Around the World

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.

Oh Look, Pope Leo Presumes To Tell Us What To Do With A.I.! Ethics Observations, Part II

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

The summary of the Pope Leo’s open letter to “all people of good will” is at Part I, along with a link to the whole 42,000 word opus. News reports on the document can be read here, here and here.

1. The document appears to begin, as we would expect, from the basic socialist/Communist/progressive bias the Catholic Church has always displayed, which includes suspicion and contempt for capitalism. In the text, Pope Leo says that while “technology should not be considered, in itself, as a force antagonistic to humanity,” he added that “the pursuit of greater profits cannot justify choices that systematically sacrifice jobs.” The encyclical doesn’t resolve the obvious conflict that has always existed in that perspective: technology ideally improves the quality of life for humanity, saves resources and redistributes them elsewhere, and often reduces the costs of goods and services making them more affordable to all. One of my favorite inventors, Walter Hunt (inventor of the safety pin), invented the first practical sewing machine but didn’t patent or market it because he was certain that it would put seamstresses out of work. So Elias Howe patented the sewing machine instead. Were more jobs lost or created by the invention? I have no idea. This has been the inevitable sequence with new technology throughout human history: its ultimate impact is usually impossible to predict.

Ethics Lesson: Trying to develop rules and laws limiting the uses of emerging technology is stifling as well as futile, and foolish to boot.

2. A Pope using the Biblical fable of the Tower of Babel as his primary analogy to justify limiting the use of artificial intelligence is signature significance that makes me, for one, tend to roll my eyes at the entire document. That’s a story about the Old Testament God finding sinful the aspirations of mankind and sabotaging an effort by humans to cooperate in creating something ambitious and unprecedented. The encyclical demands acceptance of human limits, while science, capitalism and American individualism set no limits on human advancement. The Pope seems to be saying the equivalent of “If God had meant for us to fly, he would have given us wings.”

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OK, Maybe Bill Maher Is Sincere In His Criticism Of Democrats and Progressives…MAYBE, Part II: Why Bill’s “New Rule” Is Not As Ethical As He Thinks It Is

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

In Part I, I published Bill Maher’s surprising slap at Democrats and progressives for their unethical drift into anti-Semitism. It’s pretty good—for Bill. The 18 paragraphs are numbered so I don’t have to repeat them here, especially since WordPress nearly sent me to the woodchipper when I was trying to compose the first post. I’m sorry that you’ll have to jump back and forth, but so do I, to write this.

And away we go…

1. Everyone has a right to be anti-Semitic, just as everyone has a right to lie, or commit adultery. Advocating anti-Semitism, promoting it, and acting on it is still unethical. These ethical nuances, rights vs. law vs. ethics, are beyond Maher’s comprehension.

2. See? Bill immediately defaults to a Rationalization #22 defense of Israel. It isn’t the worst country! Wow. Talk about a back-handed compliment!

3. Not quite as bad as China, Russia, Sudan, Iran, Myanmar, Haiti, the Congo, and North Korea, eh? Way to make anti-Semites feel ashamed, Bill….

4. Ezra Klein is nothing to be proud of. He has been a leader of Axis bias for a decade.

5. A “They’re just as bad” (Rationalization #2) cheat by Maher, and he’s cherry-picking. Carlson has been excoriated by conservatives for his anti-Israel stance. He is not representative of the Right at all, and I, for one, never thought he was.

6. Bill managed not to mention the Times’ “dog rape” libel.

9. Maher likes the #22 rationalization so much he comes back to it. This is because Bill doesn’t get ethics. He also evokes “Everybody does it!” here, the hoariest rationalization of all. Jeez Bill…read a book.

10. The “new rule” is about Democratic Party anti-Semitism, but the candidate he writes the most about is an obscure anti-Semitic Republican. Huh.

11. Israel overwhelmingly has the “right-wingers” on its side, and it has the President of the United States on its side in particular. Maher never mentions President Trump at all. He’s only willing to infuriate his audience so much, apparently.

12. Trying to continue his false equivalence argument regarding anti-Semitism on”both sides,” Maher pairs two typical leftist academics with…Candace Owens? She is persona non grata among conservatives, a true embarrassment, and she is the opposite of an academic, as she is illiterate.

13. Again with the rogue Republican joke in a statement about Leftist anti-Semitism, and again, Bill is cherry-picking. There is a reason that Margery Taylor Greene isn’t in Congress any more. Representing her idiocy as mainstream Republicanism is despicable. Rep. Fine’s sharp quip after one of Mayor Mamdani’s Muslim minions derided dogs was, in my opinion, undiplomatic but defensible. No dogs in the U.S. have engaged in any mass shootings or terrorism.

14-18. Bill finishes very strong, almost making up for his rationalizations and weasel words on the way to his conclusion

So NOW the Climate Change-Hyping “Experts” Admit That Their Fear-Mongering Models Were Garbage!

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment
GUEST POST BY RYAN HARKINS

[From your host: I know the headline and graphic is my style and not Ryan’s. The valuable commentary below came out of a thread on the last Open Forum. I decided that it was worthy of a stand-alone guest post, especially since I should have written pretty much the same post when this news was first reported. Also, with this post I am officially Christening “The Climate Change Hysteria Ethics Train Wreck.” I should have done it years ago. JM]

I’m seeing some news that the IPCC (the International Panel on Climate Change) has rejected the RCP8.5 model as pretty much an impossible scenario. What is significant about this is how much research and how many policies were based on this scenario. With the IPCC actually stating that RCP8.5 is simply not plausible, the foundation for so much of the climate change hysteria has been ripped away.

To provide a little more detail, RCP8.5 is one of thousands of different models (computer simulations) trying to predict the impact of human activity on climate change up to the year 2100. These models try to take into account factors like human population growth, adoption or rolling back of climate policies, differing degrees of climate forcing due to carbon dioxide (because the science is definitely NOT settled on how much forcing CO2 actually contributes), and a host of other factors. RCP8.5 has always been one of the most extreme models, predicting an increase of 8.5 W/m^2 by 2100. There are scores of other models that are far more modest in their projections, and certainly observed data has favored models that project something closer to 3.4 W/m^2, though even those are diverging from observed data as time goes on.

The upshot, though, is the sheer scope of how much of the world’s climate policies are based on RCP8.5. From this article, we have

“Why this matters: these scenarios live in policy. The now-implausible upper-end scenarios — RCP8.5, SSP5-8.5, and SSP3-7.0 — are not just academic constructs used in esoteric research. They are embedded in the policies and regulations of most of the world’s largest economies, found across the world’s most important multilateral institutions, and used in the climate stress tests that govern hundreds of billions of dollars in bank capital. National climate impact assessments in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Australia, Japan, and the Netherlands all use RCP8.5 or SSP5-8.5 as a reference scenario. The Network for Greening the Financial System framework, used by more than 140 central banks, has utilized a “Hot House World” scenario calibrated to RCP8.5 physical risk into the bank stress tests run by the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, the Banque de France, and the US Federal Reserve. The World Bank’s Climate Change Knowledge Portal, which provides the climate diagnostics that feed into the Country Climate and Development Reports for more than 100 client countries, defaults to SSP5-8.5 and SSP3-7.0.”

We have trillions of dollars worldwide tied into climate policies. Europe is practically destroying itself trying to achieve Net Zero targets. Industries are dying, people are facing energy insecurity, prices are skyrocketing, and the entire continent is growing in unrest over the devastation to livelihoods. All this comes from countries making policies based on a model that people have warned for years is unrealistic. But the good news is at least with the IPCC ruling the scenario implausible, there is no defense for anyone to keep using those high-end scenarios to craft policy.

Sadly, I’ll bet few policies are actually updated to reflect this ruling.