Latest news with #moralclarity
Zawya
15-07-2025
- Politics
- Zawya
Ghana: Africa's Reparations call now a unified demand- President Mahama
'Africa's call for reparative justice is no longer a whisper—it is a unified demand grounded in historical truth, moral clarity and our unwavering commitment to dignity. As we implement the 2025 Theme of the Year on Justice for Africans and People of African Descent through reparations, we reaffirm our shared resolve to correct historical wrongs and injustices through restitution, healing and holistic systemic transformation.' This powerful declaration was made by H.E. John Dramani Mahama, President of Ghana and the African Union Champion for Reparations, as he delivered a progress report in Malabo on the AU's 2025 Theme, 'Justice for Africans and People of African Descent through Reparations.' Addressing the 7th Mid-Year Coordination Meeting of the African Union, President Mahama stated that notable progress has been achieved by the AU Commission and Member States in implementing the theme. He expressed particular satisfaction with the recent decision by the Executive Council to extend the focus on reparations for a decade, covering the period from 2026 to 2036. 'This undoubtedly affords us, as a Union, the opportunity to sustain the momentum for the realisation of this noble cause, as well as map out well-thought-out strategies to mobilise adequate resources to champion implementation of the theme domestically,' President Mahama stated. President Mahama issued a call for global partnership, saying, 'We call upon all nations, within and beyond Africa, to partner with us in shaping a more just and equitable world for the sons and daughters of the motherland.' The former Ghanaian President noted the deep connection between reparations and African identity and dignity. 'Restitution to the African, therefore, is restoration of our full human dignity,' he stated, adding that the movement aims 'to speak of history on African terms, of healing deep civilisational wounds and of restoring to African peoples our rightful agency in shaping our past, present and future.' He underscored the necessity of reparations for African progress and unity, arguing, 'We cannot speak of development without identity or speak of unity without acknowledging the erasure that has fractured our heritage.' President Mahama stressed the importance of a unified African narrative on the global stage and encouraged robust partnerships, particularly with the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). Looking ahead, he announced that Ghana and Togo will co-sponsor a high-level event in the margins of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in September 2025 'to further bolster efforts at achieving the justice and closure which has eluded us for centuries.' 'As we do more to correct historical wrongs, we are reasserting our full humanity. We are reaffirming our sovereignty. We are reigniting the flame of dignity that has always burned within the African soul,' assuring the Union of Ghana's continued support for this agenda towards 'The Africa We Want.' Distributed by APO Group on behalf of The Presidency, Republic of Ghana.
ABC News
08-07-2025
- ABC News
Erin Patterson's trial revealed our need for moral certainty in uncertain times
It is an odd conundrum of modern life that the more frenzied the proliferation of information with which we are pelted daily, on every subject imaginable, the more voracious and unreasonable becomes our appetite for moral clarity. Of the data presently available on the internet world wide, approximately 90 per cent was created in the last two years. Probably not even a fifth of that data comprises hot takes on the Mushroom Murders, but the trial of Erin Patterson certainly provides a neat example of how humans behave when swamped with too much information. The escalating daily assault of data on our brains — war, horror, destruction, dead sea creatures on Adelaide beaches, dead children in Texas rivers, Italian brain-rot, the power-sucking zombie creep of AI — what does it really make us feel like doing? Turns out it makes millions of us feel like getting to the bottom of whether Patterson really did have mismatched plates. That's what. The only solution, perhaps, to this misery of overwhelm and huge things, is to pursue aggressive certainty about smaller things. And to find ourselves in company with others who also are sure. How odd, that an endless torrent of context and nuance should inflame, in humans, an urgent need to abolish all traces of doubt. We need people to be good, or to be evil. We need a cause to be unimpeachable, or reprehensible. How else to explain the unscratchable itch that the trial of Erin Patterson has become for humans all over the world? It's not the blamelessness of the dead generating traffic volumes here; Patterson's three victims and sole survivor are surely that, but their names swirl quickly away in the tally of humans who have died horribly and unfairly, even in this week alone. And while chat forums and podcasts discussing the case often carry a virtuous disclaimer that the real tragedy here is of course the loss of innocent life, there's no doubt at all that the juice in the system of this content behemoth is the perfidy or otherwise of the chef herself. The trial unfurled the kind of detail that is now common in murder trials and would have been inconceivable a generation ago; hot-tempered exchanges that once would have wafted away on the air are now immortalised by messaging apps. Pings from mobile phone towers point an accusatory finger. Closed circuit TV sequences are excavated, along with the damning, unscrubbable images of a dehydrator. A Facebook thread in which an outburst about in-laws, suspended forever like a mosquito in amber, suddenly reanimates and buzzes back to torment its author. This wealth of detail, along with DNA technology, makes the job of detectives and juries easier of course, in one sense. There's more evidence. But the jobs of "detective" and "juror" are harder now, too, simply by virtue of the fact that they're contestable now. We're all detectives. We're all jurors. The justice system — like so many institutions, whether their business be public policy or news reporting or weather forecasting or epidemiology — has been violently democratised by disruptive technology. The jury system was originally conceived to ensure that defendants would be judged not by elites but by a group of utterly unremarkable peers. But now, jurors are remarkable in one key respect: they're the only humans during a criminal trial who aren't allowed to google the key players and undertake a spot of online sleuthing. The rest of us — having not only access to the trial evidence in real time but also the ability to form our own opinions without much by way of structural constraint — are free to succumb to that uniquely modern act of self-soothing, the sorting of ourselves into prejudicial tribes. In his 2020 book Why We Are Polarised, Ezra Klein argues that the formation of tribes has to do with the human brain's incapacity to accommodate the vast new tides of information that swamp the world. "We are exquisitely tuned to understand and manage our role in the small, necessary groups that defined our world as hunter-gatherers, but we've not had long to adjust to the digitised, globalised, accelerated world we've built," Klein writes. "The sensitivities that helped us thrive within the interplay of a few groups of a few hundred people can drive us mad when exposed to the scale, noise, and sophisticated manipulations of modern capitalism and politics." How mad? In the case of the criminal trial of the moment, this hunger for simplicity, for clarity, for fellow feeling, for quiet, might lead us to Reddit threads or podcasts or scans of iNaturalist in search of the exhilaration that accompanies the certainty that another human being is absolutely black of heart. In other more extreme contexts that same hunger might lead us to dox someone, or storm a building, or trash a synagogue. The jury in the Patterson trial — a dozen Gippsland locals whose names we don't know — were sequestered for a week. They delivered an answer on Monday, and were allowed to go home with the commendation of the presiding judge. Unlike American jurors, they cannot be identified by name or give interviews. Unlike judges who hear criminal cases in the Australian jurisdictions which allow trials by judge alone (NSW, SA, WA, Queensland and the ACT), they are not required to provide grounds for their decision. So juries, in Australia, find themselves in a weird situation. The job they do is publicly, flappingly contestable. They may find themselves — as did the Morwell Twelve — at the centre of a live-action drama commanding global attention. But their own reasoning, unlike that of every pub galah on Reddit, stays hidden forever. Only conjecture — or painstaking simulations, like Tosca Looby's recent SBS series, Jury: Death On The Staircase, in which cameras monitored the decision-making process of a jury for whom the entire real-life criminal trial of a Sydney man was recreated by actors — can summon their arguments, their reasons, their midnight moments of self-doubt or epiphany. They remain anonymous. Their job is done. But the vast and clanking business of Mushroom Investigation Inc is unlikely to be crimped by anything so trifling as a verdict supplied by the relevant legal authority. There are documentaries to be made, and a fresh-fallen snowdrift of evidence from the court files to be romped through; messages exchanged between the accused and her victims, and new CCTV of Patterson visiting a service station whilst simultaneously wearing white trousers and experiencing explosive diarrhoea (a detail that launched a thousand opinions). Each new detail delivers a spark of certainty for someone; filaments of context that delivers us, one by one, from evil, having established that it lives in the hearts of others.
New York Times
07-06-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Anger Over the Destruction of American Values
To the Editor: 'How to Make a Mild Guy Really Angry,' by David Brooks (column, May 30), struck a deep chord. His outrage is justified. The reduction of patriotism to mere tribal loyalty and the denial of the idea that soldiers might fight for ideals are not only historically inaccurate but also morally corrosive. Mr. Brooks rightly calls this what it is: an attempt to reject the better angels of our national character. If the current administration wishes to recover a sense of moral clarity, it might begin by revisiting the rich tradition of Catholic social teaching. Pope Francis often reminded us that authentic social peace cannot be built on exclusion or the idolization of the homeland, but only through a love that seeks the good of others. Human dignity is not earned by group membership or ancestry; it is universal and inviolable, and must be the foundation of all political action. When leaders traffic in dehumanizing language or policies, they not only stain the office they hold — they also cheapen the very ideals that generations of Americans have fought and died to uphold. America is indeed a homeland. But as Mr. Brooks reminds us, it is also an idea. And without that idea — of liberty, justice and equal dignity for all — we become just another tribe with flags. Robert StewartChantilly, Va. To the Editor: David Brooks's anger over the destruction of American values is felt by many who are demonstrating on our streets and filling town hall meetings. But if we are to reverse the terrible moral condition of the United States, we must accept that the American people are responsible for it. The American people elected Donald Trump and the MAGA majority in Congress, and by doing so eliminated historical national values such as democracy, compassion and concern for the national good, replacing them with individualism, grievance, presidential corruption and tribal dominance. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
National Post
02-06-2025
- General
- National Post
Michael Higgins: Flamethrower attack could easily happen in Canada
It would be redundant to call the flamethrower and Molotov cocktail attack in Colorado a wakeup call since the alarm bells have been ringing for some time, especially in Canada. Article content Article content Colorado happened just a week after two staff members at the Israeli Embassy in Washington D.C. were murdered and reveals, once again, that the rising tide of antisemitism shows no sign of abating in North America. Article content Article content In Canada, since October 7, antisemitism has flourished because of a lack of moral clarity from authorities and as a result of political leadership at all levels who are bound by an anti-Israel ideology. Article content Article content How serious is the federal government on 'combatting antisemitism' when the group tasked with findings ways to eradicate this particular evil recommended spending $10 million to 'address all forms of hate' and to provide $26.8 million to police colleges for training on 'all hate crimes.' Article content Article content When the National Forum on Combatting Antisemitism chooses to focus on hate generally then how are we ever to come up with an answer for Jew hatred. It's as if the federal government isn't really trying. Article content Article content The outrageous and brazen attacks against Jews in this country should have compelled governments to act, or at least to provide unequivocal moral leadership, which might have prevented the sympathetic response from some in authority to the hatemongers, like providing them with Tim Hortons coffee. Article content In Colorado, a 45-year-old Egyptian national allegedly set elderly demonstrators on fire as they held a peace vigil in support of Israeli hostages being detained by Hamas in Gaza. Eight people were wounded. The suspect reportedly yelled 'free Palestine' during the attack.
National Post
23-05-2025
- Politics
- National Post
Avi Benlolo: Hamas thanks Liberals again. It should be a national wake up call
Canadians don't believe in terrorism. They believe in peace and democracy. That's why this week's news should alarm every Canadian: Hamas, a designated terrorist organization responsible for the brutal murders and rapes of over 1,200 innocent people on October 7 — including the deaths of eight Canadians — publicly praised a joint statement issued by the UK, France, and Canada. That statement demanded that Israel cease its military operations—or face 'concrete actions.' Article content Article content Article content Let's be honest: if Hamas is thanking you, you're on the wrong side of history. Article content Article content And this isn't the first time. This marks the second instance where Hamas has openly praised Canada's stance. When a terrorist organization applauds your foreign policy — not once, but twice — that should trigger a serious moral reckoning. Article content Even more troubling, after it was revealed that several UNRWA staff were complicit in the October 7 massacre, Canada didn't cut back funding to the agency. The government increased it. What does that say about our moral compass? Are we so determined to appear 'neutral' that we're willing to reward those tied to terror? Article content This is not a matter of foreign policy nuance. This is a question of moral clarity. Hamas — an organization committed to Israel's destruction — welcomed the joint Western statement describing it as a 'an important step' in the right direction. Why? Because it lets them off the hook. Why release the hostages or stop fighting if even the West is behind us? Article content Article content The Canadian and friends statement contained no demand for Hamas to disarm and to stop firing rockets. There was no appeal to Qatar or other regional powers to pressure Hamas to lay down its arms — instead, the statement expressed support for their efforts. Article content The blame — once again — was placed squarely on Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East. That double standard is antisemitism, plain and simple. Article content Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney amplified this misguided posture with sharp rhetoric, and Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand added fuel to the fire by falsely accusing Israel of weaponizing food, citing unverified and inflated casualty statistics — without once acknowledging Hamas's role in provoking and perpetuating this war. Article content Let's remember: this war began with the slaughter of innocent civilians by Hamas. Israel has a right — and an obligation — to defend itself.
