Quick Facebook Ban Update…

May 17, 2019May 17, 2019 / Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

Facebook continues to reject any links to Ethics Alarms posts, although one occasionally and randomly slips through apparently. I have never received any explanation for this, though some posts do get the “community standards” excuse. If Ethics Alarms violates “community standards,” it is only because the blog refuses to enable knee-jerk “resistance” plots and narratives, or engage in the Left’s mass denial that the mainstream media has become a propaganda organ and cannot be trusted.

Efforts to contact Facebook and acquire any information or response have been futile. The consequences of this action by Facebook are tangible. Posts before this action would be routinely shared on Facebook between 20 and thousands of times. It has hurt blog traffic, and conceivably my business, ProEthics, which benefits from my visibility.

Today I was made aware of the Trump Administration’s Tech Bias Sharing Tool, which is collecting accounts of censorship and other content-based abuse by social media and the large tech companies. I just posted the whole story, as only I can.

Let’s see if anything happens.

Ethics Alarms Flashback Post Of The Week: “Ethics Quiz: The Sensitive Cop’s Facebook Confession”

May 15, 2019 / Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

[A while ago I wrote that I might periodically re-post one of the more than 2000 Ethics Alarms essays that have appeared here since 2009. The criteria? Let’s see:

A post that I have completely forgotten about, and don’t remember even after I’ve read it again.
A post that may be interesting to consider in light of subsequent developments since it was written (in this case, social media posts triggering workplace discipline, and police-community relations)
A lively discussion in the comments.

I think this post, based on a find by now-retired Ethics Alarms super-scout Fred, qualifies on all counts. It’s from May of 2014.]

“If there was any time I despised wearing a police uniform, it was yesterday at the Capitol during the water rally. A girl I know who frequents the Capitol for environmental concerns looked at me and wanted me to participate with her in the event. I told her I have to remain unbiased while on duty at these events. She responded by saying, ‘You’re a person, aren’t you?’ That comment went straight through my heart!”

Thus did Douglas Day, a police officer at the West Virginia Capitol in Charleston, confess to Facebook friends his mixed emotions while doing his duty.

For this he was fired.

The day Day wrote his Facebook post, Capitol Police Lt. T.M. Johnson told him that the post “shows no respect to the department, the uniform or the law enforcement community which he represents.” About a week later, Sgt. A.E. Lanham Jr. wrote to Day that he “found the entire [Facebook] posting to be extremely offensive and shocking … This is just another episode of many incidents which show his bad attitude and lack of enthusiasm toward police work in general and toward our department in particular.”

Day was thunderstruck. “If they believed there was some sort of a violation I made, then why wasn’t it addressed? They never brought me in and never said anything to me,” Day said. “In 2½ years working there, I had no disciplinary action taken against me at any time. Nothing was ever written up and I received no reprimands.” So much for the “many incidents.” Continue reading →

I Guess I Shouldn’t Feel Badly About Facebook Banning Ethics Alarms…

May 14, 2019May 14, 2019 / Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

…since the social media giants are slowly but surely revealing their true nature as machines of speech and viewpoint censorship, and social control.

Today’s Big Brother avatar: Twitter.

Ray Blanchard, Ph.D., a respected psychologist and adjunct professor at the University of Toronto was blocked on Twitter for expressing his opinion informed by clinical experience. His articulately and civilly presented position was flagged for “hateful conduct.”

The professor served on the working group for gender dysphoria (the persistent condition of identifying with the gender opposite your biological sex) for the DSM V, which contains the official definitions that assist psychologists diagnose patient disorders. Over the weekend, he tweeted his professional conclusions on transgender identity.

My beliefs include the following 6 elements: (1) Transsexualism and milder forms of gender dysphoria are types of mental disorder, which may leave the individual with average or even above-average functioning in unrelated areas of life. (2) Sex change surgery is still the best treatment for carefully screened, adult patients, whose gender dysphoria has proven resistant to other forms of treatment. (3) Sex change surgery should not be considered for any patient until that patient has reached the age of 21 years and has lived for at least two years in the desired gender role. (4) Gender dysphoria is not a sexual orientation, but it is virtually always preceded or accompanied by an atypical sexual orientation – in males, either homosexuality (sexual arousal by members of one’s own biological sex) … or autogynephilia (sexual arousal at the thought or image of oneself as a female) (5) There are two main types of gender dysphoria in males, one associated with homosexuality and one associated with autogynephilia. Traditionally, the great bulk of female-to-male transsexuals has been homosexual in erotic object choice. (6) The sex of a postoperative transsexual should be analogous to a legal fiction. This legal fiction would apply to some things (e.g., sex designation on a driver’s license) but not to others (entering a sports competition as one’s adopted sex).

This clinical opinion by a qualified expert was reported by at least one, probably many, Twitter users who, like the growing number of progressives within the Leftward social movement, believe that their power and control of society will arrive more swiftly if dissent and contrary views are marginalized, suppressed, and branded as hate speech. Twitter swiftly complied. The professor was silenced. His position was a thought crime: it would not be permitted in the interests of “the greater good.”

Fortunately, Ray Blanchard is internationally known, and Twitter’s tactic shook some nests with pretty big hornets inside. Helen Joyce, an editor at The Economist, wrote,

“Ray Blanchard served on the gender dysphoria working group and chaired the paraphilia working group for DSM V,” Joyce tweeted. “He is a world expert in the field. Twitter has just suspended his account for a thread setting out his findings from A lifetime of research. Unreal.”

Jesse Singal, contributing writer at New York magazine, wrote,

“Gender dysphoria is in the DSM-5. Despite endless rumor-mongering and misinformation to the contrary, it *is* considered a mental disorder. Maybe it shouldn’t be! But it’s beyond insane to suspend someone for expressing an opinion which lines up with the DSM. I have less and less faith that, as a journalist who often writes about science, I will be able to continue using Twitter without getting punished for communicating scientifically accurate information.”

There were many more who condemned Twitter’s nakedly political act. Oops! I guess we were a bit aggressive there! Better retrench, or everyone will be on to us!

After 24 hours, Twitter restored the professor’s account, and said it had made “a mistake.” The mistake, I submit, was that it jumped the gun in the Left’s rush to install totalitarian speech suppression. We’re not quite there yet. Facebook can block Ethics Alarms, because Ethics Alarms lacks allies in high places. If the social media platforms just quietly, incrementally pinch-off dissenting voices that challenge the tactics, distortions and actions of those representing “the right side of history,” the frog will be boiled before anyone notices.

If Twitter and Facebook were serious about supporting free speech, they would suspend the accounts of users who abuse the reporting system, and use it to stifle opinions they disagree with.

__________________________________

Pointer and Source: Tyler O’Neil

DC’s “Ethics Subway Train Wreck,” A Tragedy In Six Acts

May 12, 2019May 13, 2019 / Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

…or, “A Streetcar Named Stupid”…

This is a Nation’s Capital, drama my friends…an ugly ethics mess, in

ACT I

Eating on a Metro train is a criminal violation in Washington, D.C., but the transit authority seems to think that enforcing laws is icky, or something, so Metro Transit Police Chief Ron Pavlik sent out an order on May 8, telling officers to “cease and desist from issuing criminal citations in the District of Columbia for fare evasion; eating; drinking; spitting, and playing musical instruments without headphones until further advised.”

Telling officers not to enforce laws is per se incompetent and irresponsible. If you want to repeal the law, fine. An unenforced law, however, is an invitation to chaos. If the directive to ignore it is secret, then the public that sees scofflaws unimpeded assumes that law enforcement isn’t doing its job. If the public knows that the law won’t be enforced as a policy, then it will begin engaging in the conduct the law was made to prevent.

This is idiotic.

ACT II

Local author Natasha Tynes saw a Metro employee eating on a train, and reported the woman to transit officials by tweeting a photo of the woman, in uniform, eating on the Red Line. She also tweeted that when she confronted the woman for breaking Metro rules, the woman replied, “Worry about yourself.” “When you’re on your morning commute & see @wmata employee in UNIFORM eating on the train,” Tynes tweeted. “I thought we were not allowed to eat on the train. This is unacceptable.”

She’s right. It’s unacceptable. Telling Metro officials that they should not ticket violators of the law does not mean that Metro employees are free to violate the law. This is a predictable result of Pavlik’s unethical order. Tynes, however, was engaging in responsible citizenship.

ACT III

In response to the tweet, the head of the MTA workers’ union stated that the employee had “done nothing wrong.”

This is ethics ignorance. There is a law against what the worker did, and the fact that violations (stupidly) weren’t being enforced doesn’t alter the wrongness of the conduct one iota. This is Ethics 101. Teach ethics in school!

Morons. Continue reading →

TGIF Ethics Celebration, 1/10/19: Plenty Of People Who Need Firing or Something Close…

May 10, 2019May 10, 2019 / Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

I don’t know why I’m celebrating a weekend: in a home business, there are no weekends…Maybe I’ll just celebrate the flowers that bloom in the Spring!

1. Poll: The firing of Mary Bubala. As you may know, the mayor of Baltimore got caught red-handed in a self-dealing scheme, tried to take a leave of absence instead of resigning (thus preserving her salary), and finally had to resign anyway. Discussing the events on the air on Baltimore TV channel WJZ, news anchor Bubala asked Loyola University Maryland Professor Karsonya Wise Whitehead,

“We’ve had three female, African-American mayors in a row.They were all passionate public servants. Two resigned, though. Is this a signal that a different kind of leadership is needed to move Baltimore City forward?”

Bubula is white. The station was bombarded with complaints that her question was racist, and the station quickly fired her, saying in a brief statement,

“Mary Bubala is no longer a WJZ-TV employee. The station apologizes to its viewers for her remarks.”

Well-respected conservative pundit Mark Tapscott called this “newsroom fascism,” writing, “I’ve never met now-former Baltimore TV local news anchor Mary Bubala, but I am outraged as an American and a journalist over her firing for a question that clearly wasn’t remotely related to the fact the city’s two most recent (corrupt) mayors were both Black and women.”

I would have fired her. There are two good reasons. First, the question sure sounds like “After three female black mayors who have either been corrupt or unsuccessful, do you think a white man might be worth a try?” to me. What else could it mean? Do you think it might be time to elect a GOOD mayor? Why mention their race and gender at all if it isn’t part of the question? Second, if the question wasn’t racist, she should be fired because she’s too inarticulate to have that job.

Tapscott concludes, “Either this …ends or liberty isn’t long for anybody in this country except those with approved opinions.”

Let me ask you, then…

Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 5/9/2019: Incompetence Parade!

May 9, 2019 / Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

Good Morning!

1. Here, as if objective observers needed any more, is the definitive proof of what a dishonest, untrustworthy, biased partisan hack New York Times columnist Paul krugman is. Do present this to any of your Krugman-worshiping Facebook friends. I’m dying to hear their best spin attempts. It should be hilarious.

Yesterday, Krugman tweeted a photo of the President awarding Tiger Woods the Presidential Medal of Freedom , and wrote,

I’m old enough to remember when Presidential Medals of Freedom were given for showing courage and making sacrifices on behalf of the nation and the world. Tiger Woods … hits golf balls for money.

Washington Free Beacon editor Andrew Stiles quickly compiled this partial list of recipients of the honor during Obama’s Presidency:

Michael Jordan
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Meryl Streep
Steven Spielberg
Robert Redford
Robert De Niro
Tom Hanks
Yo-Yo Ma
Bob Dylan
Stevie Wonder
Gloria Estefan
Barbara Streisand
James Taylor
Diana Ross
Bruce Springsteen
Warren Buffett
Tom Brokaw
Lorne Michaels

What does this teach us about Krugman? Well, let’s see…

—He doesn’t check his facts before shooting off his metaphorical yap.

—He is so biased against the President that his judgment is untrustworthy and useless except to anti-Trump fanatics.

—He flagrantly endorses double standards, condemning one President he hates for the exact conduct that he found unobjectionable from a President he supported.

—He’s an idiot. Any pundit with multiple brain cells firing would hesitate to set himself up for ridicule like this, and would automatically make sure his complaint was supported by reality.

—This is the quality of columnists the New York Times employs. Continue reading →

Dead Ethics Alarms+Blackface+Social Media+Spineless School Administrators= One Hopeless Ethics Train Wreck

May 5, 2019May 5, 2019 / Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

Constant reader/commenter/master provocateur Michael Ejercito flagged this story for us, and it had already garnered some interesting commentary before I spotted it. Michael has a distinct style here and is always asking questions that are the equivalent of firecrackers thrown into a wake. He’s one the longest-enduring participants here, and I haven’t let him know sufficiently how much I appreciate what he contributes.Thanks, Michael.

This is a hopeless ethics train wreck at this point, screwed up beyond all repair. I will note the points at which it all could have been avoided, but really, as it is now, it can only get worse. The thing unfolded like contemporary Shakespeare tragedy, in five acts.

ACT I: In Illinois, photos and video posted to Snapchat, showed a group of white males wearing blackface pulling up to a fast food drive-thru and making denigrating comments about African-American girls. One of the boys is wearing a sweatshirt from Homewood-Flossmoor High School, where all of them were students.

Morons with dead ethics alarms. No high school student in the United States should be unaware that such a prank/stunt/ unbelievably stupid act and self-publishing the evidence of it is almost—but not quite!—the equivalent of maliciously shouting fire in a crowded theater, and thus deliberately tempting others to react emotionally and destructively. I know, teenage boys are too close to sociopaths for comfort, but conduct like this indicts their parents, their teachers, and the community, as well as them.

Just to be clear, the reason why this is not quite like shouting fire in a crowded theater is that doing that is deliberately inciting a riot, and thus not legal and protected speech. Blackface is offensive speech, but still legal.

ACT II: A former student of the school re-posted the content to her Facebook page, thus ensuring as much damage as possible. Over a thousand students and others now knew about the blackface episode, and so did the school district.

This is like someone hearing someone whisper fire in a crowded theater when there is no fire, and then shouting what was whispered to maximize the damage. If the student wanted to alert school officials, then she should have done this responsibly and quietly. Doing what she did was intentionally creating an online mob and inciting as much anger and irrationality as possible. The student was virtue-signaling, while magnifying the harm done by the original jerks. That is malicious.

ACT III: District 233 superintendent Von Mansfield and Homewood-Flossmoor High School principal Jerry Anderson sent out a letter to parents denouncing the “highly offensive and culturally insensitive” posts, saying,

“The social media postings that were seen and heard were not representative of the high expectations we have for all students that attend our school.This type of behavior is contrary to our expectations, is being addressed quickly and appropriately and will not be tolerated.”

What students do and post to social media off campus and unrelated to school personnel and activities is none of the school’s business. They have no obligation to comment on it or disclaim it. Let me repeat that: What students do and post to social media off campus and unrelated to school personnel and activities is none of the school’s business. Just because school activists, social justice warriors, busy-bodies, victim-mongers and trouble makers want to start shaking their fists and screaming at clouds over what someone else does, student or not doesn’t mean that the school should take the bait. Wearing blackface is 100% legal, in fact, it is Constitutionally protected. So is saying mean things about black girls, Asian girls, white girls, or Martian girls. The letter from the administrators made a tricky problem worse, and that’s not the moronic boys’ fault, nor the trouble-making ex-student’s fault. It’s their fault. They are supposed to be adults, and more competent, responsible, and reasonable than this.

[No, I do not think the fact that one of the students was wearing a school T-shirt made this a school-related act. If one of the students was wearing a Union Jack T-shirt, I would not assume that Great Britain was behind the episode.]

ACT IV: In an effort to urge administrators to take harsh discipline against the students in the blackface episode, nearly 1,000 of the uninvolved students participated in a walkout, “chanting their demands for justice.” I assume this means that hackneyed “No justice, no peace” chant that I have come to loathe as much as “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”Students don’t get to dictate discipline to administrators. That is known as “letting the inmates running the asylum.” Every one of the students participating in the protest should have been suspended. The parties responsible for students acting like this are the dim-witted and unethical educators who have allowed and even encouraged student holidays to protest gun control and climate policies. Protesting is not part of high school; it isn’t even a valid component of college.

ACT V: The president and vice president of the district’s board of education reacted by sending out a letter following the walkout, where they condemned the blackfaced students’ conduct and praising the “speedy response” from Homewood-Flossmoor administrators, which allegedly includes an investigation. The administrators have no right to investigate legal actions engaged in outside of school not involving other students. The parents of the students should tell the school to back off, and hire some tough lawyers to make the point as vividly as possible. “Our children misbehaved, and this is our job, not yours. You worry about education in the school, we’ll worry about how our kids act out of it.”

The letter read,

“The District 233 Board of Education will be revisiting and moving forward with the diversity and inclusion aspects of our new strategic plan, as they relate to cultural awareness and cultural competency training. Homewood-Flossmoor High School will continue to stand against racism, and against insensitive and disrespectful behavior of any kind, and will take the appropriate and necessary actions to ensure that all students are respected, that our differences are embraced and that our unity is celebrated.”

Oh, ugh, yechh, blechh. More posturing and virtue-signaling out of abject cowardice. “Cultural awareness and cultural competency training” sounds like, and almost certainly will be, political indoctrination. I’d like to see 1000 students walk out over that. You can’t dictate that “all students are respected,” and wearing blackface off school grounds isn’t a show of disrespect for students, since it didn’t involve students other than the jerks in blackface. Nor can students be compelled to embrace differences or to celebrate unity, especially when there is only one kind of unity that Big Brother School District will allow to be celebrated, and because you can’t encourage “differences” while demanding unity.

My review of the play? Everybody involved screwed up, acted without considering consequences or proper boundaries. At this point, this mess can not be fixed. If my son was one of the idiots who wore blackface, I would consider,

My own protest to the school and the school district, as well as a law suit for demonizing and endangering my son based on his non-school related conduct.
Meeting with every administrator involved and explaining in great detail why they are incompetent fools unqualified to train goats, much less educate children.
Taking my son out of the school, and either hone schooling him or shipping him off to military school.
Making him regret the day he donned blackface for the rest of his youth, telling him that such privileges as driving, having an email account, using social media or having a cell phone would cease until he was living elsewhere and over 18.

Good job, everybody!

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 5/3/2019: The “All They Had To Do Is Not Be Crazy, And They Couldn’t Even Do That” Edition [Part II]

May 3, 2019May 3, 2019 / Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I’d recommend reading the Introduction to this two-part post before diving into this. I also recommend holding down the top of your head…

1. You want crazy, I’ll give you crazy... The Washington Post, one of the two loudest media heralds for the Woke, progressive and nuts, felt it was necessary to raise this question: “Why didn’t Chewbacca get a medal?” As I’m sure you know, Peter Mayhew, the tall actor who played the lovable, if inarticulate Wookie, died yesterday. Thus the Washington Post felt it was newsworthy to discuss whether the Rebels in the original Star Wars were white supremacists or something because the final scene shows Luke and Han wearing medals for saving the galaxy far away but poor Chewbacca with nothing, although he’s obviously being honored too.

We really do have to be trained to see racism everywhere, especially when white bitches like Princess Leia call the shots.

This comes on top of another Post article by John Broich, who teaches WWII and British Empire history at Case Western Reserve University, and typifies why sending your kid to college today is irresponsible. His position: “Allied leaders were anti-Nazi, but not anti-racist. We’re now paying the price for their failure.”

Now if I read this right, the logic of the current history-cleansing Left would require that all monuments to W.W. II leaders, generals and soldiers should be hauled down, since they enabled racism. He concludes,

“After Charlottesville, too, social media echoed with variations of the line: “My grandpa didn’t fight the Nazis only for them to return.” And it’s possible that a good many of our grandfathers might have fought the Nazis expressly to oppose their race supremacy. But it’s worth putting this plainly: The Allied leadership did not fight the war over fascist race-nationalism. That was the historical path not taken.”

The allied leadership and its soldiers fought the war to win, and did. The total defeat of Hitler and Japan sent the most powerful message possible to the public and the world that genocide and race hatred were suicidal ideologies. Continue reading →

Facebook And Instagram Leap Down The Slippery Slope To Thought-Policing

May 3, 2019May 3, 2019 / Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Facebook has banned right-wing activists Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos, Laura Loomer, Joseph Watson, white supremacist Paul Nehlen, Jones’s company, Infowars, and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

And yes, it is unethical. And frightening. The irony is that Facebook says that the ideas promoted by these mostly fringe figures are “dangerous.” Nothing any of them say or write are anywhere nearly as dangerous as promoting censorship based on content and political viewpoint.

It doesn’t matter that all of the political and opinion figures Facebook banned from its two social media platforms are assholes, bigots and hate-mongers—I can’t say for sure that all of them are, since I only bump into any of them when I take a wrong turn on the Information Superhighway, as Al Gore liked to call it. I can say for sure that Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan meets that description, just as I can say for sure the media spin that he is “right wing” is ridiculous. If he’s so far right, why have so many members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including the only-recently resigned co-chair of the Democratic National Committee, met with him, posed with him, and generally given him legitimacy? Barack Obama posed with him too, though that photo was stored in the media memory hole until he was safely elected President.

Oh, I get it: only conservatives spread hate, ergo Farrakhan must be a right winger. I suspect that the real reason Farrakhan was on the initial list of banned users was so Facebook could claim, when challenged, that it wasn’t just banning advocates for the far right.

Progressives and their allies need to get their stories straight.

Let me get back to the first sentence: for a major source of communication in our society to permanently censor anyone based purely on the ideas and opinions they advocate is unethical, and is a serious threat to freedom of expression in the United States. Continue reading →

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“I really will not allow the simple gesture to belong to the moronic dogwhistling catfishing foghorning frogmarching pigsticking dickwaving few who attempt to appropriate it for their own fatuous fantasies.”

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ACT I

ACT II

ACT III

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Good Morning!

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