Pepsibloggate
July 10, 2010
Corporations are legally obligated to make decisions that would be considered sociopathic if made by individual human beings. This is because the directors and officers of a corporation have a fiduciary obligation to maximize the profits of the shareholders, and if they make decisions on other bases–things like decency, charity, sympathy, intellectual honesty, etc–they will have the living shit sued out of them by the shareholders.
While individuals within corporations may act from these bases, the corporation qua corporation simply cannot. That the “management” of ScienceBlogs fails to understand this is fucking pathetic. And this, by the way, also explains why a blog sponsored all or in part by corporate funds is fundamentally different from a blog created by a corporation. That the “management” of ScienceBlogs also fails to understand this is also fucking pathetic.
The “management” of ScienceBlogs obviously has not the slightest clue about how to actually manage a creative enterprise. Furthermore, CEO Adam Bly’s embarrassingly ignorant petulant comments on his own blog about the article disclosing the editor’s e-mail to that Seed columnist shitcanning a column on Bhopal because they didn’t want to preclude Dow Chemical from buying advertising (and the breezy way in which that editor him or herself admitted in the e-mail to a grotesque journalistic ethical breach) render it obvious that no one in the Seed chain of command has the slightest training or experience in real journalism. What we’ve basically got are children dressing in their parents’ clothing while their parents are out to dinner.
Comradde RisottoProffe 
July 10, 2010 at 2:35 pm
The thing that freaks me out the most about corporations is that if a person in a position of power figures this out and tries to fix it they simply get replaced by someone who will do the sociopathic shit. We have created monsters.
July 10, 2010 at 11:29 pm
It is still sociopathic behavior.
July 10, 2010 at 11:59 pm
Actually, it’s worse than that. The late, great Bill Hicks summarized these circumstances better than anyone before or since.
July 11, 2010 at 11:42 am
Excellent post.
July 12, 2010 at 7:08 am
I can’t be horrified anymore. It takes too much energy.
I am simply amused.
July 12, 2010 at 11:46 pm
Corporations have an obligation to maximize shareholder value, not profits.
July 12, 2010 at 11:51 pm
and the Business Judgement Rule protects the board of directors from lawsuits unless a plaintiff can prove corruption, extremely bad value “waste”, conflict of interest, or bad faith.
I only watched part of “The Corporation,” (I stopped at the part about Fanta) but I am guessing they kept making stuff after I turned it off.
July 13, 2010 at 11:38 am
Oh hooray, we have a new troll!
July 13, 2010 at 3:26 pm
skeptifem
I have been on and off for a few months now. Anyway, if you’re in the Baltimore area, my friends and I are getting together to discuss the role of the Marine Corp in liberating the women of Afghanistan. You’re welcome to attend.
July 14, 2010 at 5:18 pm
Dude, a bunch of science writers and bloggers are bandying about on Twitter about this web-based service that analyzes a sample of one’s writing and ascribes your writing style to a famous author.
http://iwl.me/
So, I copy-and-pasted this post into the doohickey and it said your write like Kurt Vonnegut. I believe that you would like this.
July 14, 2010 at 9:09 pm
thanks Abel, thanks a whole bunch.
July 14, 2010 at 10:47 pm
I’ve seen what you have written on Zuska’s blog. You are a mansplainer. This is the lowest tidbit you have written, and that is some thing. Some thing indeed.
Don’t even begin to start to try to even think to use women’s issues or women’s rights as an excuse, reason or justification for this fucking country to be in Afghanistan or anywhere else.
If Afghanistan were not strategically located, if 80,000 mercenary corporations weren’t bloating their bellies with blood and cash,if the TAPI natural gas pipelines weren’t planned, then this country wouldn’t play act pretend, however transparently to give a flying fucking shit about Afghani civilians, women or otherwise.
Rwanda.’Splain me that if we care so fucking much. Oh, not strategically located with no natural resources? Fuck off and die, but please make sure you do die. That is our foreign policy. Always was, probably always will be.
The Marine Corps is a feminist organization everyone! The revolution is here and we won!
Maybe US woman soldiers should stop being raped and sexually assaulted by their fellow male soldiers, eh? When they are, maybe their military superiors should report the crimes, instead of covering them up. Bring that up at your little chit-chat gossip gabfest with the boys.
July 15, 2010 at 12:19 am
America actively discouraged the only pro woman movement in Afghanistan back in the day. They wanted to give russia a vietnam style war in order to drain it of resources, they didn’t give a shit if it ruined the country. It was expected to. Our government funded and trained the extreme misogynist element of the civil war. This is the standard history of that region. If we really were wiping out the misogynists it would mean cleaning up a horrific mess that our country knowingly contributed to, not some act of virtue that everyone should worship.
July 15, 2010 at 12:32 am
Nope, not in that area at all. Maybe you can look at RAWA’s site if you need suggestions.
http://www.rawa.org/index.php
The role of the marine corps in feminist struggle generally is that of a perpetrator. The war has not liberated any women, for the reasons I outlined in my last post.
July 15, 2010 at 12:41 am
I recall that on 9/10 Afghanistan was strategically located. I also recall on 9/10 that the TAPI natural gas pipelines was planned.
I also recall some incident were 4 planes were hijacked and smashed into American buildings. A lot of people died. Of course, that has nothing to do with our presence in Afghanistan.
Actually, Clinton as well as the Senate and House made respect for women’s rights a condition of American recognition for the Taliban. The Taliban refused to accept and America recognition never came. (1)
Bosnia had no resources. Kosovo lacked much in the way of resources. Macedonia lacks much in the way of resources. Montenegro lacks resources. Yet, we intervened all of those cases to stop genocide, halt ethnic cleansing, or prevent ethnic violence. So, lack of resources had little to do with it.
My guess was that the United States government remembered the lessons of Somalia. (2) You remember back in 1993 when the US went to Somalia to feed the starving people (the primary reason we went to Somalia is Colin Powell thought it was easier than Bosnia and that the US would have to either intervene in Bosnia or Somalia(3). The Somali militias ran wild, killed some American military personnel, and dragged their bodies in front of TV cameras. Of course the Harlan County incident didn’t inspire confidence in Clinton that he could intervene successfully. (4)
I suspect but cannot yet prove that Clinton was also disinclined to intervene due to the allegations of imperialism from Chomskyites that would have accompanied any campaign to stop genocide in Rwanda.
I never said the US military was perfect. I merely stated it had a significant role in liberating the women of Afghanistan. Judging from the lack of female suicide bombers and insurgents, I am guessing that the women of Afghanistan, say like the women of France during WW2, regret American violence but accept as necessary to secure their liberation.
As noted by the CIA’s Red Cell, a veto-overriding portion of the Afghanistan public don’t mind American forces being in AFghanistan http://file.wikileaks.org/file/cia-afghanistan.pdf .
I might. I also might mention how if we had listened to people like you in 1995 and not intervened, the Bosnian Serbs might still be running rape camps in Foca. Of course, you’d be bitching because we hadn’t done anything.
(1) Michael Scheuer, Marching Toward Hell: American and Islam after Iraq, 68-9
(2) Samantha Power, Problem From Hell, 374-5
(3) David Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace, 251-2
(4)David Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace, 272-9
July 15, 2010 at 6:22 am
I am guessing that the women of Afghanistan, say like the women of France during WW2, regret American violence but accept as necessary to secure their liberation.
That seems like a pretty major unsupported assumption to make. And are “the women of Afghanistan” a monolithic group among whom there is no disagreement?
July 15, 2010 at 9:15 am
It’s amusing that RAWA’s activities in Afghanistan have increased in scope and publicity only after the US invasion of Afghanistan. It’s almost like the US invasion swept away those that oppressed them and created the conditions for them to be active.
Now, if you have an alternative theory as to why RAWA is not able to appear on Afghan TV and openly mark International Women’s Day in downtown Kabul that does not involve the American routing of the Taliban, I’d be enertained to hear it.
July 15, 2010 at 9:32 am
Against the advice of senior CIA officials at the time, the US did try to rebuild the government of Afghanistan along secular, Western lines after the Soviet withdraw. USAID, State, and lots of Western lawyers and NGos poured into Afghanistan and tried to install a secular, Western regime. Oddly enough, those who had fought and defeated the Soviets were unwilling to surrender their hard-earned freedom and gains to outsiders installed by a foreigners. (1)
It was a lesson you thought the US would have learned after its failures in Yugoslavia and Albania after WW2, but apparently not.
Also, let us not forget that had the United States sent troops or used force to accomplish this objective, the same objective it is now trying to do in Afghanistan and to which you object , the cry of “imperialism” from the doofy left would have been lethal.
(1) (1) Michael Scheuer, Marching Toward Hell: American and Islam after Iraq, 38-40
July 15, 2010 at 9:35 am
I thought that was a unspoken assumption but I’ll correct it. I do note that you don’t say anything about the French. But I’ll correct it for you.
I am guessing that the women of Afghanistan (except those who supported the Taliban, or hate America, or otherwise oppose American liberation and prefer a return to the good ole days of Soviet occupation, civil war, Taliban rule, or random chaos) say like the women of France during WW2 (except those who supported the Nazi occupation or Nazi rule to liberation by violence), regret American violence but accept [it] as necessary to secure their liberation.
Better?
July 15, 2010 at 10:18 am
Hmm, so you point out that installing a regime by force against the will of the people (or the people in power, which in Afghanistan would be men) doesn’t usually tend to work as desired in the long term, but you believe that the United States’ forcible installation of a new Afghan government has “secured” Afghan women their liberty?
Actually, just like when the US installed the Taliban to fight against the Soviets, the new US-installed government appears to be problematic at best. And where women’s rights are concerned, this 2009 law says it all:
According to the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights, the legislation says that Afghan Shi’ite women will not have the right to leave their homes except for “legitimate” purposes, and forbids women from working or receiving education without their husbands’ express permission. The legislation explicitly permits marital rape by saying that a wife is bound to satisfy the sexual desires of her husband.
This is a law signed by Karzai [which was then submitted for Judicial review], not some renegade act by the left-over Taliban. So the US installs a new government, the government starts to act in ways the US doesn’t believe it should, and what do we do now — or, to stay on your topic, what is the Marines’ role in resolving this problem so they can secure the liberty of Afghan women? Install a new government?
The full article may be found here:
http://www.rferl.org/content/Secretary_Of_State_Clinton_Criticizes_Controversial_Afghan_Women_Law__/1602529.html
I don’t know what the solution is to the situation of women’s rights in Afghanistan, but I think listening to Afghan women (rather than guessing at their emotions/opinions based on analogies to a different war in a different culture in a different time) is probably the first step.
July 15, 2010 at 10:42 am
The Taliban was formed in 1994. The Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989. USSR collapsed and ceased to exist on 12/31/1991. Also the US did not install anything to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, it provided weapons usually through its ally Pakistan to those willing to combat the Soviet Union.
I think we should stick with what the American left does best and assume it knows better than those it seeks to help. Or you can read the Red Cell analysis to which I link and discover that people have already been asking Afghanis what they want and received answers. Just not the answers you want.
July 15, 2010 at 8:31 pm
Alright! A major benefit of a blogging break is that HP has turned his affections towards CPP! He’s all yours, CPP! Enjoy!
July 17, 2010 at 2:21 pm
This sounded interesting, so I pasted this post and several other posts (by myself and a few random other bloggers), and they all came out as David Foster Wallace. So I’m not too impressed…
July 17, 2010 at 7:42 pm
I put in an article I wrote about Cannabis, and it also came up David Foster Wallace.
July 18, 2010 at 1:46 pm
[…] PhysioProf […]
July 19, 2010 at 9:51 pm
History Punk is an ignorant assclam.
And I write like Daniel Defoe.