Category Archives: Morality

The Quality of Egyptian Mercy… And Society

Democracy, Islam, Justice, Middle East, Military, Morality

“The concept of a society is based on the quality of its mercy, of its sense of fair play, its sense of justice,” goes that memorable line from the film “Midnight Express” (which surely represented Hollywood at its heyday). The protagonist’s protest against his inhuman and inhumane Turkish jailers was a plea against a merciless authority.

The kind the US and its surrogates (“NATO”) around the world endorse as democratic.

In another word, Egypt.

The new Egypt has demonstrated in spades the quality of its mercy and, by extension, society, by sentencing the “deposed leader Hosni Mubarak” “to life in prison for failing to stop the killing of 900 protesters in January 2011.” (Was that even provable?)

The demonstrating “activists” might want to consider giving old Hosni a sponge bath and reinstating him, rather than condeming an old man to life in prison (or death there, whatever comes first).

Since the ousting of Mubarak, reports BBC News, “Foreign direct investment has reversed from $6.4bn (£4bn) flowing into the country in 2010 to $500m leaving it last year. Tourism, a major revenue generator for the country, has also dropped by a third.”

UPDATED: Blame The Beast (DC) For Big Business’ Moral Bankruptcy

Business, Capitalism, Ethics, Free Markets, Government, Morality

Myron Pauli sends along an interesting series of Venn diagrams, reflecting the intersection between The DC Beast and Big Business, and purporting to “show how corrupted American ‘democracy’ really is.”

Registering his disgust, Myron writes this (with his usual flare):

“While the American Booboisie gets distracted with this ‘election,’ where the grandson of a polygamist
debates the son of a polygamist on ‘gay marriage,’ as the Welfare-Warfare-Deficit-Jail State
goes on – 800,000 arrested for marijuana last year – hundreds wounded or maimed in Afpakistan,
trillions of new debt and malinvestment, television cameras proliferating everywhere to catch
American citizens (e.g. ‘criminals’) violating an ever increasing list of ‘crimes’ ….”

Agreed, except that companies don’t have much option. Without buying and paying for a plant to do their bidding within the State apparatus, they are doomed to be investigated and prosecuted non-stop by the government’s alphabet soup of regulatory agencies; the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the Securities and Exchange Commission, on and on. Business gets dragged into court every other day and sued. By necessity, entire departments and budgets within corporate America are given over to lobbying and pacifying The Beast.

“When Bill Gates neglected to schmooze Washington, Joe Klein, the Justice Department’s top dog, picked up the scent and gave chase. The lesson being that if he wants to survive, the entrepreneur must also pay protection money to his political masters.” (“CONGRESSIONAL CHURLS TROLL FOR VOTES”)

Our “overlords who art in DC” “are the ones who force the entrepreneur to replace viable, voluntary trades and transactions with bureaucratic, politicized decision making. Rather than concentrate on satisfying consumers, proprietors must divert resources from innovation and production into getting around the bureaucrat’s tax and regulatory laws.”

“Unlike government (and CNN’s Anderson Cooper), you can keep private enterprise honest. Business aims to please its constituents, the consumers. …”

Downsize the state, strip it of its police-state powers—and business will shape-up. Capitalism is moral if practiced. We do no longer practice it.

UPDATE: Yes, Myron, why can’t I get this URL to work? I found another valid hyperlink for “18 Venn diagrams showing how corrupted American ‘democracy’ really is.“

Slaughter in Syria

Crime, Islam, Middle East, Military, Morality, War

To evoke W. H. Auden’s reflections in Letters from Iceland, what “… an extraordinary vision of the cold controlled ferocity of the human species.”

“BBC News: “The village of Taldou, near the town of Houla in Syria’s Homs province was the scene of one of the worst massacres in the country’s 14-month-long uprising on Friday. United Nations observers on the ground have confirmed that at least 108 people were killed, including 49 children and 34 women. Some were killed by shell fire, others appear to have been shot or stabbed at close range.But at whose hands they died remains a matter of contention. …”

Uncle Sam Turns Tricks (& Stiffs Sex Workers)

Affirmative Action, Ethics, Etiquette, Feminism, Government, Military, Morality, Politics, Sex, The State

In “Uncle Sam Turns Tricks (& Stiffs Sex Workers),” the latest weekly column, I make a Modest Proposal. Here’s an excerpt:

“They seemed like complete stupid idiots. I was surprised that every time he [the Secret Service agent] danced with me, he lifted up his sweater so I could see [his ripped abs].”

Beefcake unburdened by brains is how Colombian call girl Dania Suárez described the Special Forces agents who solicited her services at the Hotel El Caribe in Cartagena, Colombia, prior to President Obama’s arrival in that country for the April, 2012, Summit of the Americas.

The “morons,” said the sassy Suárez, “drank liberally and acted boisterously, one of them jumping onto the bar.” Nor were they shy about petitioning Suárez and her sex-worker colleagues for favors.

Our boys abroad were clearly practiced pros.

Slightly more uplifting was the news that one of the married Secret Service agents who serves the president at the pleasure of the American taxpayer likes “normal sex.”

Kinky carnality, however, is preferable to a man who does not honor a contract. The agent refused to pay Suárez the $800 dollars he owed her, which is why this tempest in a C-Cup blew up in the first place.

Fortunately for the errant agent, “paid sex is legal in Cartagena.” Rather than call on a pimp, the prostitute petitioned local law enforcement for redress. A pimp would have likely worked the agent over good and proper.

All in all, a million here and there for a good time is nothing in the grand scheme of the tricks turned by the Empire’s foot-soldiers and stooges—and the toll these tricks take.

Come to think of it, if regular visits with prostitutes kept the political class from launching trillion-dollar war- and welfare programs, and financing Fanny, Freddy and the Fed—I would personally contribute to a prostitution fund for Washington whores.

The prostitutes would be the patriots. …”

Read the complete column, “Uncle Sam Turns Tricks (& Stiffs Sex Workers).”

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