that Japan is struggling with moral questions related to its ancient sport of sumo.

Reporting from Tokyo, the Times’s Norimitsu Onishi notes that in recent months a coach has been suspended from the sumo association for inflicting fatal injuries on a 17-year-old apprentice in a hazing incident, a grand champion has come under suspicion of fixing matches, and a woman who tried to enter a sumo ring — an act considered “impure” in the traditions of the sport — was pulled down by a wrestler.

Onishi writes: “While the problems may have looked disparate, however, they were rooted in a quintessentially Japanese conflict between tradition and modernity. Should sumo, whose popularity has long been declining, change? The debate in Japan has taken on a heated, though predictable, course. Traditionalists have said any change would mean the death of sumo, while others have said that sumo will die if it fails to change.”

The death allegedly linked to hazing has taken on particular significance because corporal punishment has “long been considered a fact of life in sumo stables, feudal-like camps where wrestlers are expected to live and train,” according to Onishi’s report. “In a practice called kawaigari, older wrestlers repeatedly throw a novice down on the ring, ostensibly to toughen him up but also to mete out punishment.”

“Critics said that this practice, and the culture of violence that led to the fatal beating, was symbolic of sumo’s failure to keep up with the times,” writes Onishi.

From International Herald Tribune/France 24/Harris Interactive:

“A new International Herald Tribune/France 24/Harris Interactive survey finds that, overall, in the United States and the five largest European countries, people are mostly satisfied with their jobs. At least two-thirds of each country’s workers say they are satisfied, with Italy having the lowest satisfaction numbers (67%) and Spain having the highest (83%).

“In their current jobs, the top two most important aspects are the interesting nature and the salary. In Great Britain, France, Italy and Germany, the interesting nature of the job comes ahead of salary for importance. For Spanish and American workers, however, salary is more important than the interesting nature of their jobs. The working hours are third for each of the countries in importance….

“Looking specifically at pay, over three in five U.S. workers (63%) say they are well-paid, and this is the highest of the six countries….

“…Working less and earning less is not something workers want. While one in ten Spanish workers (11%) would want this, they are the highest of the six countries.

“While it may be the theme of many a television show and movie, on average, most workers do not dislike their bosses. Just under one-quarter (23%) of Italian workers say they dislike their current boss and they are the highest of the six countries. On the flip side, two-thirds of U.S. workers (65%) like their current boss with almost half (46%) saying they like their boss very much. Majorities in Great Britain (56%) and France (52%) also like their boss and just under half of Italian workers (48%) and German workers (47%) feel the same. Spanish workers are a bit more mixed….

“Like with pay, on the most part, people believe the number of holidays workers (i.e. vacations) have in their respective countries is sufficient. Almost three-quarters of French adults (74%) believe the number of days is sufficient as do seven in ten (71%) of Germans and two-thirds (66%) of Italians. Just over half (55%) of Spaniards also feel this way about vacation days. Feelings are more mixed in the U.S. as 42 percent of Americans believe vacation days are sufficient and the same number believes they are insufficient. Great Britain is the only country where more think the number of vacation days is insufficient — 45 percent say insufficient and 37 percent believe the number of days is sufficient….”

“When the fight begins within himself, a man’s worth something.”

– Robert Browning (English poet, 1812-1889)