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Showing posts with label moral clarity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label moral clarity. Show all posts

Wednesday, 25 March 2026

Moral Clarity – Why Is It So Rare When It Matters Most?



There are moments in history when the lines are not blurred. When right and wrong are not subjective. When moral clarity should be obvious to anyone paying even the slightest attention.

This is one of those moments.

Iran’s Islamic regime is not misunderstood. It is not a “complex regional actor.” It is a rogue state that has spent decades exporting terror, suppressing its own people, and openly declaring its genocidal intentions.

Let’s be clear about what this regime is.

This is a government that has turned its guns on its own citizens—killing tens of thousands in brutal crackdowns. A regime that stages public executions to enforce its medieval ideology. A state that imprisons, tortures, and silences dissent as standard practice.

This is not speculation. This is fact.

Beyond its borders, Iran has built a global terror network. It funds and arms Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis—proxies responsible for bloodshed across the Middle East and beyond. It has supported attacks on American personnel and Jewish civilians worldwide.

And then there are the ambitions.

Ballistic missiles. Drone swarms. A relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons. All backed by explicit threats—Israel described as a “one bomb state,” promises to wipe it from the map, and the United States branded the “Great Satan.”

This is not defensive posture. This is declared intent.

So when Israel and the United States finally say, “Enough,” and take action to neutralise that threat, what do we see?

Not unity. Not resolve. Not moral clarity.

Instead, we see equivocation.

We see media outlets obsessing over the imperfections of the response while barely acknowledging the scale of the threat. We see politicians hedging, qualifying, and wringing their hands. We see commentators more interested in scoring ideological points than confronting reality.

And worse—we see a complete inversion of moral responsibility.

Iran launches missiles into civilian areas. Residential buildings are hit. Infrastructure is targeted. Energy facilities. Desalination plants. Entire populations placed at risk.

And yet, somehow, the focus shifts—away from the aggressor and onto those trying to stop it.

This is not analysis. It is moral confusion.

Or perhaps something more deliberate.

Because the truth is this: standing against a regime like Iran’s should not be controversial. It should not require pages of disclaimers or tortured moral gymnastics.

It should be obvious.

A regime that terrorises its own people, exports violence across the globe, and openly seeks the destruction of other nations forfeits any claim to legitimacy.

The objective here is not conquest. It is containment—and, ultimately, liberation.

And that is the point so many seem determined to ignore.

The Iranian people themselves have shown where they stand. Time and again, they have risen against their oppressors. Many are quietly, and sometimes openly, welcoming the pressure on the regime that has crushed them for decades.

They know who their enemy is.

Why don’t we?

History has a way of judging these moments harshly. It remembers who stood firm—and who looked away. Who spoke clearly—and who hid behind ambiguity.

This is not a time for clever commentary or political positioning.

It is a time for clarity.

Because if we cannot recognise evil when it is this obvious, we are not confused.

We are complicit.


Monday, 24 February 2025

Moral clarity!


Sometimes the words spoken by leaders do not age well. Circumstances change and not only are the words no longer relevant but history has made them shrill and out of kilter. 

Yet I happened to come across a short clip from years ago that rings as true to day as it did when it was delivered. The clip is taken from a much longer speech Trump delivered in Saudi Arabia to the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council in 2017. 

Perhaps it is even more meaningful given it was delivered to Muslim leaders whose co-religionists include the Islamists terrorists who are and have been the major source of religious terrorism for decades. But listen to the words, they apply equally to all religion-motivated terrorism. And they ring true today, especially given the wide support given to Hamas terrorists by many who should know better.





Friday, 10 November 2023

Is journalistic ethics an oxymoron?


"Moral clarity", "moral compass", and "Moral fog", are phrases used frequently nowadays to expose arguments that support actions with a flawed ethical basis. Most common recently in relation to the Oct 7 Hamas attack on Israeli civilians, but of course applicable in many other areas of cultural conflict.

                                

So what is moral clarity? While not easy to define for any situation, hypothetical questions provide some insight by focusing on dilemmas where we have to make choices. Our choice of right or wrong highlights our moral compass. For ourselves at least.

Here are three hypothetical questions to let you clarify your own position.

Question 1; You are a journalist confronted by an active crime scene. A young man has a woman by the throat and is trying to rape her. Do you; -

1. Try to stop him and liberate the woman?
2. Call for help and try to help her?
3. Take out your mobile phone and start filming the rape?

Question 2: You are a television journalist and your producer has inside information of where and when a protest will take place in front of a private residence. He wants you to go and cover the protest together with a film crew. You are told the protest is on a private residence so you are to ensure you do not violate trespassing laws.

Do you
1.  Follow your producer's instructions and go to the property without alerting the owner of the property?
2. Tell your producer that you would be an accomplice and therefore do not accept the assignment?
3. Inform the authorities and let them know where and when the illegal protest will take place then go and cover the protest?

Question 3; You are a photo journalist and your producer has asked you to attend a military action by a terrorist organisation. Your producer has asked you to cover the action to provide a professional record.
You know this is going to be violent and on a large scale

Do you
1. Follow your instructions and join the group as an observer to record the 'action'?
2. Tell your producer that you refuse to go as you do not want to be an accomplice to the actions of a terrorist group
3, Do you advise the authorities where and when a terrorist attack is to take place and then go and cover the action?

And a second part to this last hypothetical. 

Question 3 part 2
You had decided to go and create a record without informing the authorities who could prevent it. You now find that the terrorists are carrying out a massacre, murdering, raping, butchering, burning, decapitating,

Do you
1. Cover the story with pictures and live narrative?
2. Refuse to take part in any way?
3 Try to help those being massacred?

Of course, these are pointed questions. Unfortunately, the scenarios are not totally hypothetical,  Question 2 is based around the protest covered by Australia’s ABC where the TV crew covered an anti-mining protest at Woodside CEO's Perth residence (see Woodside files formal complaint with ABC over CEO protest. They chose not to let the victim know but took part in what they knew would be an illegal action. What do you think of the ABC's ethics?

And worse still Question 3. There was a CNN journalist embedded with the Oct 7 Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians. Yes, really. Hard to believe. Of course, some questions on ethics are now being asked, but this is after the event.


These questions are of course not easy. I can hear journos providing a variety of excuses for moral compromises; 
  • "If we let authorities know, then we would never have informers
  • "The crimes would have occurred even if we were not there, but then the world would not know about them? Surely it is better to shine a light on such events?”
  • "We never break the law"

Mmm. I guess that is where the moral clarity is missing and moral fog takes over.



Saturday, 28 October 2023

Innocent civilians?

The many marches in our streets decry the death of Gaza's civilians caught in the Israeli bombing of Gaza with "These are innocent people.", "The blockade is a collective punishment." 
I am sure many are, but given that many of Gaza's 'civilians' are Hamas one day and civilians the next it is a difficult claim.

Even more disturbing is a recent X post by Victor Davis Hansen that exposes the 'innocent civilian' claims. His post is rather long but here is a snippet.

"Purportedly, free apartments and $10,000 bounties were offered by the Hamas leadership to Gazans who brought back Israeli hostages. And at that moment, though not now, there seemed to be hundreds of takers zealously following the Hamas death squads into Israel—including a few who had been prior guest workers in border kibbutzes.

That picture of eager civilian involvement was apparently confirmed by videos that emerged from the Gazan street, as the Israeli captives and dead were spit upon, struck, and reviled by civilian mobs—at least in the heady days after news of the easy killing of Jews in Israeli but before the IDF aerial response."

Read the full post here

So are they all innocent civilians? No, neither are they all civilians nor innocent.