Around the World

The Pope’s Views On When Wars Should Be Fought Are Irrelevant To Reality And Not Just Useless, But Harmful

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

Once again, the position at EA is that the Pope—it doesn’t matter which Pope—is unethically abusing his authority and serving as gum in the works while fostering confusion when he presumes dictate national policy based on idealism and utopianism

A guy I never heard of who was an executive editor of The National Catholic Reporter and who, we are told, “directed coverage of the conclave that elected Pope Leo XIV,” was awarded an op-ed in the New York Times (Gift link, though it’s not much of a gift) to explain why he thinks the Pope thinks that “the age of artificial intelligence undermines the moral criteria for just war.” Ramalama ding-dong! Why is anyone listening to guys who have the luxury of dealing with the abstract and never having the responsibility of keeping a nation and a population safe and secure as they pontificate about the right way to do it? Why is anyone reading the analysis of an obscure functionary who has also never had to face the harsh human, military, geopolitical and practical realities of war as he rationalizes the basis for a Pope’s irresponsible interference with serious international matters?

The New York Times has demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is fully committed to undermining President Trump, his policies and his popular support. The “just war” blather, another phase of arguing how many angels can gather on a pinhead, suddenly became useful to the Axis of Unethical conduct when it wanted to root for a murderous, anti-Christian Islamic regime while it was fighting the United States of America. Popes never support wars, and it isn’t news when the Vatican condemns one. Infamously, the Vatican refused to take sides in World War II, or take any substantive steps to try to end the extermination of Jews in Europe. Now the Pope doesn’t think a war that has among its goals making as certain as possible that Iran doesn’t have the ability to do what it has been promising to do for decades—destroy Israel— is a “just war,” or to be more precise, that we should redefine “just war” to eliminate Israel’s and the U.S.’s justification for neutralizing Iran.

There’s a damning consistency there, no?

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Now THIS Really Couldn’t Happen Here (With Rueful Ethics Observations…) [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

This is the EU Commission in Brussels. “It’s like feudalism,” a Commission official working on a lower level of the Berlaymont told POLITICO, making a justifiable analogy since the upper floors, where housing commissioners worked, kept their air conditioning running while the proles in the lower floors sweltered

Americans wouldn’t stand for this.

Not yet, anyway.

1. Could there be a more throbbing example of the unethical “Let them eat cake!” attitude, though it is more like “Let them jump into rivers and drown!”?

2. Why would anyone trust the EU if its leadership could even consider something like this? Yet this is the same orientation that Communism inflicted on its populations. I saw the end results as well as the brainwashing of the public it required when I had (and I do mean had) to be in Moscow in the Nineties for two weeks.

3. Bernie Sanders honeymooned in Moscow. What does this tell you? And he’s being credited with remaking the Democratic Party, along with fellow useful idiot AOC.

4. Yet young voters in droves rushed to the polls in New York to elect exactly the kinds of candidates who hold the “government knows best” and “Know your place, serfs!” world view that is antithetical to American traditions, values and thought.

5. The Democratic Party, now being increasingly dominated by socialists and Communists, is counting on Trump Derangement to let it triumph in November, while its policies, and the even worse policies supported by the Democratic Socialists, are ostentatiously irresponsible and anti-American. Good plan!

“It Can’t Happen Here”? Brazil Gives Us A Glimpse Of What The Woke Passionately Wish For America

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

In April, Brazilian father and mother, Audato and Ieda Denardi were found guilty of the crime of “intellectual neglect” and were sentenced to 50 days in prison for homeschooling their two daughters without sufficient instruction on“gender and sex education” or “tolerance and diversity.”

The court also found that the girls, aged 15 and 11, not enjoying popular Brazilian musical genres such as “trap” or “sertanejo” was evidence of a criminal deficiency in their cultural education.

Even though the prosecutors in the São Paulo trial requested an acquittal after concluding that the minors were not suffering from any neglect and were demonstrating appropriate academic and social development, the conviction was handed down. It is currently under appeal before the Seventh Criminal Court Chamber of the São Paulo State Court of Justice. The Christian legal organization ADF International is representing the family, and it denounced the case as “a grotesque abuse of criminal law.”

Ya think?

Despite the fact that both girls are pianists with advanced training and are fluent in several languages, the judge accused the parents of “using their daughters as pawns in an ideological struggle, subjecting them to a form of unregulated education, the effectiveness and quality of which lack adequate metrics within the Brazilian legal system, while completely excluding the state’s involvement.” Julio Pohl, legal counsel for Latin America at ADF International, neatly pointed out the obvious: to be concise, the verdict is crackers.

“An independent educational psychologist found no sign of neglect. The girls themselves described rigorous daily education,” Pohl said. “The judge convicted anyway because a fifteen-year-old said she finds some music lyrics morally questionable, and because the curriculum didn’t include state-approved content on gender. A parent has been sentenced to prison not for failing to educate her children, but for educating them according to her own values. This is a grotesque abuse of the criminal law, and we will not let it stand.”

Let’s go through the occupants of Congress, the Senate, state houses and mayors’ offices and speculate which of them secretly (or not so secretly) would like to see similar “justice” in the United States. Do we even have to speculate on the how the leadership of the teachers unions would regard the Denardi case?

Ethics Observations on Negative Commentary On The U.S. That A Critic Is Ethically Estopped From Making…

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

…or, “Shut the hell up!”

Ann Althouse today pulled the following quote from “Happy birthday USA. But is America’s revolution unravelling? When the USA turned 200, the nation came together as one. Fifty years on, what are the chances of the same thing happening under Donald Trump? A special series from The Sunday Times Magazine is dedicated to the 250th anniversary of the USA”:

“And beneath the bluster, Trump’s limited view of the American Revolution is very familiar… it reflects, like so much else about him, the mainstream culture of the Cold War era, when museums and films did indeed tell a relentlessly upbeat story of American accomplishment — in vivid contrast to the plodding drudgery of communism. The leftist radicals of the 1960s and 1970s dissented noisily from this cozy view, but the majority accepted it unquestioningly. Since then a more extreme view has taken root: those who see the revolution not as the start of an unfinished project but as a fixed source of authority, a 250-year-old set of final answers. But as the US blows out its birthday candles, does it still have the capacity it once had for political renewal, while retaining its founding principles? It is always easier to start revolutions than to end them. This is why so many Americans have believed theirs was superior to others: it had been brought to an elegant conclusion by the constitution of 1787. Americans, it seemed, had escaped the spirals of radicalism and authoritarianism that beset France, or Latin American republics….”

I’m going to take a bit of time off from having to fend off insults, protests and rationalizations from the alleged legal ethicists who are furious at me for raising this issue to point out why I couldn’t be less interested in a Brit’s critique of the U.S.

Althouse summed up one excellent reason concisely with her sole comment on the article: “That’s the London Times. The view from the losing side.” That losing side has seen its empire collapse, its culture overwhelmed and destroyed by unrestrained immigration, the right of free speech trampled, its women brutalized, and its economy disastrously mismanaged while the country stands as a cautionary tale regarding the false promise of socialism. Its Prime Minister just resigned, the sixth leader of the government since the beginning of 2016: a seventh will arrive before the year ends. Meanwhile, its revered royal family is riddled with scandals and embarrassments, for King Charles’ pedophile brother to the obnoxious expats grifting off of their titles in the U.S.

Where does this rotting country get off criticizing us?

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The Great Stupid, DEI Mania Division:

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Let’s see:

  • Because the best soccer players happened not to be black?
  • Because the team was constructed according to ability, not DEI mandates?
  • Because sports are not supposed to be about race?
  • Because sane fans don’t demand that athletic teams “look like them”?
  • Hey, you’re right! Funny, I didn’t notice because I was watching the game. Are there any Asians?

A wag from Argentina responded on X, “Because we are a country, not a Disney movie.”

Yeah, that too.

The U.K.’s Rape Gangs and the Warning to America

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

A Guest Post by

Sarah Beth

There have been two major incidents that brought my attention to this problem in the UK.  I think we have all heard about Henry Nowak, but the fact that he died while being arrested for racism rather than having someone take care of him and arrest the kid who knifed him rather upset me.  In case we are confused about the problem, at least in the US Karmelo Anthony was arrested rather than Metcalf, whom he had stabbed.  However, a new report has come out regarding the Muslim grooming gangs in the UK and that, with the background of Henry Nowak, leads me to some conclusions.  Read the whole thing, if you have the stomach for it.  I cried as I read it.

If it is too upsetting to read it all, here is an article about the report.  It doesn’t hurt as much to read. 

There are three main causes that I can see for this situation.  The first cause, like the cause for much human suffering and trafficking, is poor structure, in this case, family structure.  Most trafficked girls are either sold to traffickers or, as in many of the victim’s reports, from a less than ideal, often abusive, family structure.  I don’t plan to discuss the problems or solutions to this, as it is a serious can of worms and the hardest to fix. If we work on the other two problems, this, while still an issue, will be less of one.

The next problem is that of Islam.  Islam itself is not a good religion for a civilized society.  We see that the Koran states that you may marry up to four wives and have as many concubines as you wish, as long as they are not Islamic women.   Sex with prepubescent girls is also totally okay, with child marriage accepted and consummation recommended at the age of 9 with some versions of Islam suggesting it even earlier.  Some Imams have said that it is better for a girl to not to become a woman (referring to her first period) in her father’s house, but instead in her husband’s.  We also have the precepts in the Koran for how Muslims should behave in society, peaceful as the powerless, lying to unbelievers at any time, and when reaching a majority and having power, becoming brutal. 

Before discussing the repercussions on society for those precepts, I think it is fair to address the concern that this is not all of Islam, the “religion of peace.”  We can always have the discussion of what in a holy book is to be taken literally, figuratively, or even transiently.  I know of many statements in the Bible that we could debate.  However, there are plenty of reasons to believe that the Koran is far more troublesome than the Bible.  First, many Imams today proclaim the harsher rules, and the Imams who do not are almost always in non-majority Muslim countries, which could perhaps fall under the “lying to infidels” rule.  If we compare that to how Jewish rabbis, protestant ministers, and the Pope relate to the Bible, you will see that the violence recommended in the Bible is not taken to be a command to take literally today by the majority, even in countries where Jews or Christians are the majority. 

The second reason we should consider the Koran’s violence to still be considered a literal command instead of a figurative one is the sheer number of Muslims that follow it.  We can look at Jews and Christians and see that the majority of followers of those religions do not follow the violent commands.  Consider the commands in Leviticus and Deuteronomy to stone homosexuals and witches.  There aren’t many Christians who do either, and the majority loudly denounces people like Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptists.  We don’t see much of the Muslim world decrying other Muslim’s antisocial behaviors.  The best we tend to get is, “that’s not how we follow our faith, so don’t blame us.”

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From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Traditionally, the tale of the plug of tobacco has been law students’ favorite anecdote explaining the term “res ipsa loquitur,” or “the thing speaks for itself.” I have reprinted the story or a link many times, but not yet in 2026, so here you are…

“It seems that appellant [Mr. Pillars] consumed one plug of his purchase, which measured up to representations, that it was tobacco unmixed with human flesh, but when appellant tackled the second plug it made him sick, but, not suspecting the tobacco, he tried another chew, and still another, until he bit into some foreign substance, which crumbled like dry bread, and caused him to foam at the mouth, while he was getting “sicker and sicker.” Finally, his teeth struck something hard; he could not bite through it. After an examination he discovered a human toe, with flesh and nail intact. We refrain from detailing the further harrowing and nauseating details. The appellant consulted a physician, who testified that appellant exhibited all of the characteristic symptoms of ptomaine poison. The physician examined the toe and identified it as a human toe in a state of putrefaction, and said, in effect, that his condition was caused by the poison generated by the rotten toe.[emphasis added]…Generally speaking, the rule is that the manufacturer is not liable to the ultimate consumer for damages resulting from the defects and impurities of the manufactured article…[but the Court can] “imagine no reason why, with ordinary care human toes could not be left out of chewing tobacco, and if toes are found in chewing tobacco, it seems to us that somebody has been very careless.” Agreed. The case is Pillars v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. et al., 78 So. 365 (Ms. 1918).

Similarly, 21-year-old woman Maria Eduarda Rodrigues de Freitas is dead because the idiot staff at a bungee-jumping event threw her from a bridge but forgot to attach the cord, leading to the poor woman plunging about 130 feet into a ravine. Maria was pronounced dead at the scene. The incident occurred on the “Skeleton Bridge” in Limeira, in the state of São Paulo.

Six people have been taken into custody. Good.

You know, hiring the equivalents of Moe, Larry and Curly to supervise bungee jumping is even more irresponsible than letting the Three Stooges be plumbers, carpenters or surgeons, which were among the set-ups for many of their slapstick film misadventures. Neither their employers nor the negligent homicide perps themselves can fall back on any rationalizations on the list and get away with it. #19. The Perfection Diversion, or “Nobody’s Perfect!” and “Everybody makes mistakes!” or #20. The “Just one mistake!” Fantasy are probably their best shots, but the problem is that literally nobody does this, ever, unless they are menaces to society who need to be locked away for the greater good. Tossing a trusting thrill-seeker off a cliff and neglecting to fasten the cord expected to safe her life is signature significance for a reckless moron. I guess #20A, “Everyone Deserves a Second Chance,” is also worth a try, but I would require such a bungee jumping establishment to prominently display a sign that says:

“Warning! Occasionally our staff neglects to attach the cord, which will result in a jumper having their brains splattered all over the ravine floor.”

I hate blaming victims, but I feel compelled to add that those of us who deliberately engage in activities that have no societal utility whatsoever and that innately involve the risk of death or serious bodily injury are limited in the amount of sympathy they can expect from me when their metaphorical tossing of the dice comes up snake-eyes. There are several posts on EA about the topic, as with people who pay absurd amount of money to climb Mount Everest or who go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Those who feel something as pointless as bungee jumping will enrich their lives and signify a purpose to an otherwise empty existence have their priorities seriously out of order. They don’t deserve to die, but they do deserve to have St. Peter say, when they knock on the Pearly Gate, “You died how? What were you thinking?”

If You Wondered If President Trump’s Elimination of Rep. Thomas Massie’s Chances Of Being Re-Elected To Congress Was Ethical and Necessary, Wonder No More…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Massie, a libertarian Republican from Kentucky, emerged as a troublesome anti-Trump rebel motivated substantially by his opposition to Israel. He was defeated in an expensive Republican primary battle decided when President Trump endorsed his opponent: it was so expensive because anti-Jewish and anti-Isreal haters from both political parties gave generously to keep Massie on Capitol Hill. Among his fans are—no surprise— Al Jareeza, the Arab news agency, and ex-MAGA boob-turned-full-time-publicity-whore-Trump-basher Marjorie Taylor Greene. Marjorie, you may recall, claimed that the Rothschilds may have caused California wildfires using secret space lasers, and refused to support the bipartisan Antisemitism Awareness Bill in 2024, arguing that the measure could convict Christians for the Bible account that Jewish leaders handed Jesus over to to be crucified. I’m not a believer in guilt by association, but in the case of Marjorie Taylor Greene I could be persuaded to make an exception. Now to be fair, Massie is smarter than Marjorie.

But then so is my coffee mug.

Massie blamed AIPAC and “Zionists” for his defeat, and today, with nothing to lose, he took the House floor to deliver an alleged remembrance of the victims of the 1967 friendly fire attack by Israel on the USS Liberty during the Six-Day War. Thirty-four U.S. sailors were killed and another 171 wounded in the incident which, like the 9-11 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, is a favorite of anti-Israel conspiracy theorists. An investigation—more than one, in fact— concluded that the tragedy was the result of mistake by Israeli forces in believing they were attacking an Egyptian ship. Israel took responsibility for the disater within hours of the incident on June 8, 1967, officially apologized and later paid millions of dollars in restitution to the families of victims and to wounded survivors.

Never mind. Anti-Semites like Taylor Greene, Massie and lots and lots of powerful Democrats are convinced that the incident was one more plot by those evil Jews.

Again, this occurred in 1967. Why would a U.S. Congressman decide that it needs to be rehashed now, in 2026? I’ll give you three guesses, and the first two don’t count. We said things like that in 1967.

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Remember Midway, June 7, 1942 [Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

The five day naval Battle of Midway ended on this date in 1942. Midway has never been celebrated with the verve and reverence it deserves, in great part because the June 6 remembrance of D-Day, a pivotal event in the Allied victory in World War II, has just been celebrated the day before. (Another reason is that there isn’t a really good movie about Midway, though the last one, Midway (2019), with its B-list stars, was better and more historically accurate than the 1976 effort with an all-star cast and a silly romantic sub-plot.) Midway was arguably just as important as D-Day, however.

The Pacific theater of WW II, fought between the Allies and the Empire of Japan, lasted from December 7, 1941 until September 2, 1945, and was longer and bloodier than the European side of the war. On June 4, 1942 when Japanese planes launched bombing raids on the Midway atoll, a group of islands under US control. The US Air Force and Navy had been depleted in the 1941 sneak attack on Pearl Harbor: all eight of our battleships were damaged, with two lost completely and the others taken out of commission. As a result, the US had no battleships available to fight in most important naval battle of the war.

Fortunately, US intelligence knew an attack was coming. Japan’s Naval General Operational Code used book ciphers, making it much easier to break than the Germans’ Enigma and Lorenz codes. We had discerned early in 1942 that Japan was planning an attack on Midway. It was commanded by the same man who oversaw Pearl Harbor: Chuichi Nagumo, who was the vice admiral of the Japanese Navy and commander of the Japanese First Air Fleet. His successful attack on Pearl Harbor put him in charge of all his nation’s attacks in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. (He was to honorably kill himself later in the war when the tide turned against Japan.)

At the beginning of the Battle of Midway, the Japanese Army also attempted to invade the Aleutian Islands. Some believe the Aleutian attack was designed to pull U.S. attention away from the more crucial naval battle. Meanwhile, if there had been betting markets in 1942, the Japanese would have been heavy favorites. The U.S. fleet was outnumbered: the Japanese attack used four aircraft carriers, seven battleships, 150 support ships, 248 carrier aircraft and 15 submarines. The US defense consisted of just three aircraft carriers, 50 support ships, 233 carrier aircraft, 127 land-based aircraft on Midway and eight submarines. Meanwhile, Admiral Halsey was sidelined with shingles.

Japan was sure it could neutralize the U.S.’s already weakened US navy and prevent it from interfering with the Rising Sun’s aggression in the Pacific, as Japan was determined to expand its empire. But as Carnak the Magnificent might say, “Wrong, Sushi Breath!” After the four day battle, Japan withdrew from Midway on this date in 1942. The Japanese had lost nearly 300 planes, all four of its aircraft carriers and 3,500 men. Japan did sink a US aircraft carrier, the USS Yorktown, and destroyed many US aircraft and vessels, including a destroyer. Still, there was no dispute over which forces prevailed. Midway was the turning point in the Pacific. After the battle, Japan and the US reversed roles: Japan spent the rest of WWII defending its territories in Pacific as the United States attacked.

ADDENDUM: Ace commenter Joel Mundt authored a terrific piece on the battle, and I urge you to read it, here.

Friday Open Forum, or “Help Me Find More Bananas Ethics Stories!”

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

On my birthday (also known as “Finding Jack’s father dead in his chair day”) in 2025, I began a post thusly…

“I missed this pre-Great Stupid story in 2019, when it was a harbinger of stupid things to come, and missed it again this year, when it was back in the news a few days ago. It wasn’t too long ago that Fred and Pennagain reliably alerted me to ethics stories around the web that I otherwise might have missed. A few of you do send me story ideas regularly, but something like this shouldn’t slip through the cracks.”

“This” was a recurring story about various reactions to absurdist artist Maurizio Cattelan taping a banana to a wall at an art show in 2019 and calling it “Comedian.” In 2019, performance artist David Datuna ripped the banana off the wall and ate it, so Cattalan just taped another banana to another wall. I missed that one and in 2024 was urging readers to keep my EA runway full. I am doing so again. I can’t find every rich ethics story out there all by myself. I still welcome guest post submissions too.

The story in 2024 was that a Chinese cryptocurrency entrepreneur named Justin Sun bought the silly artwork for $6.2 million at auction and, in front of cameras, ate the banana as a gesture of conspicuous consumption to show how rich he was. Well, “Comedians” sparked another stupid incident last month: The Pompidou-Metz museum in Paris announced that it had filed a criminal complaint for theft against the unknown art-lover (or banana-lover) who took down the most recent banana to be featured in “Comedians” and ate it.

The museum also announced that it had replaced the banana.

Now it’s your turn again to write about more trenchant ethics events like that one, or more sophisticated issue that may lack appeal.