responsible development: growth and securitization of freedoms... abolishing corporate personhood is the pathway to meaningful and real change, progress & stability.
Dr. Lisa Newton, professor of philosophy and director of the Applied Ethics program in the Colleges of Arts & Sciences, has written a new book, Permission to Steal: Revealing the Roots of Corporate Scandal, published by Blackwell in November.
"It is the story of the scandals that brought down Enron, WorldCom, HealthSouth, and all of the other scandals to which we were subjected at the end of the 20th century, along with an explanation of how such things happened," Dr. Newton said. Delving into each scandal, Dr. Newton offers a fresh perspective on what went wrong and what needs to be done to prevent corporate corruption from reoccurring.
Identifying the root of the problem, Dr. Newton said, "It all started with Gyges' Ring." The mythical ring mentioned in Plato's Republic was known to make the wearer of it invisible. "Plato was convinced that if people had the power to be invisible they would do all sorts of terrible things. Sure enough, they did." In her book, she writes that we do not have Gyges' Ring in the real world, "but rings that do nothing more than make us invisible - offshore special purpose entities, Swiss banks, gated communities, and the general anonymity of the city - are everywhere we look, there for the purchasing. We need the accountability that comes with transparency, visibility, and access to information, to keep our corporations honest."
Please compare Plato's Gyges' ring with thesE-circles & -cycles and moral-fallout/spiral-virus of sExxell's Complexxon: P3 explanation of global structural energy fundamentals-based inherent and implicit State-corporate corruption:
http://rspas.anu.edu.au/rmap/newmandala/2008/02/13/samaks-disgrace/"...With his blatantly inaccurate statements to a worldwide audience, Mr Samak has shown disrespect to everyone who has fought for democracy in this country and embarrassed the nation at the same time. In an exchange with correspondent Dan Rivers, Mr Samak reduced the Oct 6, 1976 massacre to a mere �movement of some students�Eand kept on insisting that only one person died that day, even if Mr Rivers presented him with the official death toll of 46 and the possibility that the actual number of casualties could be much higher than that."
distorted vision of truth
Feb 17, 2008: Thailand Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej perverting faith and confidence while insisting the history of the oct 6, 1976 student revolts -Thammasat University massacre- had been distorted and left 'only one' dead! Samak, Interior Minister from oct 22, 1976, accused the students of 'being communists who aimed to destroy the country's revered institutions'!
Click to watch part of the interview given by Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej to Dan Rivers of CNN's Talk Asia programme which was broadcast at 7.30 am Saturday, Feb 9, 2008
from Stephan Tychon, february 18, 2008 Chang Mai, Thailand, to the editor of The Nationwww.nationmultimedia.com
Thaiability: East meets Best!
While visiting your beautiful country it's not easy for me to escape national political and governmental concerns about the responsible development of sustainable behaviour regarding the equal democratic representation and participation of anybody involved and/or concerned. Observing the global awareness and responsiveness of your readers that send letters to the editor, I feel the urge to point a crucial global event of the past, hardly anybody knows or realizes: the U.S.-seizure of global energy fundamentals with the world's first and only('onlyOne'!) energy transition of 1963, the international Gasunie: Exxon, Shell and the Dutch government being the globe's largest public-private partnership (PPP!) to date. The European 'Coal and Steel' paradigm changed without much consent regarding public debate into a European natural-gas model linked to the U.S. petro-dollar policies and politics of war. Hence the euro being pegged to the dollar. The western easy-money syndrome born to be mild is now bound to be the world's new paradigm of scandal and excess without ordinary people having any access to the playing-field of growing greed-technology, subprime conduct and failing jurisdictions... let alone the internationalization of law. I expect your country's leaders to know better and be open to historic global failures that are made, especially regarding peoples' right to understand before having to choose. Thai intelligence helped the Americans land on the moon safely, I recently learned. Let Thai common sense for the greater good of all peoples set an example for the world and finish once and for all the global lack of overview, insight and understanding of how to let this growing credit-crisis and disaster without integrity nor transparency end by making a soft landing somewhere between East and West. All the best! www.Thai.zation.org
Click to watch Suthichai Yoon's comment on PM Samak Sundaravej's statement that only one person died in the Oct 6, 1976 incident...and how history will decide his role? Join Yoon's blog: http://blog.nationmultimedia.com/ThaiTalk
Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej (Photo: AFP)
Thailand made an uneasy return to elected government as a Cabinet packed with politicians of unsavory reputations tied to ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was sworn in by the king.
Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej leads a lineup criticized by the media and the public as unqualified, unsuitable and tainted by allegations of corruption. The new Cabinet includes an interior minister accused of subverting justice and a deputy prime minister who was Thailand's first high-profile politician to be banned from public office. Samak himself is under investigation for corruption stemming from his tenure as Bangkok's mayor. In finalizing his list of ministers, he called it an "ugly duckling" Cabinet.
The 36 new Cabinet members took their oath of service Wednesday before King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who urged them to work for the people. Samak leads a coalition government assembled after his People's Power Party won the most parliamentary seats in the December election. The party, formed by Thaksin loyalists, is regarded as a vehicle for the ousted former leader. There are 41 positions in the new Cabinet, with five members holding two portfolios. Samak holds the defense minister's job as well as the premier's post.
Thaksin was toppled by a September 19, 2006, coup after months of demonstrations demanding he step down because of alleged corruption and abuse of power. He was abroad at the time, and now lives mostly in London. After his allies won the post-coup election, he said he planned to return to Thailand, perhaps as early as April.
After the coup, Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai Party was disbanded by court order. He and his party's other 110 executive members are barred from public office for five years�forcing the pro-Thaksin forces to form the People's Power Party and turn to second-tier politicians for the Cabinet. While many new Cabinet members are merely minor politicians with undistinguished records, several have gained notoriety.
The most controversial is the new interior minister, Chalerm Yoobamrung, whose public baiting of the military while serving in a previous government helped trigger a 1991 coup. Early in his political career, Chalerm was dogged by media reports that he made a fortune in the gambling business. He was once charged with a gambling offense but never indicted.
A former police officer and justice minister, he has been accused of using his political clout to get out of legal trouble; the most prominent case involved one of his sons who was accused of killing a policeman in a barroom brawl. One of Samak's deputy prime ministers, Sanan Kajornprasart, is a former interior minister who was banned from politics for five years in 2000 after an anti-corruption committee found he fabricated a loan document.
Wives of three men who are banned from politics fill three seats in the new Cabinet, despite limited experience. Key ministries�justice, finance and foreign affairs�went to Thaksin allies, close advisers and relatives. The new foreign minister is Noppadon Pattama, Thaksin's legal adviser and spokesman. Surapong Suebwonglee, a member of Thaksin's inner circle, is the new finance minister.
Surapong has little financial experience. A medical doctor by training, he became information and communications technology minister in Thaksin's government in 2002. The justice portfolio went to Sompong Amornwiwat, Thaksin's boyhood classmate, and Thaksin's brother-in-law, Somchai Wongsawat, was named deputy prime minister and education minister.
Watch Suthichai Yoon�s comment on PM Samak Sundaravej�s insistence that the �invisible hand�Eis still trying to undermine his government�E/FONT>
US slowdrown of conduct, crime, faith, hope & confidence.
Save Our System, Forget Our Souls!
TM
Early history of Arid zona:
Mexico saw the United States as an aggressive nation driven by the doctrine of 'Manifest Destiny':
Land-hungry invaders who claimed it was their divine right to take what they saw as empty territory.
Hispanic fears were heightened by the belief that Americans were 'lawless', 'uncivilized' and bent on theft and destruction. Mexico's fears became a reality in 1835 when the United states annexed Texas, an act that precipidated the Mexican-American War.
!826: 16 foreigners were reported along the banks of the Santa Cruz river in Tucson: 'Yanqui' trappers in search of beaver named after the Yaqui tribe(?) Americans had appeared for the first time in what was Spanish territory until it became Mexico after the mexican War for independence 1810-1821.
Nowadays, mexicans going to their former country and homeland are called illegal aliens by the most aggressive and arrogant people on earth: Yankees. This fundamental attitude of wrongdoing is essentially defining what terror at its roots is and will for ever prevent whatever responsible development and sustainable globalisation.
Rhetoric on homeland security, energy security and individual security define the Washington swampwalk without exit strategy nor hope of victory and enduring quagmire we are now all in.
An enduring myth of regulation
The New York Times is shocked to discover that big, established businesses often attempt to manipulate governmental regulation to their advantage over entrepreneurial startups. This hidden cost of regulation is one that I noted awhile back in regard to the proposed XM-Sirius merger. Many well-meaning folks -- usually those without much experience in business matters -- believe that regulation is good for the consumer because most established businesses generally abhor such regulation. However, established businesses typically use a part of their superior resources to manipulate regulation to their advantage and against the threat of beneficial competition from new companies. A big, well-established business can absorb the high cost of regulation and pass it along to the consumer. A thinly-leveraged start-up generally does not have that luxury.
Warren Meyer, who actually confronts this phenomenom as he runs his small business, makes the same point here and provides the following insightful quote on the subject from the late Milton Friedman:
The justification offered is always the same: to protect the consumer. However, the reason is demonstrated by observing who lobbies at the state legislature for the imposition or strengthening of licensure. The lobbyists are invariably representatives of the occupation in question rather than of the customers. True enough, plumbers presumably know better than anyone else what their customers need to be protected against. However, it is hard to regard altruistic concern for their customers as the primary motive behind their determined efforts to get legal power to decide who may be a plumber.
.E BUSINESS
LICENSE THE .E-MARK OR B2B-LOGO NOW !!
E@xxell.com
Anti-Charter Change Groups:
Home > National > Taxi drivers warned over anti-charter stickers
Taxi drivers warned over anti-charter stickers
Interior Minister Aree Wongsearaya yesterday said he had ordered the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration and the Metropolitan Police to investigate taxis that display stickers against the draft constitution.
Published on August 10, 2007
He said the Interior Ministry was checking the stickers.
He also called on people to inform the ministry, the BMA and police if they knew of vote-buying by groups opposed to the draft constitution ahead of the national referendum on August 19.
"It is not against the law to display stickers, as long as drivers have not been hired to do so by groups who want to reject the draft charter," Aree said.
However, Prime Minister's Office Minister Thirapat Serirangsan warned that taxi drivers who display the stickers on their cars might be breaking the Motor Vehicle Act. Thirapat said the Motor Vehicle Act stipulated that a taxi driver cannot display a sticker which may be considered as advertising.
Taxi drivers have been displaying stickers saying, "We take passengers but not the draft constitution", while the government has warned the stickers might be against the referendum law.
Cab driver Supong Chanthasane, 33, said he had seen some of his fellow drivers put the stickers in their vehicles and was interested in the wording. "I asked my friend to get one for my car to show that I will reject the draft," he said.
He said he did not know it was against the law and, if the police asked him to remove the sticker, he would ask why. "It is my right to show that I will not support the draft. I am not persuading anyone to do the same, I just want to express my view," he said.
However, some taxi drivers said the police had warned them to remove the stickers.
Bangkok Taxi and Tuk Tuk Drivers' Association leader Chinawat Haboonpad said he had not taken part in the sticker campaign, adding that it had been started by individual drivers.
He said the stickers had been handed out by anti-coup groups at Sanam Luang.
Meanwhile, the Transport Ministry announced half-fares on buses and trains from August 17 to 20 to encourage voters to take part in the national referendum.
He said private companies had also agreed to reduce fares on ferry boat services.
Bangkok's subway will also provide free rides from 7am to 5pm on August 19.
Portlanders for Accountability has its first radio spot out. Here's the transcript:
"Hi, this is former Mayor Bud Clark. And I need your help to protect Portland's future.
There is going to be an election next month. One of the measures on the ballot, Measure 26-91, will change Portland's form of government, taking power from our elected city council and giving it to the mayor.
Well, I was the mayor, and I can tell you that this measure would put far too much power into the hands of one person. Measure 26-91 would make it easier for special interests like big developers to influence city government. What's worse, Measure 26-91 drastically reduces citizens' ability to have a voice in City Hall.
Our unique form of government is one of the reasons Portland is such a great city. Why would we change a system that's working well for one that has too much potential for abuse?
You know, the people of Portland have been asked this question 7 times and each time they have said "no." Please join me in saying No one more time - vote NO on 26-91. Whoop, Whoop!
A few random thoughts: This is the good summation of the many messages we've been hearing from the anti-charter change folks since they began their work. It's a sort of checklist of arguments that probably proved the most effective in their polling earlier this spring: Too much power for the mayor, big business is bad, access will go away, you've already said 'no' to this.
An interesting sidenote: If that twangy music in the background sounds familiar, there's a reason. It's the same tune that played behind one of Erik Sten's campaign ads in the 2006 City Council race. Yes, both campaigns were run by consultant extraordinaire Mark Wiener.
New East West Synergy 
GOODBYE AMERICA!
"It is the story of the scandals that brought down Enron, WorldCom, HealthSouth, and all of the other scandals to which we were subjected at the end of the 20th century, along with an explanation of how such things happened," Dr. Newton said. Delving into each scandal, Dr. Newton offers a fresh perspective on what went wrong and what needs to be done to prevent corporate corruption from reoccurring.
US slowdrown of conduct, crime, faith, hope & confidence. 
TM
