Around the World

On James Bond, The BFI’s Trigger Warnings, and “Poisoning the Well.”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

And now for something completely stupid…The British Film Institute, which screens classic films in its Southbank location in London and has the mission of preserving British cinema, has slapped a ridiculous trigger warning on the early James Bond movies, along with some others from the same period. It reads,

“Please note that many of these films contain language, images or other content that reflect views prevalent in its time, but will cause offence today (as they did then). The titles are included here for historical, cultural or aesthetic reasons and these views are in no way endorsed by the BFI or its partners.“

The “Look out! You’re going to be offended if you are right-thinking Brit!” is offensive itself for many reasons, as that description might suggest. The BFI is for adults, not children; there’s no need to warn grown-ups about characters smoking, naughty bits, violence and the terminology of the time. The date should be enough: “Oh, right, this film is six decades old! Things were different then!” The BFI is treating viewers like idiots, as well as imposing its woke, nanny sensibilities on others.

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Scary and Unethical Reactions to the Hamas-Israel War on the Left and Right.

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

I don’t want to end the year on a down note, I really don’t, but…

The ugly head of anti-Semitism or, giving some of the reaction a more charitable spin, the callousness and lack of sufficient concern for the fate of Israel has been a revelation for me. I’ve never understood anti-Semitism, and being forced to acknowledge that this contagion that once was at the heart of the evil plunging the world into a catastrophic conflict is still thriving came as a shock this year. Over at Simple Justice, liberal (but not progressive) criminal defense attorney Scott Greenfield neatly assesses the significance of the anti-Jew and anti-Israel sentiments erupting on college campuses, in the black community, in the Democratic Party and other places where the woke run free. He writes in part (today),

“….the Hamas terrorist attack of October 7th and its ensuing war in Gaza has bubbled up the fundamental differences between a liberal democratic nation and the swell of simplistic authoritarianism of the young.

Others in my position have adopted the woke view of the world, some because they needed the validation that comes from espousing the popular views of progressives, and others because they were never quite as serious as I thought. Or hoped. But how many more marches by  the young and unduly passionate who justify terrorism and suddenly find rape and murder acceptable when done by those their tribe tells them to favor?

Will 2024 be an inflection point, where people finally come to grips with the fact that they’ve become the enemy they righteously believed they were fighting? At first, it seems there might be an epiphany, a realization that dividing the world into the oppressed and oppressors was an infantile way to deal with the many problems facing society. But since then, it’s become apparent that the young and unduly passionate have fallen back into their tribal ways, enjoying the fresh air of sowing misery on blocked highways for an irrational and destructive cause.

I never would have believed in my old man head that we would be back to open Jew hatred again. Yet here we are, and tens of thousands of people who would claim the mantle of progress fully embrace the end of Jews. Never in its wildest dreams would Hamas have believed that raping and beheading Jews would turn them into progressive darlings, but here we are.

Will this cause young progressives to recognize the error of their ideology? Will they realize that their sudden existential concern for Palestinians when they cared nothing about them until it meant they could openly hate Jews, proves that they are just another flavor of haters, of authoritarians, of racists?”

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CNN’s Brianna Kellar and the News Media’s “Think of the Children!” Refrain in Support of Hamas

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Yes, it’s “Imagine” time again. Mainstream media talking heads and hacks have apparently been playing the John Lennon’s sweet and fatuous ode to nonsense over earbuds as they sleep, judging from the angle they repeatedly return to as they push anti-Israel propaganda on the public.

CNN’s Breanna Keilar had a typical “Think if the children!” exchange with Israeli spokeswoman Tal Heinrich yesterday.

Keilar (talking over and interrupting her guest as she Heinrich expressed regret that children in Gaza were being placed in harm’s way): “Tal, when you see those pictures coming out of Gaza, do you see why some people don’t have hope looking at those pictures?”

Heinrich: “Well, we are in the middle of a war that Israel did not start, and did not want.”

Keilar: “It is prosecuting it forcefully, and you see the pictures here.”

Heinrich: “When Hamas started this war — hope and peace and a better future for the region — that is the greatest enemy of terrorists. Once we eliminate these terrorists, we eliminate the rule. We hope that there will be other voices, pragmatic ones that want to work with us towards peace. This is what we want. We want to live in this region peacefully. That’s what Israelis have always wanted. But first, Hamas must be gone, and then we hope that the Palestinian society will de-radicalize. We can’t have — you know, what our troops are finding right now, on the ground, in certain neighborhoods in Gaza, pictures of children, women with guns, Hamas uniform tailored for children. And Hamas terrorists that we have arrested—”

Keilar (interrupting): “Does that make the children justifiable enemies to you? Is that what you’re saying? Does that make all of the children justifiable enemies to you? I mean, you’re raising the specter of them being used in military uniform.”

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Confronting My Biases, Episode 5: The Speed Hump Weenies

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

For this continuing series examining the biases that make me stupid (or not), on the one month anniversary of the last installment, I want to take up the matter of drivers who slow to a crawl or even stop their vehicles entirely when they encounter a “speed hump” in the road.

This past week two such drivers almost caused my car to run into them. In recent years Northern Virginia has gone speed hump mad, putting the things virtually everywhere that isn’t a highway or a main thoroughfare. I don’t mind them, however, nearly as much as I mind the way some drivers seem to regard them as explosive devices. You can safely drive over a speed hump at a moderate velocity; your transmission or axles aren’t going to fall off if your car doesn’t slow down into single digits.

I confess: I regard drivers who freak out at speed humps as emblematic of creeping weenie-ism in the nation. I imagine such drivers as still wearing masks alone in their cars, spending nights shivering in terror over the certain doom that the world faces if we don’t start living like prehistoric cave dwellers, fearing to allow their kids to walk unaccompanied a few blocks home from school, and who want the U.S. to minimize the deployment of its military to tasks involving expanding LGBTQ rights and advancing the cause of diversity, equity and inclusion. I envision them applauding when some anti-gun fanatic shouts that it would be worth eliminating the Second Amendment “if it saved one life” and crippling the First so no feelings are ever hurt by unwelcome opinions.

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Boxing Day Ethics Quiz: The Gaza Mayor’s Lament

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

The conservative news media and punditry sites are exploding with criticism of the New York Times for publishing the op-ed on December 24 written by Yahya Sarraj, mayor of Gaza City. Sarraj was appointed mayor by Hamas, the terrorist organization that has ruled Gaza for more than a decade. The piece is self-evident proaganda that seeks to create outrage and sympathy for Gaza in the wake of Israel’s retaliation for the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on October 7 and its invasion of the Gaza Strip.

The Hamas-backed mayor writes in part…

“The Israelis have also pulverized something else: Gaza City’s cultural riches and municipal institutions. The unrelenting destruction of Gaza — its iconic symbols, its beautiful seafront, its libraries and archives and whatever economic prosperity it had — has broken my heart….Why did the Israeli tanks destroy so many trees, electricity poles, cars and water mains? Why would Israel hit a U.N. school? The obliteration of our way of life in Gaza is indescribable. I still feel I am in a nightmare because I can’t imagine how any sane person could engage in such a horrific campaign of destruction and death….The Gaza Zoo has been destroyed with many of its animals killed or starved to death, including wolves, hyenas, birds and rare foxes. Other casualties include the city’s main public library, the Children’s Happiness Center, the municipal building and its archive, and the seventh-century Great Omari Mosque. Israeli forces have also damaged or destroyed streets, squares, mosques, churches and parks.”

The clear and obvious answer to “why?” would seem to be “Because your government started a war, and this is what happens to places that start wars by massacring civilians, raping women, beheading babies and taking hostages.”

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On “The Crown,” National Anthems, Tradition, And That Guy Making A Sex Video In The Capitol

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Perhaps I am the only one who immediately thought of Aidan Maese-Czeropki when I read this Brit’s complaints about “God Save the King,” but that’s the way my mind works.

Apparently the University of Bristol has dropped the UK national anthem from its graduation ceremony, and that decision has roiled the traditionalists in Britain. “University bosses have been accused of hating British culture and pandering to wokes,” one paper reported. The deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden, posted on X: “If Bristol University are too ashamed of their British heritage, presumably they no longer want to be subsidised by [the] British taxpayer?” Education Secretary Gillian Keegan said that “universities should stand up for our British values and stop giving in to woke ideology.” But Guardian lifestyle columnist Tim Dowling took the predictable progressive line: all that traditional stuff is behind the times, stuffy and boring. “God Save the King is not a good song. It plods. It goes nowhere,” he writes. “The first three lines end with the same word, as if no one could be bothered to come up with a rhyme for king. Obviously this made things easy the first time they had to change it to queen, but there’s no historical evidence that anyone was thinking that far ahead.”

Wouldn’t it be great if the British national anthem were something flashy and fun like “Don’t Stop Me Now” by Queen? (That’s my suggestion, not Tim’s.) No, it wouldn’t be great; Dowling doesn’t get it, just as so many people don’t get it, just as Aiden the Sex Machine doesn’t get it, just as those who complain about our national anthem don’t get it.

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Now Here’s A Scary Poll Result…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Geena is right.

A survey conducted this week by Harvard-Harris polling found that 51% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 believe the answer to the Israel-Palestinian conflict is for “Israel to be ended and given to Hamas and the Palestinians.” The stark contrast between our rising generation and the rest of the American population is truly disturbing. As you can see..

…outside of the demographic that has been indoctrinated into an anti-American, victim-obsessed, extreme progressive ideology by exposure to our education system and social media, the U.S. public is overwhelmingly supportive of Israel and understands that Hamas represents terrorism and genocide. “These individuals siding with evil over democracy should be a wake-up call,” Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) said, reacting to the poll. “Ideological rot among young Americans, driven by woke values and victim culture, has gotten so bad they’ve convinced themselves to sympathize with actual terrorists who hate America.”

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Unethical Quote Of The Month: Yes, Donald Trump Of Course…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“They’re poisoning the blood of our country, that’s what they’ve done. They’ve poisoned mental institutions and prisons all over the world. Not just in South America, not just the three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world they’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia…all over the world they’re pouring in.”

–—Presumptive GOP Presidential nominee Donald Trump during a rally in Durham, NH.

To its credit, C-Span introduced the clip of Trump blathering by noting he was talking about illegal immigrants, and I’m sure he was. However he never said “illegal immigrants” or anything similar. He just gave a number that could be illegal immigrants or just immigrants. “When they let 15, 16 million people into the country…we’ve got a lot of work to do,” he began. Wait, we “let” legal immigrants into the country: is Trump complaining about them?

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Look! Another Racial Casting Controversy!

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I love this one: it involves one of my favorite actors and one of my favorite historical figures.

Denzel Washington has lapped Sydney Poitier as the most successful and, in my view, most versatile and best black Hollywood star in film history, so one would think his casting to portray any historical figure would be seen as a boon to that figure’s fans. In this case, you would be wrong. Denzel is playing the Carthaginian general Hannibal in a Netflix historical epic, and Le Monde reports that in Tunisia, Hannibal’s old stomping ground, Hannibal’s admirers are furious. The casting has even been debated in the Tunisian parliament. Tunisian MP Yassine Mami railed about “the risk of falsification of history” while calling on members to join him in “defending Tunisian identity”.

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A Boy Who Identifies As A Girl Won An Irish Dancing Competition…Now What?

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I was thinking of making this an ethics quiz, but I couldn’t decide what to ask.

The Daily Signal reports—an exclusive!—that a teenage boy who identifies as a girl is heading to the Irish Dancing World Championships after placing first in the U14 2023 Southern Region Oireachtas competitions. The conservative website tells us that the winner competed as a boy and placed 11th in the world in the Coimisiún Le Rincí Gaelacha (CLRG) World Championships just eight months ago, in April 2023. (These kids just grow up and change sex so darn fast these days!). In the meantime, a “non-binary” contestant won another Irish dancing competition in August.

Irish dancing competitions are typically divided by gender. The Daily Signal reports, “Parents of girls competing in Irish dance are frustrated and outraged, saying that they cannot understand why a boy with physical advantages is allowed to dance against their daughters.” Huh? I would think a male would have only physical disadvantages in competing against girls in a dancing competition, just as a male dancer would be at a disadvantage trying to win the part of the Sugarplum Fairy in “The Nutcracker.” I assume female Irish dancers are supposed to appear, well, feminine while wowing judges with their footwork. If not, why is the competition restricted to girls?

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