Category: Events

By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Ethics in Government, Events, Uncategorized

For seven years, Zheng Xiaoyu headed China’s Food and Drug Administration–a time in which that agency was filled with scandal, from tainted toothpaste to poisoned pet food. Both animals and people died in large numbers as a result, The New York Times reports.

Mr. Zheng, 62, has been sentenced by the Chinese government to death–not for the poisonings, but for the bribery that enabled them.

One more reason to stay honest, o ye corporate executives and government officials.

Of course, there are plenty of others–including, as I point out repeatedly in my award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, that it’s actually easier for an honest business to profit and thrive.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Events, Frugality/Frugal Fun, General Commentary, Shel's Personal Life, Uncategorized

Out of the blue this morning, I received a fascinating e-mail:

Hi Shel,

I’m Joel Falconer, lead singer and songwriter of the Gold Coast,
Australia-based Grok Rock band Midnight.Haulkerton. I don’t want to
bother you, but I thought you might be interested in this.

Earlier this year we came up with the idea of the Tuneback. A
Tuneback is a song recorded under the self-imposed time limit of one
hour from conception to publication (making it more of a concept or a
‘sketch’ than a complete song) and a new one must be posted once a
week, every Tuesday.

Given that most songs take weeks to go through the recording process
alone, not to mention conception and publication, it’s no mean feat,
but it’s quite a fun way to interact with an audience online and keep
us thinking.

I guess it’s a frugal, grassroots way of not only publishing music,
but creating it too!

This week I wrote the Tuneback with my good friend and colleague, NDK
Creative Artist, who said you’d know who he is and sends his regards.
He first introduced me to your work a couple of years ago, and I must
thank you for your article on frugal weddings, which helped to shave
a few pennies from my own last year.

This Tuneback was inspired by the idea of Principled Profit,
something NDK is a strong advocate of, and so am I. We are all
interested in solutions to the poor state of culture and
civilization rather than the continual whining of most mass media
(who I think cause many of the problems in the first place) and self-
pitying artists.

The fact that there is someone actively doing something about the
problem of unethical marketing is inspirational and we want to honor
you with the dedication of this song.

To which I say–go right ahead and bother me, Joel. Any time you write a song about my ideas, I’m delighted to be interrupted. I had never heard of Joel before this e-mail (although I have corresponded with NDK–we used to be on the same discussion group), and I’m impressed that I made an impact all the way to Australia–without even discussing the Business Ethics Pledge (which does have a number of Australian signers).

The song is kind of a synth/metal thing, not the sort of thing I usually listen to. But I really like the lyrics (used with his permission, of course):

Principles of Profit

The principles of profit
Say make your money in the honest way
Good work, hard work
Quality all the way
It pays
Shortcuts to profit, don’t really exist
You gotta be alive just ask Ken Lay

There’s nothing wrong with making money
There’s nothing wrong with making hay
It’s all in the way you make it
The principles of profit say
Make it the honest way

The cheating culture, full of vultures
Picking over scraps
Pluck the vultures, cook their goose
Change the cheating culture
You want to be loose, you want to be free
Live the life you want to live
We gotta keep on changing, re-arranging
So we can make profit in a principled way
There ain’t no shortcuts to profit
That’s just cutting corners to hell

There’s nothing wrong with making money
There’s nothing wrong with making hay
It’s all in the way you make it
The principles of profit say
Make it the honest way

Make honesty pay,
Make honesty pay,
Make honesty pay
Profit the principled way

I also really like the way Joel manages to refer obliquely to several of my websites and book titles in his message, subtly cueing me that he has taken the time to study my stuff a bit.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Events, Peace and War, Uncategorized

I don’t shock easily–but I am deeply shocked. I m outraged. I’m enraged. I’m bloody furious!

We hear all the time from the Bill O’Reillys, Ann Coulters and Rush Limbaughs of the country that any criticism of the Iraq “mission” is unpatriotic and goes against supporting our troops.

And then this–The Nation reports on numerous cases of soldiers injured in the war, pressured to accept a psychiatric discharge for a “pre-existing condition” that they never had, being told by their military doctors that this way they’ll get to keep their benefits and get a much quicker discharge–when in actuality these brave young men and women are hung out to dry, stripped of their medical benefits, and left holding the bill for any enlistment bonus they haven’t yet earned out.

This lowest of lowball tactics is saving the Veterans Administration millions of dollars–and is yet another betrayal of these many-times-betrayed soldiers.

Here’s a longish quote from the article:

He was standing in the doorway of his battalion’s headquarters when a
107-millimeter rocket struck two feet above his head. The impact punched a piano-sized hole in the concrete facade, sparked a huge fireball and tossed the 25-year-old Army specialist to the floor, where he lay blacked out among the rubble.

“The next thing I remember is waking up on the ground.” Men from his unit had gathered around his body and were screaming his name. “They started shaking me. But I was numb all over,” he says. “And it’s weird because… because for a few minutes you feel like you’re not really there. I could see them, but I couldn’t hear them. I couldn’t hear anything. I started shaking because I thought I was dead.”

Eventually the rocket shrapnel was removed from Town’s neck and his ears stopped leaking blood. But his hearing never really recovered, and in many ways, neither has his life. A soldier honored twelve times during his seven years in uniform, Town has spent the last three struggling with deafness, memory failure and depression. By September
2006 he and the Army agreed he was no longer combat-ready.

But instead of sending Town to a medical board and discharging him because of his injuries, doctors at Fort Carson, Colorado, did something strange: They claimed Town’s wounds were actually caused by a “personality disorder.” Town was then booted from the Army and told that under a personality disorder discharge, he would never receive disability or medical benefits.

Town is not alone. A six-month investigation has uncovered multiple cases in which soldiers wounded in Iraq are suspiciously diagnosed as having a personality disorder, then prevented from collecting benefits.

If it weren’t already obvious, this “treatment”–which ought to be the subject of immediate Congressional investigation AND ACTION is the very opposite of supporting the troops. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again–the best support we can give our troops is to bring them home safely and SOON. To which I’ll add that bringing charges against the barbarians carrying out this deeply inhumane and vicious policy that victimizes the very people hurt in carrying out their orders is also a way of supporting the troops.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Events, Politics, Uncategorized

Huffington Post’s Eason Jordan nailed the problem with recent Iran “revelations”:

After weeks, if not months, of US official planning to present a damning “dossier” of incriminating evidence against Iran, and after this same US administration presented us with lopsided, erroneous information about the capability and evil intentions of the Saddam Hussein regime, the best the US government can give us today is incendiary evidence presented at a Baghdad news conference by three US officials who refuse to be quoted by name?

That’s disgraceful and unacceptable.

Yeah, you got that right. Disgraceful and unacceptable. There’s a book coming out about the coming war with Iran: “From the Wonderful People Who Brought You Iraq” by Craig Unger. I was listening to him on Democracy Now this morning, along with General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff–in other words, a major big cheese in the US military–who doesn’t believe the “evidence” incriminates the Iranian government (of which I am no fan, and nor was I a fan of Saddam–but that doesn’t mean we go charging in with guns blazing and brains left behind).

Scary stuff. Once down that dangerous and foolhardy road is apparently not enough for the Bush League. Or for the New York Times, which ran a Page One story yesterday with the unsourced allegations–by none other than Michael Gordon, co-author with Judith Miller of some of the worst pro-war propaganda in the run-up to the Iraq invasion.

To its credit, today’s Times features a much more skeptical article:

Even so, critics have been quick to voice doubts. Representative Silvestre Reyes of Texas, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, suggested that the White House was more interested in sending a message to Tehran than in backing up serious allegations with proof. And David Kay, who once led the hunt for illicit weapons in Iraq, said the grave situation in Iraq should have taught the Bush administration to put more of a premium on transparency when it comes to intelligence.

“If you want to avoid the perception that you’ve cooked the books, you come out and make the charges publicly,” Mr. Kay said.

The article goes on to quote General Pace, who also gets his own article on the subject.

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By Posted on Posted in Events, Media Ethics, Uncategorized

I’m just back from the National Conference on media Reform in Memphis, where much honor was deservedly poured on Martin Luther King, Jr., assassinated in that city just a few blocks from the conference (now the site of the National Civil Rights Museum).

My reports on the 2005 conference in Saint Louis are posted on my Frugal Marketing site; I’ll try to get at least some of my ’07 coverage up this week.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Events, Uncategorized

It’s wonderful to see a national figure like Senator Russ Feingold who’s not afraid to connect the dots. In an insightful piece on Huffington Post, he all but calls the Foley-lusts-for-boy-pages scandal a distraction from the continuing disaster of Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld’s totally failed Iraq policy:

We all saw the recently declassified key findings of the National Intelligence Estimate. One thing those findings underscored is that our continued and indefinite presence in Iraq is benefiting global terrorist networks that threaten our country. The war has been a disaster, but the Administration refuses to admit its mistake. It refuses to do what’s right for our national security. By “staying the course,” this Administration is ignoring the conditions on the ground in Iraq and the growing threats we face around the world.

I hope this guy runs for President! But the Dems will probably run Hillary Clinton, and if they do, I’ll vote Green–I will not vote for a candidate who still doesn’t understand that the Iraq war is a moral and practical failure, and who as far as I know has not repudiated her support for the so-called Patriot Act (which was one of the most unpatriotic pieces of legislation in its time–unfortunately surpassed by last month’s shameful embrace of torture and spying).

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Events, General Commentary, Uncategorized

For several years, I’ve wondered about the failure to scramble fighter planes on 9/11 to intercept the hijacked jets. I’ve ready all the conspiracy theories, and agree that the series of coincidences is not plausible, and probably not random. However, now that the transcripts of NORAD’s Northeast control center (NEADS) have been released, it seems very clear to me that whatever conspiracies might have been in play, NORAD’s controllers weren’t a part of it.

Michael Bronner, writing in Vanity Fair, uses the actual transcripts of NORAD/NEADS control room operations on that fateful day, with his explanation and commentary. Bronner, an associate producer on the movie United 93, has the background to interpret what the cryptic military language actually means–and most of his commentary is simply explaining what we hear (yes, you can actually listen to several brief clips).

The article is long, and includes large sections of actual transcripts. I recommend printing it out and reading carefully (and listening to some of the clips).

What I come away with…

  • NORAD did absolutely the best job they could, given the lateness and dearth of information that should have been pouring into them from the first moment it was known that one plane had been hijacked
  • The government was completely unprepared for the possibility that planes would be hijacked by trained pilots who would know to turn off the transponder beacons that establish aircraft location for air traffic controllers
  • They only had four fighter jets to scramble, and they did scramble them, as well as call in additional resources so that by day’s end, 300 jets were patrolling American cities–but because of the late notice and the equipment’s failure to track planes with transponders disabled, they couldn’t intercept–and misinformation such as the belief that American flight 11 was still airborne and headed for Washington (not to mention that there were reports of over a dozen possible hijackings) didn’t help
  • There may have been a cover-up in NORAD’s testimony to the 9/11 Commission–but the incorrect testimony just as easily could have been faulty memory or misunderstanding rather than malice
  • Any order to shoot down civilian aircraft could only come from the President–and as we all know, GWB was reading children’s stories in Florida at the time
  • Dick Cheney lied about agonizing over the decision whether to shoot down Flight 93, which crashed in the Pennsylvania farm field within seconds of his first being notified that it was off course

    • What this article establishes in my mind is that NORAD’s people behaved phenomenally well under conditions more stressful than any in history–but they had antiquated and inadequate equipment, antiquated and inadequate and in some cases completely false information, and no chance to preemptively block the hijackers from reaching their targets.

    I commend their courage, and I thank Vanity Fair for running the article. Now…was there a conspiracy involving other aspects of 9/11?

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    By Posted on Posted in Events, Media Ethics, Uncategorized

    I first learned of the Pulitzers going to New Orleans and Biloxi’s newspapers for Katrina coverage (and heroism)from the blog on journalism published by Poynter.org. Some very human reportage of how the newspapers covered the floods.

    Nice to see something that makes me proud of my rather troubled profession–unlike the post I’m about to make.

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    By Posted on Posted in Events, General Commentary, Shel's Personal Life

    ​​​​This blog was launched on December 29, 2004, which means it just
    turned one year old. So allow me to wallow in a bit of reflection,
    please.

    I’d delayed blogging for a long time, because I’d
    thought that to be taken seriously, a blogger needed to post daily. I
    even tried to organize a group of non-blogging marketing pundits to
    each take a day of the week in a communal blog. That effort went
    nowhere, but I think at least three of us now blog regularly. Once I
    realized that many bloggers post once a week or less, I knew I could
    handle it.

    I started the blog with a few agendas. I wanted to:

  • Create a platform for my ideas and rants, of course
  • Open a doorway to a syndicated op-ed newspaper column (a dream I’ve had for decades) Support the Business Ethics Pledge campaign
  • Become more widely known in the worlds of business ethics and progressive politics
  • Develop new readers who would then buy my books, subscribe to my newsletter, etc.

    And
    in fact, in the spring, I went through my blog entries, selected seven
    or so, polished them, and submitted them to four different newspaper
    syndicates–all of whom turned me down. But I’ll keep trying.

    The
    blog has veered away more often than I’d have expected from what I’d
    originally thought of as its core topic: business ethics. But I already
    have a platform to talk about that: my newsletter, Positive Power of Principled Profit.

    It’s
    also hard to tell what impact it has, or where people are learning
    about it. I get very few comments, and many of them are from people
    I’ve steered to the blog via a post to a discussion list or one of my
    newsletters.

    So, this year, one of my goals is to build more traffic to the blog, which will be mirrored both at blogger.com and on my own PrincipledProfit.com site.

    There
    have been a few signers of the Pledge that I believe found me via the
    blog, and a few useful contacts. Hopefully, over the next 12 months,
    I’ll be able to know for certain that the blog is helping to shape the
    discourse.

    And meanwhile, there’s revamping the PrinProfit site,
    hosting my radio show (which I hope to syndicate as well), getting
    publicity for the Pledge, selling more foreign rights, and tons of
    other stuff. somehow, I find time to do at least some of it, between
    client copywriting and consulting projects.

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    By Posted on Posted in Events, General Commentary

    Sigh. Why is it that so often after there’s a natural disaster, if you dig deeply into the cause of the death toll, you find humans taking unconscionable shortcuts in construction…and other humans in charge of safety oversight looking the other way?

    Last week, I happened to sit next to a very intelligent and politically aware Pakistani gentleman at a Bruce Springsteen concert. In the hour before the music started, we had a long talk. My new friend just sent me a link to the work of a Pakistani ethics writer, Ardeshir Cowasjee. His latest weekly column is all about the direct responsibility for fatalities in the recent earthquake…on the shoulders of those crooked builders and didn’t-see-nuthin’ officials.

    Read it and weep!

    But then turn to another of Cowasjee’s columns, and see an example of the triumph of the human spirit.

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