Around the World

Here’s a New Way For a Public School Teacher to Be Unethical!

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Mario Perron, a middle school teacher at Westwood Junior High School in Saint-Lazare, Canada, has apparently been secretly selling his students’ art projects on the web for his own profit. A pupil stumbled across the teacher’s website with listings for drawings created by the student and fellow classmates in class, and reported the discovery to the school, according to CTV News. The usual investigation is ongoing, but how else would class art projects end up on line being sold for as much as $100? Here, for example, are some of the student drawings being sold on mugs…

Wow. People will buy anything online. The drawings also are being offered on T-shirts and phone cases.

The father of the student who made the discovery told reporters, “I’m extremely disgusted with [the teacher]. It’s extremely, you know, it’s unbelievable…Is this teacher asking for certain types of projects to be done to be able to sell them? Is he asking for these types of portraits to be done so it meets the market?…I’m not impressed with the school, or the school board.”

Perron’s LinkedIn profile says he has been a full-time teacher at Westwood Junior since September 2019 His profile also promotes his personal website, 1-mario-perron.pixels.com, which is where he offered his students’ artwork for sale without their permission or knowledge.

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Pointer: JutGory

From the “Rules Are Rules” Files: The Matchstick Eiffel Tower

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

47-year-old Richard Plaud of France spent the past eight years assembling a model of the Eiffel Tower out of matchsticks in order to become the Guinness Book of Records record-holder in that cherished category, “World’s Tallest Eiffel Tower Model Made Out of Matchsticks.”

Aside: How many parts of that sentence justify a “What? For God’s sake, why, and who cares?” Why is there a published record for matchstick models of anything? Does the Guinness Book of Records include records for matchstick Chrysler Buildings, Pentagons, Statues of Liberty, Golden Gate Bridges? Big Ben, the London Eye? What’s special about the Eiffel Tower? Why should holding an obscure record in a book few people read or care about matter to anyone except pathetic losers desperate to give meaning to their empty lives? How shallow must a man be to devote eight years to assembling something with no utility whatsoever other than to win him mention in that silly tome?

Back to poor Richard: after he completed his project, he discovered that even though his model, at 7.19 meters, is easily taller than the current record holder for matchstick Eiffel Towers, the 6.53-meter-tall model built by Toufic Daher in 2009, his opus was ineligible for the honor. Why, you ask? 

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Stop Making Me Defend Tucker Carlson!

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I’m reasonable sure I have made my ethical assessment of Tucker Carlson clear for years now: he’s an opportunist, he’s a demagogue, he’s ambitious and it is impossible to determine what he really believes. He’s also glib and articulate, and I could not care less what he advocates or opposes, since he makes such calculations based on ratings and their perceived usefulness in giving him fame and power.

However, lately Carlson is taking flack because he is in Russia, apparently preparing to interview Vladimir Putin. The criticism is across the partisan and ideological spectrum. The Left, predictably, detests Carlson and would criticize anything he did. But conservatives are attacking him too. Bill Kristol, the NeverTrump director of Defending Democracy Together, said sarcastically, “Perhaps we need a total and complete shutdown of Tucker Carlson re-entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” Bill Browder, the CEO of Hermitage Capital on CNN that Carlson is “either remarkably stupid or consciously evil.” “He’s not stupid,” replied CNN’s John Harwood. Adam Kinzinger, who along with Liz Cheney served as one of the only two Republicans on the House select committee that turned the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot into an extended “Get Trump!” kangaroo court, pronounced Carlson “a traitor”.

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Unethical Headline of the Week: The LA Times

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

“How throwing soup at the Mona Lisa can help fight climate change”

You can read this opinion piece if you want, but the headline accurately conveys all you need to know by itself, I hope. The author, an associate professor of environmental studies at USC (so you know the quality of critical thinking and ethical analysis they are teaching there), essentially is making an argument for terrorism, because sometimes it works.

“Objections to acts of climate activism such as the latest food fight at the Louvre are understandable but might miss the point. Protesters’ perceived madness is indeed method,” Shannon Gibson writes. And the method is attracting attention to a cause by disruptive, selfish and destructive acts having no relationship to the goals of the activists. In some respects, violent acts of terrorism are easier to rationalize: at least those seeking a Palestinian state are directing their “method” at those with some direct relationship to the entity the terrorist blame for their plight. Throwing tomato soup at Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” or the Mona Lisa has no such relevance.

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Nick Kristof’s Moral Preening Over Gaza

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof seems like a good man, a decent human being. He reminds me of many of the dedicated liberals I went to law school and college with, always gathering signatures to ban the bomb, end a war, fight pollution, cure cancer, save whales, get universal employment…you know the list. These are the people who tear up when they hear “Imagine.” They were classic liberals before the ethics rot of progressivism, and that’s Kristof too.

Today he issued a characteristic Kristof primal scream about the carnage in Gaza, and if there was ever a “Think of the children!” lament, this is it.

It is the fourth such column by Kristof since the Hamas attack, having earlier submitted “I’m Crying for All the Victims That Are Going to Suffer”, “We Are Overpaying the Price for a Sin We Didn’t Commit“, “We Must Not Kill Gazan Children to Try to Protect Israel’s Children.” The beating and bleeding heart of “What Can We Possibly Say to the Children of Gaza?” or, in another format, We Can’t Justify This Much Suffering, is in these sentences…

Over the years, I’ve covered many bloody wars and written scathingly about how governments in Russia, Sudan and Syria recklessly bombed civilians. This time, it’s different… as a taxpayer, I’m helping to pay for the bombs.

Gaza is also different from Syria and Ukraine, of course, in that Israel did not start this war. Instead, Israel was brutally attacked by Hamas in a rampage of murder, torture and rape. Any government would have struck back, and Hamas maximized the suffering of civilians by using them as human shields.

Yet military response is not a binary choice; it exists on a continuum. Israel, traumatized by the attack it suffered, elected to retaliate with 2,000-pound bombs, destroy entire neighborhoods and allow only a trickle of aid into the territory, which is now teetering on the brink of famine. The upshot is that this does not feel like a war on Hamas but rather a war on Gazans.

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Should the World “Stand By”UNRWA? Of Course Not…

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, is losing support and funding for a very good reason. Israel’s intelligence alleges that at least six UNRWA employees infiltrated Israel on October 7, including two who may have helped kidnap Israeli civilians to be taken as hostage. Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Britain’s TalkTV, “UNRWA is perforated with Hamas.”

Last week, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said 12 UNRWA employees were implicated in the Hamas attacks. Of those, “nine were immediately identified and terminated,” one is “confirmed dead,” and “the identity of the two others is being clarified.” In response at least 15 countries, including the United States, have announced a halt to payments to UNRWA, pending further investigations. Officials have expressed fears that UNRWA could run out of money, endangering its humanitarian efforts in Gaza.

Too bad. That consequence should have been considered before allowing terrorism supporting U.N. employees to work for the organization.

The New York Times published an opinion piece by the foreign minister of Norway, one of the nations holding fast to its funding commitments. Espen Barth Eide argues that “we should not collectively punish millions of people for the alleged deeds of a few.”

I may have to fashion that time-honored excuse into a rationalization for the list. We read and hear versions of that entreaty constantly: it is a call to avoid just consequences for unethically run, untrustworthy organizations, agencies, societies, cultures and businesses. The only rational response to that argument is “Sorry. The organization is at fault, not those who make a reasonable and rational decision in response to it.”

No one should give funds to any organization that has proved itself untrustworthy, and UNRWA has. Apologists for the agency keep talking about “alleged misconduct,” but the U.N. acted quickly in firing twelve of the accused Hamas agents in the organization, almost certainly because the allegations were true. UNRWA obviously didn’t properly oversee its activities or properly vet its employees. The agency has has the same leadership responsible for this inexcusable botch; there is no way at this point for nation donors to have confidence that their money won’t be re-channeled into fighting Israel or other illicit projects.

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The President’s Deceitful Executive Order

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

If I were maintaining a “lie database” on Joe Biden (like the Washington Post does, among others, on Donald Trump) this would go right on it. And yes, I have not read a single analysis on any source that explains the deceitful quality of the President’s latest executive order. Unlike several of the others, this one is constitutional. It is just completely misleading, and deliberately so.

Yesterday, Biden ordered financial and travel sanctions on Israeli settlers accused of violent attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. That explanation at the top of the New York Times story cleared up initial confusion on my part. “Biden issues executive order targeting Israeli settlers who attack Palestinians” was the headline at Axios, and similar headlines abound. Huh? Does Biden think that he, like Leonardo DiCaprio, is King of the World? What power does the President of the United States have over citizens of foreign nations who aren’t in the United States? The answer, for those of you praying that J Biden and the Democrats can save democracy from the previous President who abuses presidential power, is none. None. The executive order is grandstanding of the most cynical sort. Biden literally could issue similar fanciful orders “sanctioning” Parisians who annoy visiting Americans by being rude to them with as much effect.

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UPenn’s Anti-Semitic Lecturer

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

That cartoon above, showing apparent Zionists (as in “Jews”) sipping Gazan blood like wine, is probably the most outrageous of political cartoonist Dwayne Booth’s works…I don’t know, maybe this one is..

All a matter of taste, I guess. The ethics question is, now what, if anything?

Booth is a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School of Communication having joined the school as an adjunct faculty member in 2015. Political cartooning is certainly a valid courss of study. He currently teaches two classes, but since Hamas’s October 7 terror attack, his off-campus cartooning has become especially controversial.

Booth publishes political cartoons under the pen name “Mr. Fish.” One of his classes teaches students the political cartooning art by exploring “the purpose and significance of image-based communication as an unparalleled propagator of both noble and nefarious ideas,” according to Penn’s website. “Work presented will be chosen for its unique ability to demonstrate the inflammatory effect of weaponized visual jokes, uncensored commentary, and critical thinking on a society so often perplexed by artistic free expression and radicalized creative candor.”

You can see more of Booth’s anti-Israel cartoons here. As far as I can determine, there is not sufficient basis for disciplining him or ending his association with the school. Political cartooning, though I personally view it as a crude, over-rated and deceitful form of editorial, is by nature extreme in device and approach. Booth’s own political opinions and obvious anger at Israel that he expresses as “Mr. Fish” or on social media are not relevant to his value teaching the political cartooning craft, and would seem to be squarely within the margins of both academic freedom and the first Amendment, provided that his commentary in class and on campus are not directed at Jewish students.

However, if a school, like the University of Pennsylvania, decided that, at a time when there are unusual tensions around the Gaza-Israel conflict its lecturer should cool his public fervor or consider another teaching position elsewhere, that would be a fully ethically defensible position. He’s right at the line now.

He might even have crossed it.

The Russian Figure Skating Olympics Scandal Finally Is Resolved After Everyone Stopped Paying Attention.

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I’m thinking about establishing an organizational version of The Julie Principle. When an entity, company, organization or government has shown that its culture is sufficiently corrupt and unlikely to change for the better, maybe it’s a waste of time and ethical analysis to keep complaining about the inevitable misconduct. “Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly.” Either just give up on trusting that entity, company, organization or government, or resolve to live with its flaws. Like Hollywood. The National Football League. Or, as in this ridiculous episode, the Olympics and Russia.

Kamila Valieva, the teenage Russian figure skating star, was banned from competition for four years yesterday by a three-member arbitration panel at the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport. The reason was her positive doping test that messed up the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics beyond all reason, confusing everyone and keeping more than a dozen other athletes from receiving their medals.

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How Do You Solve A Problem Like Rep. Omar?

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I was actually going to begin this post with a parody of the cheery song from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “The Sound of Music,” “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?,” but decided against it for two reasons. First, no English words rhyme with “Omar,” so you’re stuck with fake sort-of rhymes like “home are” and “sonar,” and second, this is too serious a problem to cover in a song parody.

Among Donald Trump’s myriad offensive, stupid and gratuitously inflammatory comments while President was when he said in 2019 that the members of “the Squad” should “go back to where they came from.” This was particularly inept since most of that group of radical, socialist, anti-Semitic and or dumb-as-bricks Democrats are “from” the good ol’ USA, but in the case of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) at least, Trump may have had a valid point that he, as usual, chose the worst possible way to express.

In 2019, Omar declared as part of the anti-Semitic theme much of the Squad vocally embraces, “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says that it is OK for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country.” Her message was that a lot of U.S. officials—you know, Jews— allowed a conflicting fealty to Israel to blunt their duty to pursue what is in the best interest of the United States. But yesterday, a video surfaced on Twitter/X showing Omar rousing a Somali-American crowd in her district by saying in part,

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