Around the World

Why Is The Washington Post Publishing All These “Poor Gaza!” Hamas Propaganda Stories?

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

“Gaza reports more than 11,100 killed. That’s one out of every 200 people,” screamed a Washington Post headline yesterday. Today, the featured propaganda piece is “In Gaza, the dead go uncounted as medical infrastructure disintegrates.”

It is obvious that the Post has thrown in with the war crimes/genocide/ innocent civilians/humanitarian crisis that Hamas was counting on to make Israel the villain in an episode where reality is exactly the opposite, and the ethics are remarkably clear. The lessons, which Israel is now determined to teach Hamas, its sadly brain-washed Palestinian supporters, and others is this: Don’t start wars. If you do, you have no standing to complain about what happens to you. When you find that what is happening is unsustainable and intolerable, surrender, and accept the consequences of your actions.

Another lesson that the “Imagine” crowd, the best of the propagandists, and the anti-Semitic crowd, the worst of them also need to understand is that objective in any war is, or should be, to end it as quickly as possible. Regardless of what some toothless international body might claim, the way one ends wars quickly is to make them as costly and painful as possible as quickly as possible.

That’s what Israel is doing. Good.

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Ethics Pop Quiz: Why Does Amazon Sell “From The River To Te Sea” Merchandise But Not Anything Featuring A Confederate Flag??

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

I find this perplexing, and perhaps attention should be paid. Amazon sells several versions of that attractive shirt above, but stopped making anything with a Confederate flag available in 2015. The impetus for this move was, as you might recall, Dylann Roof, a lone, racist wacko, shooting and killing nine African-Americans in a Charleston, South Carolina church. Yet more than a month after approximately 1,200 Jewish civilians were murdered by Hamas in a carefully organized surprise terror attack, merchandise with the Palestinian slogan calling for Israel’s eradication, in accordance with the Hamas charter, is still selling briskly on Amazon to U.S. customers. The U.S. Congress just censured its racist, anti-Semitic “Squad” member Rashida Tlaib for endorsing the very same slogan. The American Jewish Committee regards the phrase as antisemitic.  The White House finally condemned the use of the “inspirational phrase,” as Tlaib called it. Amazon claims to have a policy prohibiting “the sale of products that promote, incite, or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual, or religious intolerance” and”prohibits or promote organizations with such views, as well as listings that graphically portray violence or victims of violence.”

How do you reconcile the contradictory treatment of the Confederate flag, which is a far more ambiguous symbol with important significance in American history, and an infamous anti-Israel rallying cry?

Some possible answers are offered below:

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Unethical Self-Parody Of The Year: France

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Confirming the fairness of every joke since World War II about the French being “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” (Groundskeeper Willy’s memorable description on”The Simpsons” ), French President Emanuel Macron said in a BBC interview that there is “no justification” for Israel’s bombing campaign and ground offensive against Gaza and Hamas, although, as Old Blues Once sang so well about love and marriage, “you can’t bomb one without the other.”

“There is no reason for that and no legitimacy. So we do urge Israel to stop,” Macron said, embracing the suddenly popular “proportional response theory” of war now that Jews defending their nation are involved. You can’t really blame him, I guess, as France saw no reason to keep fighting the Nazis when they attacked his country, either.

Macron added to his fatuous surrender monkey outburst by asserting “all civilians having nothing to do with terrorists.” Even when those civilians knowingly elect those terrorist to run their country!

Is France a great country, or what?

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Political Cartoon Ethics: The Washington Post Apologizes For Being Mean To Terrorists

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Long-time readers here know that I believe political cartooning has outlived its usefulness, and now, not all the time but most of the time, such cartoons on editorial pages of newspapers are just excuses to make misleading generalizations with which the cartoonist, who typically has the political sophistication and depth of comprehension of your average rioter, grossly exaggerates one crude point, usually using gross stereotypes, in a manner that could only be amusing to a partisan. Political cartoonists virtually always rely on reader bias as their sharpest hook.

The cartoon above, by Las Vegas Review and Journal editorial cartoonist Michael Ramirez, was published in the Washington Post. I was shocked to see an editorial cartoon that a current day Republican would applaud. The Post’s grotesquely unfair, hyper-partisan (guess which party) political cartoons have been a regular feature of the paper since I was a child. For decades, Democrat ideologue Herb Block was regarded as brilliant by using such lazy cliches as portraying conservatives as cavemen and “big business” as a fat white guys puffing on cigars. Naturally, Block regularly won Pulitzer Prizes for this juvenile junk, which was usually about as objectively funny as a “Kick Me!” sign, like this witty example…

Later, a succession of Block’s successors at the Post were equally restrained; here’s how Tom Toles portrayed the President of the United States:

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On Biases And The Vicissitudes Of Life…

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

This day got derailed early and never got back on track, so this post is as scattered as I am.

1. I just voted. Though only two contests were on the ballot here in Alexandria, and I know nothing about any of the candidates, I voted for an Independent and a Republican solely because I am convinced that the Democratic Party is now completely untrustworthy, and that anyone running under its banner does so despite undeniable evidence that he or she is consorting with villains. That said, the spectacle of democracy in action always chokes me up a little. Does that make me a sap?

2. Reader Sarah was kind enough to inform me that I used the word “censorious” incorrectly in the previous post. Indeed I had: inspired by First Amendment blogger Ken White, who coined the phrase “censorious asshat” when discussing those who sued or otherwise bullied those who posted unpopular opinions on the web, I always assumed that the word described “someone with a fondness for censorship.” It doesn’t.

3. Life competence lesson: keep engaging, you may learn something. Charmed by a CNN headline that I’m certain will make this coming weekend’s compendium by Power Line, I posted “An Arizona golf course is under attack from a squadron of pig-like creatures” on Facebook. I found the use of “squadron” especially alarming, and even listed the collective nouns for pigs, swine, hogs, boars and feral pigs to show that “squadron” wasn’t among them. But Facebook Friend, old theater collaborator and occasional Ethics Alarms participant Greg Wiggins did his due diligence research, and informed me that the collective noun for this particular pig-like creature, the Javelina, is indeed “squadron.”

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Can You Guess Who “The Great Stupid,” The DEI Ethics Train Wreck And The Hamas-Israel Ethics Train Wreck Are Ganging Up On In Germany?

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

Give up?

Please sign in, Mystery Victim!

Yes, it’s come to this! In the town of Tangerhütte, about 2 hours east of Berlin, Germany, a daycare center that for decades has been named in honor of the most famous child murdered during the Holocaust in World War II, is removing Anne’s name. The Anne Frank Daycare Center will become the “World Explorers Daycare Center” because…wait for it!…the name makes some “migrant” parents feel “uncomfortable.” It isn’t welcoming enough, or something, now that Israel is at war with Gaza.

The daycare center’s director explains that the change from the center’s current name is now troubling “parents with migrant backgrounds” who complained that they found it “challenging” to explain Anne’s story to their children. Of course, the whole idea behind such honors is that succeeding generations remember important stories, like we remember the complex tragedy of the Civil War with statues of its many flawed participants…wait. Oops! Never mind.

City officials now insist the renaming is necessary “to celebrate the diversity” of the children attending the daycare center, as explained by Andreas Brohm, the mayor. Because of the large number of Hamas supporters in the town, Anne Frank no longer aligns with the “new focus on diversity,” Brohm said. Despite Germany’s strong support for Israel as part of its penance for launching the Holocaust under He Who Must Not Be Named, respecting diversity—Kill the Jews/ Don’t kill the Jews: Diversity! Equity! Inclusion!—elevates the feelings of many parents about the current name above “the global political situation.”

Writing at “Victory Girls,” Deanna Fisher muses,

[I]f her name comes off the daycare, where does it stop? How many schools all over the world carry her name? A lot. And how quickly will that change if the local population decides that having a school named after Anne Frank sends the “wrong” message about “diversity, equity, and inclusion”? Where does this end? Given the amount of ugly anti-Semitism we have seen this weekend, and what is promised to come, I am not sure where it ends. And I’m not sure that the West has the backbone to stop it, either.

Oh, I’m absolutely sure it doesn’t! After all, a life-time petty hood died of a drug overdose under the knee of a Minnesota cop three years ago, so of course Anne Frank’s name has to go. Come on! It makes perfect sense!

The Great Stupid is all-powerful, and its reach is infinite…

Saturday Ethics Trick-Or Treat Leftovers, 11/4/2023

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

November 4 is lively ethics date in addition to the aforementioned robbery of King Tut’s tomb. There have been two notable assassinations on this date that have current news resonance: Then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, in 1995, and in 1928, gambler Arnold Rothstein, who was instrumental in fixing the 1919 World Series. (If the Arizona Diamondbacks has won the World Series just completed, I would have suspected a fix, especially with baseball sullying itself with a full embrace of online gambling last season.) Just to show how fast cultural and ethical winds can shift, it was on this date in 2008 that Proposition 8 was passed in California, banning same-sex marriage. Today I wouldn’t be surprised to see Gavin Newsome sign a bill making it a felony to say anything negative about same-sex marriages. The Iran hostage crisis began in 1979: yes, it’s true, Democrats: once the Iranians were the bad guys. In 1956, the USSR under Khrushchev sent in the tanks and crushed the flickering of democracy in Hungary. The late Diane Feinstein was elected California Senator for the first time, highlighting the Democrats’ incredibly cynical “Year of the Woman,” during which misogynist and serial sexual harasser Bill Clinton was held up by the party as a paragon of virtue. And in 2008, of course, Barack Obama was elected, proving that the United States was not the racist nation his administration and its supporters helped convince black citizens that it was over the next eight years.

Boy, this really has been a terrible date for ethics.

Let’s hope today doesn’t add to the list…

1. Could this be it? Is this the tipping point? In Dighton, Mass, (This Massachusetts boy never heard of it!), a female high school field hockey player was badly injured and sent to the hospital after a fierce shot by “a male player” hit her in the face. Whether the player on the other team “identified” as female or was just a male playing a female sport because Massachusetts’ way to avoid controversies is to just eliminate gender separations in all sports is unclear so far. It shouldn’t make any difference.

In the ridiculously woke Bay State, the incident is being treated like a live hand-grenade, but it is still setting off ethics alarms. Dighton-Rehoboth Superintendent Bill Runey said in a letter to families that “[w]hile I understand that the MIAA has guidelines in place for co-ed participation under section 43 of their handbook, this incident dramatically magnifies the concerns of many about player safety,” Runey wrote. Gee, ya think?

2. See? Baseball makes you smart! (As opposed to football, which gives you dementia…) The latest issue of the Baseball Research Journal (the fruit of a generous gift from my friend Bob Kenney) had a feature article on the burning topic of why Ty Cobb was named “Tyrus.” My first reaction was, “Wow, they are really digging deep for topics at SABR,” but, as is often the case, research on a seemingly trivial topic yielded wide-ranging and valuable information. Cobb believed that his first name was original and the invention of his father, a history professor, whom the baseball great thought bestowed on his son the name to honor the city of Tyre’s courageous resistance to Alexander the Great, who eventually destroyed it. This, in turn, would indicate that all subsequent Tyruses were named after Ty Cobb. In the course of debunking that story, historian William H. Cobb discovered and reveals,

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The Beatles’ “Last Song”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The category is botched exit ethics.

As I strongly assumed would be the case, yesterday’s much-hyped release of “the last Beatles recording” gave to the eagerly waiting world one more wan, down-beat sigh of a zombie song by the late John Lennon from his Blue Period, electronically turned into a sub-par Beatles number by adding contemporary contributions from Paul and Ringo, some instrumentation from the also deceased George Harrison, and sound engineering by “Fifth Beatle” George Martin’s son. Thus we have a trilogy of such things, with “Now and Then” being added to the similarly mediocre and lugubrious “Free as a Bird” and “True Love,” all of them home demos recorded by Lennon after the group dissolved and approved for Beatlizing by Yoko Ono.

One is compelled to ask, “Why?” Yoko doesn’t need the money; neither do the remaining ex-Beatles of George Harrison’s estate. The “last song” is going to be released on a commemorative 45 with “Love Me Do,” the group’s first hit. That’s nice. Two mediocre Beatles songs on one disc. This is akin to commemorating Shakespear by releasing “Titus Andronicus” and “Henry the VIII” as a set. This song, like the previous two, do nothing to enhance the reputations of Lennon or the group. If these were typical of the Beatles’ creative output, the band would be less fondly remembered than the Strawberry Alarm Clock (of “Incense and Peppermints” fame; in fact, I’d rather listen to that silly song than hear “Now and Then” again).

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Ethics Hero: Czech Defense Minister Jana Černochová

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

The United Nations General Assembly voted on a non-binding resolution calling for an immediate “humanitarian truce” in Gaza. 120 countries voted for the measure, with 45 abstaining. Only14 nations voted against it: Israel, the US, Austria, Croatia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Fiji, Guatemala, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay and Tonga. Eight EU members supported the cease-fire, including Belgium, Ireland, France, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia, and Spain.

The vote was not surprising, but disgraceful nonetheless. One might think that Belgium, France, Luxembourg, which suffered so at the hands of the Nazis, might have a greater appreciation for the need to take a strong stand against evil-doers, but no. The UK, disgustingly, abstained, but anti-Semitism is popular there.

Of course, a cease fire or truce simply means that Hamas and Iran advance the ball a little further up the field, with a touchdown meaning the eradication of Israel. Those 120 countries know it, too, or should, especially since the resolution didn’t even bother to condemn the October 7 Hamas attack on Israeli civilians, or to call for the release of the 230 hostages the Hamas took captive on that day.

“One must not stand silent in the face of a second Holocaust,” the Czech Defense Minister Jana Černochová said, calling on her country to withdraw from the United Nations in protest. “The Holocaust is back, and we must not be silent again.”

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Serious Question: Has Vice-President Harris Not Read The Bill of Rights, Or Does She Just Want The Government To Ignore It?

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

This would be an “Incompetent Elected Official” post, except a) we already know Kamala Harris is incompetent, and b) her penchant for talking nonsense, gibberish or idiocy long ago reached Julie Principle proportions. But other Democrats, notably Hillary Clinton, have appealed to ignorance, emotion and hysteria by doing what Harris did yesterday as part of the wholly predictable Democratic Party/progressive/mainstream media attack on gun rights after a mass shooting tragedy. This one, as you probably know already, was in Maine, and unusually deadly, so the gun-grabbing fanatics and the “Do something!” crazies were really licking their chops.

On stage with Australia’s Prime Minister at an event yesterday, Harris blathered, “Gun violence has terrorized and traumatized so many of our communities in this country. And let us be clear, it does not have to be this way, as our friends in Australia have demonstrated.”

As usual, Harris required a translator. It doesn’t have to be “this way” in Australia? Have our communities been terrified there? How has Australia demonstrated what is possible or desirable in the United States? It hasn’t, of course: it hasn’t even demonstrated that it is possible to eliminate mass shootings in Australia, where the National Firearms Agreement of 1996 made semiautomatic weapons and shotguns illegal and mandated the confiscation of close to 650,000 firearms.  The NFA requires Australians to wait 28 days before they purchase a gun to allow extensive background checks. Applicants must obtain a license and a permit, be over 18 years old, provide documentation that the weapon will be stored securely and complete firearms safety training. They must also provide a “justifiable reason” for owning the gun, and self-defense doesn’t qualify. A requirement less stringent than this was just struck down as unconstitutional in New York.

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