Rupal went to India for a week, but she never returned to the UK
"I was working overtime when I saw a message on social media about a plane crash. Initially, I ignored it. But then I received another message in a different group and realised it was serious," she said.
It was only then that Yogita discovered the crash involved the same flight Rupal had boarded. "I immediately called my brother. He cried out loud and said, 'Rupal is gone,' and then hung up."
Desperate for answers, Yogita turned to news channels and reached out to relatives, who confirmed the news.
Final conversation Yogita remembered her final phone call with Rupal. It was a short conversation in which Rupal mentioned she was at the bank and would call back later — a call that never came.
According to Yogita, Rupal had travelled to India just a week earlier for a follow-up medical check-up following surgery in the UK.
My brother asked me to tell Rupal to go back to India for another check-up to help with her recovery. She took my advice and went — but just five days later, she was gone. Yogita Patel University of Wollongong India Campus employee among the victims Kalyani Brahmbhatt, an administrative officer at the University of Wollongong's India campus, also lost her life in the crash. Her husband, Gaurav, was with her.
In a statement to SBS Gujarati, a university spokesperson expressed deep sorrow:
The University of Wollongong is deeply saddened by the passing of our colleague Kalyani Brahmbhatt, and her husband Gaurav, in the Air India crash on June 12. Spokesperson, University of Wollongong "A deeply respected and much-loved member of our UOW India community, Kalyani will be dearly missed. Kalyani was one of the first to join UOW India's team where she played an instrumental role in helping to set up the campus," the university said in a statement. "Our deepest thoughts and sympathies are with all those affected by this tragedy, especially to Kalyani and Gaurav's daughter and son and their families, as well as to our colleagues at UOW India." SBS Gujarati is a part of SBS South Asian, the destination channel for all South Asians living in Australia. Tune in to SBS Gujarati live on Wednesdays and Fridays at 2pm on SBS South Asian on digital radio, on channel 305 on your television, via the SBS Audio app or stream from our website . You can also enjoy programs in 10 South Asian languages, plus SBS Spice content in English. It is also available on SBS On Demand
Listen to SBS Gujarati every Wednesday and Friday at 2 pm
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ABC News
3 days ago
- ABC News
Washington DC crash investigation shows chopper flying above altitude limit
Investigators probing the January midair collision of a passenger plane and a US army helicopter over Washington that killed 67 people have found the chopper was flying higher than it should have been and its altitude readings were inaccurate. The details came out of the first day of National Transportation Safety Board hearings, chaired by Jennifer Homendy, in Washington, where investigators aim to uncover insights into what caused the crash between the American Airlines plane from Wichita, Kansas, and the Black Hawk helicopter over Ronald Reagan National Airport. The board opened the three days of hearings by showing an animation and playing audio and video from the night of the collision, as well as questioning witnesses and investigators about how the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the army may have contributed to the nation's deadliest plane crash since November 2001. The board's final report will not be released until sometime next year, but it became clear on Wednesday how small a margin of error there was for helicopters flying the route the Black Hawk took the night of the nation's crash. The January night-time incident was the first in a string of crashes and near misses this year that have alarmed officials and the travelling public, despite statistics that still show flying remains the safest form of transportation. The hearing opened on Wednesday with a video animation showing where the helicopter and airliner were leading up to the collision. It showed how the helicopter flew above the 200 feet (61 metres) altitude limit on the helicopter route along the Potomac River before colliding with the plane. Investigators said the flight data recorder showed the helicopter was actually 80 to 100 feet higher than the barometric altimeter the pilots relied upon showed they were flying. So the NTSB conducted tests on three other helicopters from the same unit in a flight over the same area and found similar discrepancies in their altimeters. Sikorsky Aircraft's Dan Cooper said when the Black Hawk helicopter involved in the crash was designed in the 1970s, it used a style of altimeter that was common at the time. Newer helicopters have air data computers that did not exist back then that helped provide more accurate altitude readings. Chief Warrant Officer Kylene Lewis told the board that she would not find a 80 to 100 feet discrepancy between the different altimeters on a helicopter alarming because at lower altitudes she would be relying more on the radar altimeter than the barometric altimeter. Below 500 feet, Ms Lewis said she would be checking both instruments and cross-referencing them. She said as long as an altimeter registered an altitude within 70 feet of the published altitude before take-off, the altimeter was considered accurate under the checklists. Army officials said a discrepancy of 70 feet to 100 feet between the Black Hawk's altimeters was within the acceptable range because pilots were expected to maintain their altitude plus or minus 100 feet. The greater concern is that the FAA approved routes around Reagan airport that included such small separation distances between helicopters and planes when planes were landing. "The fact that we have less than 500 foot separation is a concern for me," said Scott Rosengren, chief engineer in the office that manages the army's utility helicopters. But Rosengren said that "if he was king for a day" he would immediately retire all the older Black Hawk models like the one involved in this crash and replace them with newer versions of the helicopters. Army officials and the head of a local medevac helicopter company that flies around Washington told the board they believed air traffic controllers would never let them fly the helicopter route involved in the crash anytime a plane was approaching the runway. Chief Warrant Officer David Van Vechten said after the crash, he talked to many of his fellow pilots and everyone had the same assumption that controllers would never allow them to fly across the path of the runway the American plane was approaching before the crash. Citing the numbers for runways, Mr Van Vetchen said that "100 per cent of the time when I was on route four and 33/15 was active" he would be instructed to hold until after the plane landed or took off from that runway. During the two minutes before the crash, one air traffic controller was directing airport traffic and helicopters in the area, a task that involved speaking to or receiving communications from several different aircraft, according to the NTSB's History of Flight Performance Study. The air traffic controller had spoken to or received communications from the Black Hawk helicopter, an airplane that was taking off, an Air Force helicopter, an airplane on the ground, a medical helicopter and an inbound flight that was not the American Airlines plane that would crash. "All aircraft could hear the controller, but helicopters could only hear other helicopters on their frequency and airplanes only other airplanes," the report stated. "This resulted in a number of stepped on transmissions as helicopters and airplanes were not aware when the other was communicating." Stepped on transmissions are those that are unheard or blocked because of other transmissions. The NTSB report provides a list of 29 separate communications between the airport tower and other aircraft during approximately the 1 minute and 57 seconds before the collision. Previously disclosed air traffic control audio had the helicopter pilot telling the controller twice that they saw the airplane and would avoid it. Officials on Wednesday also raised the use of night vision goggles, which limit the wearer's field of view, on the helicopter as a factor. The animation ended with surveillance video showing the helicopter colliding with the plane in a fiery crash. Investigations have already shown the FAA failed to recognise a troubling history of 85 near misses around Ronald Reagan National Airport in the years before the collision, and that the army's helicopters routinely flew around the nation's capital with a key piece of locating equipment, known as ADS-B Out, turned off. US senator Ted Cruz, a Republican, introduced legislation on Tuesday to require all aircraft operators to use both forms of ADS-B, or Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast, the technology to broadcast aircraft location data to other planes and air traffic controllers. Most aircraft today are equipped with ADS-B Out equipment, but the airlines would have to add the more comprehensive ADS-B In technology to their planes. The legislation would revoke an exemption on ADS-B transmission requests for Department of Defense aircrafts. National Transportation Safety Board chair Ms Homendy said her agency had been recommending that move for decades after several other crashes. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that while he would like to discuss "a few tweaks," the legislation was "the right approach." He also suggested that the previous administration "was asleep at the wheel" amid dozens of near-misses in the airspace around Washington's airspace. AP
ABC News
26-07-2025
- ABC News
Babinda Boulders locals want more safety measures to prevent deaths
A tranquil, turquoise stream surrounded by rainforest, birdsong and boulders — it's the kind of place people travel across the world to visit. Floating in the water or watching the stream rush between the rocks, modern life seems a thousand miles away. To get to these spots, though, you must first pass several striking signs, warning that 21 people have died here since 1916, with the latest death occurring last year. The vast majority — 84 per cent — of those who have died at Babinda Boulders (Bunna Binda), were male, and 53 per cent were aged between 18 and 24. Locals say that despite renewed safety measures, more action is needed to prevent further tragedies. Most of the deaths have occurred downstream from the designated "safe swimming" zones, in areas including those known as Devil's Pool and The Chute. Visitors and locals alike have sometimes slipped or sunk to their deaths after mistaking flat water, bubbling pools or narrow streams as low-risk areas. It's a danger the traditional owners, the Madjandji People, know is intrinsic to this place, and dates back to the story of how this place was created. Madjandji Aboriginal Corporation chairJamie Satani said the landscape was formed by a tragedy, when a young woman named Oolana was promised to an older man, but fell in love with a man named Dyga from a visiting tribe. Mr Satani said the pair ran away together, up the river, but the tribes found them at the site that is now the Boulders. "If she could not have Dyga … no-one could have her, so then she threw herself into the waters and, today, that spirit is still there, searching for a lover." Mr Satani said this moment caused the boulders to form, and it became a sacred story place for the Madjandji People. He said the impact of every death was felt across the region. "The moment that happens, it sends an uneasy feeling through the community … it's an awful feeling" he said. Local woman Leanne Thompson knows the rocks well. She grew up a stone's throw from the famous waterhole and spent many afternoons and weekends exploring the area with friends. "It's a pretty special, magical place, and each and every time you swam here, you definitely got like an afterglow," she said. But the darker side was never far from mind. "There were times when I was a child where I had nightmares about when you would hear the ambulance coming to do a body retrieval, and you found they had jumped across The Chute, or they got caught in a siphon or a sieve," she said. Years later, in 2008, after the death of a naval officer at the site, Ms Thompson decided something needed to change. Ms Thompson spent years trawling through archives, old newspaper records and coroners' reports. Using the information she uncovered, she successfully campaigned in 2022 to have the Cairns Regional Council launch a safety review of the site. Her tenacity also led to newer, more graphic signage being installed. The review found high risks from large siphons, or sieves, in areas upstream from Devil's Pool, which, to the untrained eye, appear to be merely small areas of bubbling water. "They suck [swimmers] down underground into subterranean caverns," Ms Thompson said. Ms Thompson says the best way to picture The Chute is to imagine the wide area of water upstream, forced to pass through a crack in the rocks. The narrow opening visible at the surface may be only a metre or two wide, however, beneath the surface, the rock has been more heavily eroded, creating a cavern where fast, aerated water rushes through, plunging many metres. Sergeant Doug Godden has worked in Babinda for many years and has coordinated several body retrievals at the Boulders. He says there are specific dangers in the water course that differ from most swimming holes. "The amount of oxygen that's in the [water], caused by the turbulence, makes it very, very difficult to swim because there's no pressure to push up to get yourself out of the water," Sergeant Godden said. He added that obstacles under the water, such as rocks and logs, "could either cause you to strike them and fall unconscious or [you could] be trapped underneath them". He said police had started regular patrols of the no-go areas over the past few years, with the aim of educating visitors and swimmers rather than punishing them. "The water course is stunning, and you can see the attraction," he said. Sergeant Godden said the signs, patrols and other information campaigns were making a difference, but one preventable death was one too many. Musician Will Clift was visiting Babinda Boulders with his girlfriend in 2021, when they heard someone screaming. A young woman had fallen into The Chute, and her friend was yelling for help but there was nothing anyone could do. The body of 19-year-old Chloe Narelle Bailey was found the next day. Mr Clift said the trauma of the accident stayed with him for years. "I found that I was having flashbacks and couldn't sleep," he said. Local councillor Brett Moller, who has been visiting the Babinda Boulders since he was a child, said there had been three deaths in the nine years since he was elected. He said as well as working with tourism bodies to get the message out, council was also hoping to work with National Parks to develop access to other natural swimming areas. Councillor Moller said the increase in crocodile sightings in the lower creeks and freshwater rivers meant areas where people used to swim were no longer safe. "So they're now congregating at the Boulders, at Josephine [Falls], at freshwater creeks, [and] that's putting a lot of pressure on that natural environment," he said. Both Ms Thompson and Mr Satani believe that promoting the Indigenous story may also make people think twice about swimming in the no-go areas. "Come out for a great day, enjoy it, and we want you to come and leave here safe, [and] return home."
ABC News
24-07-2025
- ABC News
Enduring life: What Shakespeare's King Lear can reveal about our political moment - ABC Religion & Ethics
King Lear's life leading up to his death impresses on us that a life of endurance is likely to be our lot, too, at least for some of the time and to some extent. Our need to endure is not likely to be as dramatic as his was. He had to endure internecine conflict, misjudgement, abandonment by his daughters, a military conflict, and deepening madness. But it is hard for anyone to escape having to endure the irony which, every so often, comes at us from our blind side. The irony in Lear's tragedy is that despite his good intention in making public his daughters' inheritance, to ensure 'future strife / May be prevented now', his action brings it on. Civilians living in war zones — such as Gaza and Ukraine — certainly have a need to endure. In the play Edgar's father, Gloucester, has lost the will to live, having been blinded under torture, and Edgar presses him to hasten away to safety from a battle zone. 'Men must endure', he tells him, if an optimum outcome is to be reached: 'Ripeness is all.' Lear declares human life to be as cheap as that of a beast. The comparison sounds extreme, but it is understandable. Truth is said to be the first casualty in war, but the right to life for civilians is a better fit for that infamous distinction. From the earliest days of current wars, civilians have been killed and injured in large numbers. An open-air music festival, schools, hospitals, apartment blocks — they have all been hit. Scenes of distraught survivors grieving the death of loved ones continue as if they are a normal part of warfare. This is happening despite the fact that civilians have a right to protection under international law. Despite also the United Nations and aid agencies continuing to call on both sides to stop killing civilians and agree to a ceasefire and a negotiated settlement. These calls have gone unheeded for so long now that their meaning has worn thin. It feels like the wars are killing off the idea of a universal human rights morality on which the law is based. Goneril does not feel bound by morality. She excoriates her husband Albany as 'a milk-livered man' and 'a moral fool' for not supporting her in her determination to undermine Lear's power. Nor does Edmund feel bound by morality in plotting to get rid of his brother Edgar in order to become the next Earl of Gloucester. In the conflict between Hamas and Israel, there is something of Goneril and Edmund's hard-hearted ruthlessness. Even if some settlement can be brokered, severe damage has been done to the moral precept that civilians have a right to protection during war. In an article in the Financial Times , historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari wrote that the current US administration is also destroying acceptance of morality: According to the Trumpian world-view, considerations of justice, morality and international law are irrelevant, and the only thing that matters in international relations is power. This, too, sounds extreme. Yet it is understandable given the events that happened in the first six months of Trump's second presidency — a presidency that started with him signing a range of executive orders live on television with the performative flourish of a 'strongman' leader who sees his own power as paramount. US President Donald Trump signs executive orders during an indoor inauguration parade at Capital One Arena on 20 January 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images) As in Shakespeare's play, events have been happening fast in a way that is dramatic in an all-too-real sense and with a climax still to come. Among the events are summary heavy-handed arrests of undocumented migrants, with raids on their homes and workplaces in images reminiscent of a police state. There was also what comes across as an attempt to intimidate protesters demonstrating against the heavy-handed seizures, by misrepresenting the demonstration as insurrectionist and deploying the National Guard in support of law enforcement agencies. To the fore also is Russia's war of attrition in Ukraine and Europe's rush to build up its armaments. In his retort to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's plea for US support against Russia — 'You don't have the cards' — Trump illustrated his power-based approach to politics in which stronger countries dominate weaker ones. US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy meet in the Oval Office at the White House on 28 February 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew Harnik / Getty Images) The extent to which Trump remains bound by the rule of law will be a measure of how far he is prepared to go in becoming a law unto himself. So far significant Supreme Court rulings have been in his favour. His singular power was highlighted by the 2024 ruling that found a president is entitled under the Constitution 'to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts'. The Court also ruled, in the birthright citizenship case, that judges in lower courts have limited authority to block the president's executive orders. The ramifications of this judgement remain to be seen, but they may greatly increase Trump's store of power. Perhaps the most insidious of his polices has been his administration's attacks on civil society institutions — particularly on universities as independent centres of learning. These attacks have the sound of opening salvos to bring the universities more under its control. It has opposed programmes that support diversity, equality and inclusion. And the fear is that the type of courses the universities will be allowed to offer, and their contents, will be vetted to fit an authoritarian right-wing ideology. 'History is written by the victors', it is said. It may well be the Trump regime will insist on a particular version that suits its ideology to the exclusion of others. If it does, this would be a far cry from the liberal university education that Cardinal John Henry Newman saw as foundational for the development of the individual and society. The glasses and personal items of Cardinal John Henry Newman lay on his writing desk in his living quarters on 11 August 2010 in Birmingham, England. (Photo by Christopher Furlong / Getty Images) Newman believed the university should provide an education in the classics for all students, in addition to providing education in the professions. Classical education is not just about acquiring additional knowledge. It is about assimilating knowledge and understanding to enlarge the mind and become better able to reason clearly. Such an education enables a person to evaluate critically different systems of thought and practice, including liberalism. Perceptively, Newman observed that among other benefits comes a certain freedom: 'you must be above your knowledge, not under it, or it will oppress you'. If we are to have an active right to a quality of life beyond having to endure adversity, it is imperative to have freedom and to be educated to understand and appreciate its benefits. The appeal that far-right parties have for many people lies partly in the impression they give that the party alone know how to rule in everyone's best interests. There is impatience, too, with the slow workings of a parliamentary democracy and a hankering for a simple clarity enforced by a rigid hard-right government. Their appeal lies also from cutting out what they judge to be liberal excesses. But the life force is not easily confined. The appeal of the Fool to Lear, and to us, lies in his irreverent words and antics. We see him as the person who punctures holes in the pretensions of dogmatists to let in more of the life they want to exclude. Participants at the 'No Kings' protest in New York City on 14 June 2025. (Photo by Jenna Greene / WWD via Getty Images) The 'No Kings' demonstrations against Trump's policies in cities and towns across the United States marked the first major resurgence in support for democratic rights. Lear, too, was resurgent. In his initial defiance of his daughters' treatment of him, he demonstrates his freedom to respond along with his right to be treated honestly and not exploited. Our ill treatment by others brings out in us a demand that they redress the wrong they have done. Lear's travails cut to the bone in showing that our feeling of having rights counts, and that it cannot be easily dismissed. Moreover, from his remorse upon realising he wrongly excluded Cordelia from a share of his kingdom when failing to recognise her honesty, he shows that he knows other people have rights too. Unlike her sisters, she eschewed the sycophant's 'glib and oily art' and spoke sincerely about the love she had for her father in words he misjudged as inadequate. At the same time, circumstances can be complicated, making it hard to see exactly where justice lies. In Lear's case he is partly responsible for his own downfall. There is vanity, or at least insecurity, in seeking declarations of love from his daughters. And, as is often the case, we can be emotionally needy and complex in how we behave without being aware of it at the time. To recognise this, and make allowances for it, is part of a human response. Lear shows us his humanity in recognising he made a mistake and that he needs to learn from his regret. Striking his head with his hand, he reprimands himself for letting his 'folly in' and his 'dear judgement out!' Greg Hicks as King Lear and Kathryn Hunter as the Fool in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of 'King Lear', directed by David Farr at the Courtyard Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, on 25 February 2010. (Photo by robbie jack / Corbis via Getty Images) But Lear's story is first and foremost a tragedy. Reduced to wandering grief-stricken on a heath in a 'pitiless storm', he descends into insanity and death. I imagine him crestfallen and anguished at having to bear the irony that his attempt to do good only unleashed pent-up desires and antagonisms. I imagine him no longer a king with a crown and throne, but an ordinary man defeated by circumstances and now aware, as never before, of how little control we have over the consequences of our actions. Franz Kafka in his novels evokes something of the fear and dread at being hostage to forces over which we have little or no control. An atmosphere that became all-too-real in the totalitarian states of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union with their surveillance of citizens and imprisonment or worse for those they deemed a threat to their rule. There is an ominous feeling now of being swept up in a momentum towards a world divided into competing power blocs. A feeling, too, of a weakened liberal Europe being left behind in a struggle to keep its espousal of human rights relevant. The felt existence of forces stronger than us is augmented by living enmeshed in the tech-mediated world of the internet — a world we are increasingly dependent on. For all its benefits, it raises fears about what it may be doing to human agency. We can easily imagine authoritarian rulers making use of it for invasive surveillance of the population. Developments in artificial intelligence are set to draw us further and deeper into a tech-mediated world. Already some kind of trans-human experience of life is being envisioned. It may well be that we expect too much from asserting that people have human rights. Their roots lie in the idea of natural rights — an idea with a long history dating back at least to the Middle Ages. In support of the idea, it is argued that from our primary natural inclination to continue to exist comes a right to life. But rights are not physical features or qualities of people in the same obvious way that our body has visible parts. They do not have an empirical foundation. In his book After Virtue , Alastair MacIntyre argues that we cannot demonstrate or intuit an objective basis for the existence of rights independently of wishes for them, even though we have enshrined them in legally binding agreements and conventions. Nor for him are rights self-evident. From their lack of philosophical justification, he calls them 'fictions'. Throughout history people's actual behaviour has flown in the face of recognising that everyone has rights by virtue of their human nature. We have only to think of slavery and the withholding of civil rights from Black people in the American South, or of the struggle for women to have equality rights. If rights were an intrinsic part of our nature, we would expect them to have been recognised and heeded a lot more than has been evident. Protesters holding signs during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in Washington, DC, on 28 August 1963. (Photo by Marion S. Trikosko / Universal History Archive / Universal Images Group via Getty Images) Does it matter that rights don't have an empirical basis? In one sense, not a whole lot. Rather than being something we possess of our nature, rights are more like security and developmental measures we feel we need or desire, and that over the centuries people have fought to have recognised. This understanding of rights as measures that codify moral feelings can seem a good enough justification. But in another sense the lack of an empirical foundation, or of a philosophical proof of their existence, does matter. It leaves rights hanging in the air without a compelling moral authority to make people feel they have to abide by them. At the same time, the call for rights to be recognised universally came out of particularly strong and widely shared feelings in the aftermath of the Second World War. And I would argue, as David Hume does in his Treatise on Human Nature , that feelings and emotions are the source of our morality. Depending on the nature of particular actions and conditions, we experience towards them either 'agreeable' or 'uneasy' moral feeling, or a feeling that provides a sense of 'pleasure' or 'pain'. Feelings for Hume are also active in moral arguments and reasoning such that our judgements are never purely rational: 'Morality is more properly felt than judged.' At the same time, reasoning and intelligence remain vital — in particular, their cultivation through a broad-minded education such as the one Newman advocated. For Hume, by using our reason we can educate ourselves about the behaviours and conditions that arouse our feelings, and from doing this our feelings may change or be supported. Portrait of David Hume (1711-1776) by Allan Ramsay from 1766, found in the collection of National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh. (Photo by Fine Art Images / Heritage Images / Getty Images) Hume believed we naturally recognise other people to be human like ourselves, and that it is natural for us to feel compassion for strangers in their suffering. Edgar shows the primacy he gives to feelings in understanding morality. When the blind Gloucester asks him 'what are you?', Edgar tells him that, though he has borne 'Fortune's blows', he has learned from 'feeling sorrows' to be still a person 'pregnant with good pity'. Then he adds: 'Give me your hand'. It is Edgar, too, who in his concluding words towards the end of the play calls on people to speak openly about how they feel as a means of helping to avoid tragedy. Lear and Gloucester have a feeling for social justice. An unexpected turn of events exposes them to the harshness of nature, especially to the dire conditions in which people have to live. It makes both of them aware of their privileged status compared to the poor of the realm. They recognise the disparity between the justice that is supposed to reside in 'the heavens' and the injustice the poor suffer in having to endure continuous hardship. Lear faults himself for having taken 'too little care' of their plight. And Gloucester reproaches the 'lust-dieted man … that will not see / Because he does not feel'. Gloucester shows also that he believes 'distribution should undo excess, / And each man have enough'. We can read into their words not just the rootedness of morality in what it means to be human, but also that morality is an active force that drives improvements in social and political conditions. Geoffrey Freshwater as Earl of Gloucester and Charles Aitken as Edgar in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of 'King Lear', at the Courtyard Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, on 25 February 2010. (Photo by robbie jack / Corbis via Getty Images) But as the basis for morality, feelings and emotions have their own shortcomings. They show morals to be relative to us as individuals, and also to the moral expectancies in our society or culture insofar as we agree or disagree with them. This leaves open the likelihood that we will differ from other people in both how we feel about an issue and in the strength of our feeling toward it. We differ emotionally in particular over whether abortion and doctor assisted dying should be provided for in legislation, or not. We differ also over whether the conditions prescribed for a just war have been met, such as the war having a just cause, and whether a response to an attack is proportionate or excessive. The relativity of morals to feelings shows the difficulty of firmly establishing a universally acceptable moral system with respect for human life at its centre. Yet we can look on the relativity as facilitating a space for discussion and debate that is part of human experience. We can also see the relativity making us rightly suspicious of moral absolutes as solutions to complex issues. Hume believed no person or nation could be 'utterly deprived' of moral feelings. No doubt this is true for most people. But not for everyone or in all circumstances. From Hannah Arendt's study of the Nazi functionary Adolph Eichmann we have learned how easily evil can become widespread and banal. Malign feelings and intentions are on one side of an age-old struggle between good and evil. But where discussion of differences on issues can lead to argument and the shoring up of entrenched positions, some images can deeply move us and provide a non-partisan sense of moral worth beyond argument. Among them is Raphael's painting The Sistine Madonna . 'The Sistine Madonna' (circa 1513–1514) by Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino. (Photo by Bildagentur-online/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) In his essay on the painting, Vasily Grossman describes how moved he was on seeing the painting in Moscow's Puskin museum in 1955. He was struck by its fusion of immortality as a work of art with the iconic significance of a mother holding her child in her arms — an image immediately and universally recognisable. The young mother has a beauty 'closely tied to earthly life. It is democratic, human and humane beauty.' He describes the look on the face of both mother and child as 'calm and sad'. It also shows apprehension about their future in a violent and uncertain world. Grossman, a war correspondent with the Red Army, entered Treblinka in September 1944. And, on leaving the Pushkin museum, it came to him that among the faces of the many people who stepped down from the freight wagons to see armed guards directing them along was the look Raphael had painted on the faces of the mother and child. Ultimately for Grossman, the image shows a mother's soul to be 'something inaccessible to human consciousness'. But what the image does make accessible is a sense of how vulnerable human beings are, regardless of ethnicity, religion or politics. It shows how necessary our need is for Edgar's helping hand to guide us away from danger and towards a quality of life beyond endurance of adversity. Manus Charleton writes essays and fiction. A former lecturer in ethics and politics at the Atlantic Technological University Sligo, he is the author of Ethics for Social Care in Ireland: Philosophy and Practice.
