Around the World

And Now, A Positive Note About Marco Rubio: Apparently He Actually Reads Bills Before He Votes On Them…

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., speaks with the media after touring the World Famous Gold & Silver Pawn shop with owner Rick Harrison Thursday, May 28, 2015, in Las Vegas. The shop is featured in the television show Pawn Stars. (AP Photo/John Locher)

…unlike everyone else.

…at least when he bothers to show up to vote, which isn’t often.

Still, to be fair to Marco, Ethics Alarms notes that Joshua Stanton, a lawyer and North Korea policy expert who has advised the Hill on legislation, writes:

By now, most of you know that the North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act, the Senate’s version of H.R. 757, passed the Senate unanimously Wednesday night. The House is expected to pass the Senate’s version this morning and send it to the President’s desk.

In an election year, when floor time is especially precious, it was remarkable and humbling that the Senate spent an entire day debating this bill….Both Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio interrupted their presidential campaigns to fly back to Washington and cast “yea” votes. Both senators have been solid supporters of the bill. Two years ago, Senator Rubio personally read every line of an earlier version. I hope I’m not giving away a trade secret here, but it’s pretty damn rare for representatives and senators to personally read lengthy, legalistic bills themselves; most delegate that to their staffers. Rubio did so with obvious care and understanding, leaving no doubt that he’s extremely bright. I saw his tracked changes and comment bubbles in the draft, and suspect that the mineral export ban the Senate added to section 104 was (at least in part) his idea. That provision could be quite powerful, akin to previous legislation that banned Iran’s oil sales.

This suggests to me that Rubio, while not having the goods to be President, could be an excellent, responsible Senator, if he wanted to be.

Too bad he doesn’t want to be.

[There is still no excuse for every member of Congress not personally reading and understanding ever piece of legislation they vote on. For elected officials to vote into law bills they have not read carefully and fully understand is unethical—lazy, irresponsible, incompetent.]

____________________

Pointer: Fred, who is on a roll…

 

Ethics Jump Ball: What Is An Ethical Reaction To This Story?

/ Jack Marshall / 104 Comments

Pippa-Bacca

From the BBC (2008):

An Italian woman artist who was hitch-hiking to the Middle East dressed as a bride to promote world peace has been found murdered in Turkey.

The naked body of Giuseppina Pasqualino di Marineo, 33, known as Pippa Bacca, was found in bushes near the northern city of Gebze on Friday.

She had said she wanted to show that she could put her trust in the kindness of local people.

Turkish police say they have detained a man in connection with the killing.

Reports say the man led the police to the body.

I think I’ll add my reactions to the comments.

Fragments can be found in the tags.

You go first.

__________________

Pointer: Red Flag

Speaking Of Photography Ethics, How About “Don’t Kill Anything”?

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

selfie dolphin

I’ll admit it: I have about as little interest in photography and photographs as it is possible to have for a human living in this century. I regard the mania for taking photos of oneself constantly and posting them on-line as strong evidence that crippling narcissism can be transmitted electronically, and as we have been discussing in comment to this recent post, if you try to use me as a prop in your cellphone camera-warped quest to make every your waking hour the object of public gawking, you had better ask permission first, or else. I realize this attitude is fighting the “everybody does it” tide, but I’m right, everybody is wrong, and that’s all there is to it.

This story out of Argentina, in addition to being disgusting, shows just how unbalanced the selfie-craze is making human priorities. I know—Argentina. This couldn’t happen here, right?  Not in a country where Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are surging in the polls….we’re too smart.

Two La Plata dolphins, members of a rare and endangered species, got to close to shore in their playfulness near an Argentinian resort last week. Some bathers plucked the small cetaceans out of the waves, and they were passed around a smiling, brain-dead mob containing selfie-mad amateur photographers.  One of the dolphins died of stress and exposure, and was just dumped on the beach. But never mind: it will live on in online shares and Instagram. What’s the problem, dude?

“At least one of these dolphins suffered a horrific, traumatic and utterly unnecessary death, for the sake of a few photographs,” a spokesperson from the World Animal Protection group said.  “This terribly unfortunate event is an example of the casual cruelty people can inflict when they use animals for entertainment purposes.”

Activists groups just cannot help themselves, can they?  They must squeeze every episode into their own agenda. This is one of many reasons why they aren’t trusted. This episode was about reckless, selfish, ignorant people who don’t have respect for living things, not Sea World.

Well, the crowd got their selfies, so it’s all worth it to them. Meanwhile. as for their once living, breathing, prop…

dead dolphin

Fortunately, the carcass was still good for one more photo.

 

Again, The Pope Is An Ethics Dunce, And Again, Someone Is Ticking Me Off By Making Me Defend Donald Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

handogod1It is unethical to punch down, you see.

Figures of great prominence, popularity and power end up abusing all of that by denigrating, attacking and criticizing private citizens, including corporate citizens. When such individuals condemn others, they naturally focus the antipathy of their supporters on the targets, and since the targets never have similar hordes to support them, this is a grand variety of bullying….in fact, lets call it Grand Bullying.

Thus Pope Francis is ethically wrong to publicly attack Donald Trump. It’s also unbelievably stupid and petty, but never mind: we’ll just concentrate on unethical.

Trump, in one of his periodic moments of clarity—if you pew out random thoughts about everything all the time, it is like a million monkeys eventually typing “Hamlet;” the odds say that eventually something sensible will come out by accident—said that the Pope was “political” and that Francis “doesn’t understand America’s problems.”  True…true. He also could have said that the Pontiff should stop meddling with U.S. illegal immigration and environmental policies when the principality that he heads doesn’t tolerate any of the former, and he has no practical reasons to be dubious about climate change, the Vatican having no jobs, industry, or trade-offs to consider. So the Pope felt that he had to respond, and when asked by a reporter, “Can a good Catholic vote for this man?” replied, Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Japan’s Official Apology To The Korean “Comfort Women”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

comfort-women

Before and during World War II, the Imperial Japanese Army forced an estimated 400,000 women and girls from occupied territories, primarily Korea, China, and the Philippines, into sexual slavery for the convenience and “comfort” of Japanese soldiers. That the women were kidnapped, raped, and in many cases murdered is not in dispute, but for cultural and political reasons the Japanese government has never accepted full responsibility for the nation’s mass crime, or acknowledged its true nature. To the contrary, Japan has protested memorials to the Comfort women in various locales, including the United States. Japan officially maintains that the women were ordinary prostitutes, and that no crimes were committed toward them. This is a long, bitter controversy between South Korea and Japan particularly.

Pressure from the United States on both Japan and South Korea to resolve the issue had been building, and on December 29, 2015, the two nations reached an agreement by which the Comfort Women issue was considered “finally and irreversibly” resolved. Under the agreement, the Japanese government issued this negotiated statement:

The issue of comfort women, with an involvement of the Japanese military authorities at that time, was a grave affront to the honor and dignity of large numbers of women, and the Government of Japan is painfully aware of responsibilities from this perspective. 

As Prime Minister of Japan, Prime Minister Abe expresses anew his most sincere apologies and remorse to all the women who underwent immeasurable and painful experiences and suffered incurable physical and psychological wounds as comfort women.

As part of the resolution, the Japanese government pledged to contribute one billion yen (about $8.3 million), out of the Japanese government’s budget to a foundation established by the Korean government dedicated to assisting the surviving Korean Comfort Women. Forty six survive. They had no part in the agreement discussions.

The deal is unpopular in South Korea. Critics immediately complained that the agreement is inadequate. Of course it is. $8.3 million would be moderate damages in the U.S. for a single woman who was kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery. Japan is not going to accept full responsibility for the war crimes, and that should be obvious after so many decades and such stubborn denial.

The ethics question that is a bit more challenging is whether the apology is worth the paper it is printed on, or even a true apology. After the agreement, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe  stated: “there will be no future reference at all to this issue [the Comfort Women issue]. We will not raise it in the next Japan-Korea summit meeting. This is the end. There will be no more apology.” Many Koreans feel that an official apology followed immediately by a statement that says, in essence, “There, that should shut them up!” is cynical and worthless. As a Korean issues website put it, “If an apology is not followed by contrition and self-reflection, but instead by gloating—-does that apology mean anything?”

Good question! Let me rephrase that as the Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Is the official Japanese apology for the crimes against the Korean Comfort Women ethical?

Continue reading →

A “When Ethics Alarms Don’t Ring” Case Study: The Angouleme International Comics Festival Thinks Announcing the Wrong Award-Winners Is Funny

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

In December, comedian Steve Harvey inadvertently announced the wrong winner of the Miss Universe Pageant on live, national TV. It was horrible. He then had to correct his mistake, the wrongly crowned Miss Columbia had to be uncrowned, and everyone except the sadists in the audience felt awkward and embarrassed. Harvey sincerely apologized, more than once.

How anyone could be aware of that fiasco, which received world-wide attention, and conclude that it would be hilarious to do the same fake-winner bit intentionally is beyond my small mind to comprehend. Such individuals would have to have their ethics alarms installed backwards, or buy them from the Bizarro World of Superman Comics. Yet the organizers of the Angouleme International Comics Festival this tear decided exactly that: “Let’s announce the wrong winners! It will be great!“

The ceremony began with the MC, comedian Richard Gaitet,  announcing that“This will be the shortest ceremony in history, because all we want to do is drink and dance!” He then presented all nine awards in rapid succession, including the Fauve d’Or, the biggest award of the show, to Arsène Schrauwen, by Olivier Schrauwen. Then two women appeared and announced that the awards just handed out were fake, and they presented the real awards to completely different artists. The “winners” who just accepted their prizes in the exhilaration of pride and recognition, were as stunned as Miss Columbia.

The audience reaction, meanwhile, was exactly as you, I or any sane person would expect. Nobody laughed. Everyone felt that the targets of the practical joke had been abused. “We were all happy, we had tears in our eyes, and then we were humiliated,” said Sam Soubigui of Komikku, one of the publishers whose book won a “Faux Fauve” (fake prize). Another publisher who accepted a phony prize had already relayed the news of the honor to the writer and artist of the book that “won,” and then had to call them back and explain. One editor whose comic won a “Faux Fauve” left the auditorium in tears when she realized it was fake.

The condemnation of the stunt on social media was swift and unanimous. The organizers of the festival thought this was an appropriate response (courtesy of the French to English Google app, further translated by me from the typical gibberish these programs often create): Continue reading →

Animal Ethics: The East African Topi

/ Jack Marshall / 43 Comments

topi

The Topi is an African antelope. It’s hard to even google this animal, because Google keeps changing the word to “topic.”

Topi (that’s the singular and plural)  are strange. Their females are fecund only one day a year, which obviously makes that day a little frantic for the males. The males have to corner the females to mate, which is not always easy. Some of the males cheat by lying—there’s no other word for it.

All year long, male Topi warn the herd  of approaching predators by making a special, loud grunting sound that is immediately heard by all as “Watch out! A lion (or facsimile) is nearby!” When Topi hear the sound, they freeze and look  for the potential attacker.

Researchers have found that some male Topi win the mating sweepstakes by unfairly using the sound that 364 days a year means, no kidding, “We’re in trouble!” It has to be believed, for the safety and survival of the herd, and is. One day a year, however, on mating day, there are male Topi who falsely use the warning grunt to freeze shy females in their tracks, and while the girls are searching the area for something with sharp teeth, they get a big surprise from behind. These deceptive males sneak up on them, and it’s wham, bam, thank you, Miss Topi!

Topi males that use this subterfuge, researchers find, mate three times as often as those who play by the rules. Males who don’t cheat, and who don’t risk the effectiveness of a vital species defense device by playing “The Horny Topi Who Cried ‘Lion,” are less likely to pass along their genetic material.

The Topi are encouraging an unethical culture. It works for a few Topi now, but if each generation has more cheaters, will the Topi warning grunt become ineffective the rest of the year? I doubt that Topi have calendars.

If Topi were human beings, would the fake grunt tactic be unethical? Immoral?

Discuss.

__________________

Spark: Nature (PBS)

Observations On A Nauseating Development

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments
Ah, those were the good old days.

Ah, those were the good old days. Now we’re REALLY desperate.

Observation One: If you don’t see what’s nauseating about it, you are part of the problem. Here:

Top Obama administration  officials, including Denis McDonough, Obama’s chief of staff, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, FBI Director James Comey, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers, and White House Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith met in San Jose, California, with representatives of Twitter Inc., Apple Inc., Facebook Inc., and other Silicon Valley companies to seek ideas on how extremist content online can be identified and removed, as well as help creating alternative messages to counter terrorist recruitment methods using social media. You can be thoroughly nauseated by reading about the whole embarrassing fiasco here.

Other observations:

2. The incompetence this displays is staggering, and the apparent unawareness of the optics of incompetence is staggering:

“The gathering took place as Obama announced a new counterterrorism task force to thwart extremists and their use of social media after recent deadly attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California. The task force will organize federal efforts into several areas, including research and analysis, technical assistance, communications, and programs to help prevent radicalization, according to the Homeland Security Department.”

Translation: “We haven’t been taking this seriously at all and were caught with our pants down, big-time. Now we have to look like we’re doing something.” Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day (2): “The Strange Case Of The Unwanted Triplet”

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

infant

Beth’s  thoughtful Comment of the Day is only tangentially a comment on the Ethics Alarms post about the surrogate mother who balked at aborting one third of the triplets she was carrying. It was really a comment on a comment made to the author of the previous Comment of the Day on the same post, as J. Jonah Jameson described his own experience as a father who employed a surrogate. JJJ was asked why he chose the expensive and risky surrogate route rather than adoption. That question inspired Beth’s Comment of the Day.

Here it is; I’ll be back at the end.

“Why didn’t you adopt a child that needed a family?”

As a woman who battled infertility in the past, and have many friends who did the same, along with others who intentionally became single parents, used surrogates, or have or are trying to adopt a baby, let me say that this is the absolute worst question you can ever ask somebody going through this process. As you pointed out, you are not trying to be judgmental, but you should never ask this.

Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce And Unethical Column Of The Month: Univision Anchor Jorge Ramos

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments
Who is the traitor, Jorge?

Who is the traitor, Jorge?

There are some positions in some controversies that I really cannot manage to respect, because no matter how much I try to understand the points of view, they seem so obviously wrong and ethically indefensible. On “The View” yesterday, for example, alleged comedian Joy Behar, in discussing the character of Bill and Hillary Clinton, stated without joking that she would vote for a proven rapist for President, as long as he or she was a Democrat. This is the kind of position I’m talking about.

Yesterday, the Hall of Fame voting results were announced. Mike Piazza and Ken Griffey, Jr. were elected to the Hall by the baseball writers, and equally welcome to this ethicist-baseball fan was the fact that Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, both unrepentant steroid cheats, were not elected, and their still paltry vote totals suggest that they may never be. Yet several baseball pundits, reporting on the voting results, preceded this aspect of the news with “Unfortunately.”

I don’t understand that attitude toward cheating at all. I have written about as much about Barry Bonds as any ethics topic on Ethics, and  the case against him is air-tight, with the only defenses ever put forth being invalid rationalizations, easily rebutted. Nevertheless, otherwise intelligent people keep repeating them, hoping to outlast reason and reality by perseverance and repetition. (Sadly, this often works, as “77 cents on the dollar,” “Bush lied” and “Hands Up! Don’t Shoot!” tragically prove.) In the last 24 hours, I have heard Clemens and Bonds called “great players” so many times that my teeth have been ground down perceptibly. Cheaters are never great, as I explained in one of my favorite posts of 2015.

I was preparing to once again swat down the cultural poison being peddled by the Bonds and Clemens defenders when another of the issues that I believe has no respectable “other side” again raised its uglier than ugly head, so I changed course. That issue is illegal immigration, as in “immigration that occurs in direct violation of U.S. law, making it illegal.” Those who engage in illegal immigration are immigrants, and because their manner of immigration is illegal, they are illegal immigrants. Those who insist on calling them merely immigrants are lying; those who favor euphemisms like “undocumented workers” are engaging in intentional deceit. No, I have no respect for their rhetorical dishonesty–their smug and falsely sanctimonious rhetorical dishonesty—and it should not be tolerated by any U.S. citizen who wants transparent debate on a crucial national policy issue.

The ethics violator in the immediate case is serial offender Jorge Ramos, who uses his position as a broadcast journalist—unethically, since his duty is to report the news accurately, not to spout propaganda—to advocate  unrestricted immigration by Hispanics and Latinos into the United States. It is a logically, historically, demographically, economically, politically and legally irresponsible, outrageous position, but he managed to exceed previously established depths in promoting it by writing, in a column for Fusion, that GOP candidates Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are engaging in betrayal by “turning their backs on immigrants,” who, he says, just got here a little later than they did. Continue reading →