War and the Military

As the NYT Enables Terrorism and Anti-Israel Hate With “Think of the Children!” Porn…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Raja Abdulrahim, the New York Times reporter who prepared and wrote the splashy A-Section feature story in today’s print edition, says in her linked bio that “I abide by The Times’s ethical journalism standards. That includes refraining from promoting or protesting issues related to my work.” Can she possibly believe this while writing a piece of “Poor Palestinians!” propaganda like “There Is No Childhood in Gaza”? [Note: This is a gift link from me to get you past the paywall]

I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt, I suppose; it’s the ethical thing to do. Her story, and the way it is written, however, can evoke no possible response from typical semi-attentive and easily manipulated readers than “Think of the children! The Jews are monsters! Cease fire now! The Gazans have suffered enough! Justice for Palestine!”

And this is exactly the end result that Hamas sought when it launched its cease-fire shattering surprise terror attack on Israeli civilians, including infants, on October 7.

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CNN and Brianna Keilar Give a Symposium on How the News Media Tries to Rig Elections

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Incredibly and against all odds, the mainstream media is demonstrating that it is even more biased and determined to swing the 2024 election to the Democrats than they were in 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020. Not only that, but its propagandists are being more obvious about it.

As a case study, let us examine CNN’s handling of the Tim Walz scandal. Walz has been falsely representing himself to the public as a combat veteran for many years and in many ways. In addition, he abandoned the leadership of the troops he had trained with as soon as they were ordered to deploy in Iraq. This isn’t even a matter of serious dispute, yet the Harris ticket’s promoters in the news media, aka “almost all of it,” have been furiously spinning, obfuscating and ignoring inconvenient facts. Under different circumstances (such as, say, a VP nominee on a Republican ticket), the news media would be all over this story like Jaws on Pippin. It would be a daily feeding frenzy.

In the past few days, more of Walz’s former almost-comrades-in-arms have come forward to condemn Walz’s conduct and character. For example, the chaplain of Walz’s field artillery regiment said there was no excuse for the him to have abandoned his National Guard unit before a critical deployment. “In our world, to drop out after a WARNORD [warning order] is issued is cowardly, especially for a senior enlisted guy,” retired Capt. Corey Bjertness, now a pastor in Horace, North Dakota, told the New York Post. This wasn’t even newsworthy to most news sources: it might take public attention away from the fact that Trump keeps claiming Harris is misrepresenting the sizes of her rally crowds.

CNN’s spin debacle regarding Walz’s “stolen valor” was special, however.

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From a Cornucopia of Disturbing Ethics News, Which Story Shall We Start the Week With Today? How About This One…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Accountability!

Guess what company was just awarded a $2.56 billion contract from the U.S. Air Force? Why, Boeing, of course! The fact that the aircraft company’s corruption and incompetence have been almost continuously in the news for years now, that it finally dismissed its lying CEO recently and that the company currently has NASA astronauts trapped in outer space appears to trouble the United States government not one bit. (Here is the first Boeing story posted about here on Ethics Alarms in 2024.)

The contract is for the production of two rapid prototype E-7A Wedgetail AEW&C (Airborne Early Warning & Control) aircrafts, similar to the one pictured above. I’m sure it will reassure you to learn that the Wedgetail is based on Boeing’s 737 design that has been working out so well lately.

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Good To Know: Major League Baseball Demands More Accountability Than The U.S. Government.

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The Chicago White Sox announced this morning that manager Pedro Grifol has been fired. “As we all recognize, our team’s performance this season has been disappointing on many levels,” general manager Chris Getz said in a statement within this morning’s press release. “Despite the on-field struggles and lack of success, we appreciate the effort and professionalism Pedro and the staff brought to the ballpark every day. These two seasons have been very challenging. Unfortunately, the results were not there, and a change is necessary as we look to our future and the development of a new energy around the team.”

Ya think? Under Grifol, the White Sox just finished tying the all-time American League record for consecutive losses at 21. He leaves with the third worst winning percentage of any manager in Major League history who has managed more than a single season. But believe it or not, his two and a two thirds-season tenure at the helm of the ChiSox was even worse than those stats indicate.

Last season, Keynan Middleton publicly criticized the White Sox’ clubhouse culture after he was traded to the Yankees. The pitcher said that there were “no rules” and “no consequences;” he said he knew of instances of “rookies sleeping in the bullpen during games” and players skipping team meetings and fielding drills. Veteran pitcher Lance Lynn was asked if Middleton’s comments were just the complaints of a disgruntled ex-, and he said that Middleton was “not wrong.” This year there were reports that the White Sox had a “fractured” clubhouse that wasn’t helped any when Grifol told his players that they would be remembered as the worst team in MLB history if they didn’t shape up. One player told a local sportswriter, “It’s been really tough in there. Pedro is a really good guy, just not the man for the job.”

So he was fired. That’s what’s supposed to happen to the leader of an organization that falls flat on its metaphorical face with terrible consequences. Was the White Sox losing all those games—nobody expected the team, which is a re-building mode, to be good this season, just not so spectacularly bad—as spectacular an organizational failure as, just to pick a random example out of the air, the Secret Service? Nobody has been fired for its astounding incompetence in Butler, Pa., although many culprits have been identified. Nobody has been fired from a leadership position during the entire Biden Administration, although the culture of incompetence is throbbingly obvious. (I guess Joe himself comes the closest to having been fired.)

In an essay on substack, conservative law professor and blogger Glenn Reynold sees the culture rotting from the head down:

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Ethics Observations on the Tim Walz Military Scandal

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Boy, Major Jack Marshall Sr. would have hated this guy!  

Are you caught up? Here:

The Minnesota National Guard confirmed today that Gov. Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’ newly-minted running mate to the cheers of the woke everywhere, did not retire as a command sergeant major like he has claimed for years, including on his official gubernatorial biography.

The reality is that Walz “retired as a master sergeant in 2005 for benefit purposes, but he did not complete additional coursework at the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy,” Army Lt. Col. Kristen Augé, the Minnesota National Guard’s State Public Affairs Officer informed the media.

In 2018, a National Guardsman claimed on social media and in a paid ad that that Walz, then running for governor, declined to deploy to Iraq for combat duty in 2005 and forfeited his title of command sergeant major. But Walz’s biography, published on the state’s official website, says that “Command Sergeant Major Walz” retired from the Minnesota National Guard in 2005 while he was serving as one of the highest ranking members of the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion.

The timeline seems to be that Walz was promoted in September of 2004 in anticipation of his going into battle. When Walz’s battalion was ordered to mobilize for an active duty deployment to Iraq in May of 2005, however, Walz “quit, leaving the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion and its soldiers without its senior non-commissioned officer, as it prepared to go into battle. Two Command Sergeants Major confirmed this version of events.

J.D. Vance, who fought in Iraq, “pounced,” stating, “When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, you know what he did? He dropped out of the army and allowed his unit to go without him, a fact that he’s been criticized for aggressively by a lot of the people that he served with.”

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Ethics Zugzwang On The Battlefield

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

A New York Times article relates a current controversy over Ukrainian soldiers killing Russian soldiers who have surrendered. A media in a Ukrainian unit witnessed such a killing, and was so disturbed that he reported it to the Times. “It is highly unusual for a soldier to speak publicly about battlefield conduct, particularly involving men whom he still considers friends,” the Times says. “But he said he was too troubled to keep silent.”

The Times story’s reporter, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, seems to think this is a scandal, or a scoop, or a suddenly revealed secret, or something. It isn’t, as that scene above from “The Longest Day” should indicate. That incident, like all the events portrayed in the film adaptation of the Cornelius Ryan best-seller, was taken from accounts by D-Day combatants interviewed by the author.

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Searching For a Tipping Point…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

This is probably too trivial an episode, but you never know. What might it take to cause a tunnel-visioned, propaganda-marinated, Trump-Deranged, ethically-stunted Democrat or progressive to slap himself,herself or whateverself briskly in the forehead and say, “What the hell? Why have I been supporting these people? They are corrupt and embarrassing!”

On April 17, our President informed a shocked nation that he thinks his uncle was eaten by cannibals. The purpose of his rambling discourse was, of course, the evilness of Donald Trump, as Biden repeated the now Axis-enshrined claim that as President, Trump refused to visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France in 2018 because the U.S. soldiers buried there were “losers” and “suckers.”

Here’s what Biden said:

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Unethical Quote of the Week: President Joe Biden

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“They have a point.”

—President Biden responding to pro-Hamas and Palestinians protesters at a campaign event in North Carolina yesterday after they shouted “What about the health care in Gaza?” before being ushered out by security.

This wasn’t Biden’s senility on display. Nor was it one of his lies. That statement demonstrates this President’s complete ethical and moral void as well as his cowardice, the result of which is to render him incapable of analyzing any situation requiring coherent views of history and a commitment to do the right thing regardless of political fallout.

Biden wants to avoid alienating any voter block, This profound lack of integrity prevents him from leading, leaving him only with the task of unprincipled pandering.

The protesters did not “have a point,” any more than protesters shouting “What about health care in Berlin?” during the Allies’ bombing of the city during World War II would have had a point. “We need to get a lot more care into Gaza,” Biden said. Why? The United States is providing weapons for Israel to conquer Gaza and eliminate Hamas, which is supported by a large majority of the population there. Another protester, apparently as clueless as Biden, called out that health centers in Gaza were “being bombed.” Yup, sure are, and that’s because Hamas is hiding in tunnels under such places so that civilians have to die for Hamas to be subjected to the punishment it deserves and dim bulb weaklings like Joe Biden can claim that pro-terrorism, anti-Israel protesters “have a point.”

I have recorded many statements by Donald Trump that I have ruled should, under normal circumstances, disqualify him from office. None are as disqualifying as those four fatuous, offensive words from Biden yesterday.

Prestigious American Institutions Have Been Hiring Ideologically Crippled Academics For Decades, and We Are Seeing the Disastrous Results: Now What?

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Spotlight: Cornell

The Cornell Daily Sun has presented this head-exploding screed:

We, the undersigned Cornell faculty, staff and alumni, strongly support the student activists who have disrupted business as usual to protest the University’s conduct amid the horrifying, ongoing assault on Palestinian populations. The students who have mobilized under the banner of the Coalition for Mutual Liberation have fulfilled the best principles of global citizenship, engaged learning and social justice. We applaud their principled struggle.

Commending the students for opposing the wanton destruction of Palestinian lives and territories does not go far enough. These young people are, quite simply, the best of us. They have shown tremendous courage in a climate of fear and repression. We thank them for their commitment and integrity. We will do what we can to ensure that they are not unduly targeted.

The CML activists have made significant personal sacrifices to publicize the demand that Cornell divest from corporations that are linked to Israeli militarism, occupation and collective punishment. Their nonviolent demonstrations have provided a moral compass at a time of official hypocrisy.

In countless ways, the leaders of our society and our institution have signaled that silence is the only acceptable response to the profound suffering within and beyond Gaza. Cornell administrators have exacerbated campus anxiety by attempting to stifle student dissent with a draconian “Interim Expressive Activity Policy,” bypassing the faculty senate. In a moment of anguish for many members of our community, the University has chosen the path of intimidation and bureaucratic aggression.

The names of more than 300 faculty signatories to the letter can be seen here.

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Announcing the First “Imagine” Award! And the Winner Is…Marxist British Solicitor Ghuffar Usman

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Hit it, John!

(Yecchh.)

The “Imagine” Award will be periodically bestowed here upon the public figure, pundit , journalist or academic whose pronouncements most reflect the fatuous and infantile virtue-signaling of the late John Lennon, who also wrote “Give Peace a Chance.” This is the category where aging Sixties veterans, fact-challenged pacifists, incompetent progressive activists and the historically ignorant will cluster, advocating policies that are literally impossible and have been proven so over centuries. An Ethics Alarms principle is that advocating or promoting some ideal solution to a problem is unethical when that solution is delusional: the aspiration only wastes time and misleads the gullible. Right now, the political Left is addicted to such fantasies. No, we cannot end hate, racism, hunger, war, greed and criminal punishment, among other natural consequences of human existence.

Grow the hell up.

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