Terra incognita 66 Corporate Social Responsibility, One by one and Shoe throwing

Terra Incognita
Issue 66
“Written to enlighten, guaranteed to offend”

A Publication of Seth J. Frantzman
Jerusalem, Israel

Website: http://journalterraincognita.blogspot.com/

December 24th, 2008

1) Corporate Social Responsibility until bankruptcy: The newest trend in the corporate world is 'corporate social responsibility'. This includes the designaton of employees within companies to help the local communities through charitable giving. We are all too-used to this now. Corporations are becoming bloated U.N-like NGOs, and forgetting their original goal: to make a decent product. It turns out many of the recent bankrupt corporations, such as Washington Mutual, and struggling ones such as GM have invested billions of dollars over the years in charity. Now we, the people the charity was for, are supposed to bail them out. What if they had been truly responsible and invested that money in R& D or saved it for a rainy day?

2) How they think: Analyzing leftism through an Israeli lens and the Mumbai massacre (attached photo collage included): In the wake of the Mumbai attacks a series of strangely homogenous opeds appeared in the Israeli press. It makes one wonder how exactly the leftist intellectual thinks and what things bind him to her fellow man?

3) One by one: the fate of minorities in the East and the media in the West: A recent murder of more Yazidis in Iraq, and the murder of a Jew in Yemen, by their 'religion of peace' practicing neighbors brings to light the trust about why minorities disappear in the Muslim world. They don't always suffer genocide, sometimes it is the slow genocide of one murder at a time. All of these murders are, of course, obscured and excused by the western media, which collaborates, apparently unknowingly, with the Islamic terrorist in its goal to rid the world of non-Muslims.

4) Shoe throwing and hypocrisy: The slightly comical shoe throwing 'incident' in Baghdad should probably be ignored and forgotten. It has received such coverage that it deserves at least a few lines of comment. The incident shows the true nature of Arab-Islamic hypocrisy and the true reason that dictatorship and democracy do not coexist well.





Corporate Social Responsibility until bankruptcy
Seth J. Frantzman
December 16th, 2008

Corporate Social Responsibility is one of the most exciting new trends in the business world. It employs tens of thousands of people, legions of new departments at corporations devoted to helping communities and doling out corporate philanthropy. These slush funds of goodness are making corporate titans and white collar workers feel good about themselves. Academics describe a new view of the corporation that is no longer merely accountable to its customers and shareholders, but now it is accountable to its stakeholders; the community and the environment.

As corporations transform themselves into NGOs and charities, taking up new responsibilities the communities around them become dependent on the corporation, the way they were once dependant on some NGO or the government for largesse and welfare. But sometimes this new fangled system of corporate welfare fails miserably. What happens when the corporation focuses so much time on cutting ribbons at new community centers and giving out blankets to the homeless that it neglects its underlying Raison d'être, namely to provide a product for the market, and drives itself into bankruptcy?

This is precisely what has happened with Washington Mutual. Kerry Killinger and his lieutenants at Washington Mutual spent a great deal of time doling out money and caring for the community, but they seem to have spent less time auditing the mortgages they were servicing and underwriting. As reported in the The Seattle Times on September 29th, 2009, "Whether it's high-profile events such as the fireworks show over Lake Union, called the WaMu Family 4th, prominent charities such as United Way or lesser-known groups, the Seattle thrift was one of the region's most prominent givers."

Seattle was the center of the WaMu welfare universe. Peter Donnelly of the ArtsFund noted that WAMU was a "company which is headquartered [in Seattle] and which the senior leadership is living in the town and feeling part of the community." WaMu spent its donations primarily on affordable-housing and education. According to reports, in 2007, these causes received $33.6 million of the $48.6 million given by the company to charities. It was the fourth largest corporate donor to United Way, with its employees giving some $2.1 million. Now those out of work employees might wish they had saved that money for hard times. WAMU isn't the only bank to have spent heavily on charities. JPmorgan Chase gave away $114 million.

General Motors, which is now begging the U.S government for a taxpayer funded bailout, gives away some $50 million a year. Business Week, which published details on corporate giving quotes GM's philanthropic mission statement; "GM's philanthropic and community relations mission is to ensure that we maintain our position as a valued and responsible corporate citizen through activities that improve the quality of life in our communities and are consistent with our business goals and objectives." Unfortunately for taxpayers it might have been better if GM had focused on making cars that people wanted to buy rather than on being a "responsible corporate citizen." GM is now requesting billions of dollars from the U.S taxpayer, far more money than it ever doled out to charities.

What if these corporations had invested all this largesse and the salaries of their 'giving managers' into Research and Development? Imagine WAMU's $48 million of charitable giving spread out over ten years and invested each year into due diligence at making sure their borrowers were sound and their loans would be repaid? Imagine if GM had invested its $50 million a year over a twenty year period in R & D to develop fuel efficient cars. Wouldn't that have been more responsible socially, to the taxpayer, than throwing the money at causes where most of the money gets sucked up into administrative expenses of the charities anyway?

The problem with corporations transforming themselves into philanthropies and taking up responsibility for their communities is that this mission creep takes them away from their primary goal: to make a good product and sell it. By making superior products corporations are able to employ more people and those people are part of the community. By making a superior product and being nimble in the marketplace the corporation provides returns for its investors and they in turn provide liquidity to the local marketplace. But when the corporation spreads out, like an octopus, and takes on responsibilities once held by local churches and charities, it does not focus on its business model, it becomes staid and sometimes it goes bankrupt. Then, with tens of thousands of its employees out of works and factory towns transformed into ghost towns, one must ask: 'how responsible was the corporation that forgot its central reason for existence.' We don’t want churches going into business and we don't want NGOs trying to make profits, we realize that this deviation from the central function of these organizations will harm their goals and pervert their message, yet we feel that it is logical to create a new corporate model where the corporation is 'responsible' to the community through becoming a miniature NGO. But the corporation is most responsible when it is profitable and it is employing more and more people year after year and providing their homes and families with an income. Corporate Social responsibility may seem hard to argue with but the recent crises has shown that sometimes it can be height of irresponsibility.



How they think: Analyzing leftism through an Israeli lens and the Mumbai massacre
November 31, 2008
Seth J. Frantzman

It is important to understand always how leftist intellectuals think because it is the source of their thoughts, their callous calumny, that is responsible for brainwashing, for re-writing history, for revisionism, for Nazism (it was, in the end, an intellectual movement), Communism, Holocaust denial, Islamic genocide denial, Armenian genocide denial, UN loving, and various other forms of degrading hatefulness passed off as 'scientific' and 'intelligent.' Intellectualism is the realm of the left. Those who pretend that it can be included in the qualities that a conservative or right thinking individual have it wrong. Today's secular world produced the intellectual, the idea that there are philosopher-kings and men of merit and scholars is past, today intellectualism murders mankind twice, first through real murder and second through excusing that murder.

One place to analyze how leftist intellectuals think is in Israel. In Israel the intellectual class is made up of people primarily of a German-Jewish background and certainly of an Ashkenazi European-Jewish background. Their ancestors came to Israel mostly between 1900 and 1939 although some of them are more recent additions to the Israeli fabric. Their way of life is one of secularism. They have no values and they do not have very many children. They live behind fences and in gated communities where they are isolated from the world outside. Their spiritual center is Europe and they decorate their house with European tastes and pretend to know European wines in order to impress their friends. Their discourse is European. They have no national pride or pride in their heritage and theirs is the life of loving whatever thing tells them they have no heritage. They worship their homogeneity in secret but in public they try to pretend to embrace 'diversity' through having their pictures taken with a few token Asians and blacks and other colored people. In fact most intellectuals try to pretend to know something about other 'cultures' as part of their attempt to 'one up' their friends about who knows the 'tribal norms of' some obscure group in some obscure place. They never die in terror attacks because their wealthy lifestyle affords them protections from such inconveniences. When they do die they prefer cremation, lest any memory of them be left behind in this world that they hated and disdained so much. As 'citizens of the world' and members of 'humanity' they prefer that their ashes will drift endlessly around the world clogging the pores of patriotic heritage-loving people.

Originality is one of those odd things that intellectual leftists worship. They all want to be original but it escapes them for some reason. But what is most funny is to see the extreme shallowness of their 'original' ideas. Exhibit A is an attached photo collage of the covers of recent anti-Israel books. Each one uses the same image, of the 'Seperation fence'. Each one claims to be original and 'a lone voice'. But they are all the same, marching in lockstep with no originality between them. Probably exhibit B in understanding this would be Haaretz on Monday, December 1st, 2008.

The editorial of Haaretz itself, unsigned and written by the editor or his staff, was entitled "A little modesty wouldn't hurt." The editorial claimed that "to our regret these obligatory reactions [of sorrow] were accompanied by shrill voices that emitted an odious scent of patronization and by baseless populous declarations." The article went on to list a series of Israeli officials and Israeli failures such as the Pollard affair, the Ma'alot massacre of 1974 (when 22 Israeli schoolchildren were murdered by Muslim terrorists in the midst of a rescue operation), the 1977 attempt to reswcue hostages in the Savoy hotel in Tel Aviv that ended in eight dead civilians (murdered by Muslim terrorists), the 1994 death of Nachson Wachsman at the hands of Muslim terrorists and the continuing captivity of Gilad Schalit at the hands of Muslims. According to this oped "relations between Israel and India withstood a test during the tragic events in Mumbai….terrorist attacks are a cause of sorrow and rage, not for arrogant statements and impossible ideas." The article did not use the word Muslim or note that it was Muslims who murdered Jews in all these cases, this word was inserted by the author. This oped was followed, on the same page mind you, by one by Anshel Pfeffer, entitled 'Stop Offending India.' Pfeffer complained that "the chorus of those who were once somebody in security, quick to harshly criticize Indian security…is liable to do serious damage to a vital strategic relationship…the statements here [in India] are seen as an insult, a blow to national pride and are especially galling coming from a country that has not always succeeded in saving its own people who were held hostage. The Indians are also angry that the Israelis are focusing solely on the attack on Chabad House and the Israeli and Jewish victims who were killed there, while ignoring [the rest]…as of yesterday the Indian government had not officially responded to the Israeli criticism…the anger over Israeli boastfulness will keep these ties [between the countries] hidden from view." Before parsing this second oped we need to go on to a third one. That’s right, a third open on the same day in the same paper on the exact same subject. It is by Yossi Sarid and entitled "of turkeys and Indians." He writes "we, just 7 million and our hubris is legendary…we have already begun our armchair quarterbacking…it would not have happened to us. Our rescue operations are always successful: at the school in Ma'a lot, in Kiryat Shmona [the Kuntar terror attack], Nachshon Wachsman…Gilad Schalit….was or wasn't the Chabad house chosen as a target ahead of time…Ehud Olmert acted with restraint this time, he refrained from calling his Indian counterpart. That's what happens when [your brain works] unimpeded, and your mental powers are at their fullest. We've had it with egoists, with the Israel arrogance."

Three editorials. One newspaper. One day. The exact same message, the same wording even and the same examples. And each surely thinks they are being original, that they are the 'lone voice' critiquing their country and 'daring' to stand up and 'say what needs to be said.' Surely each thinks they are a 'prophet' in the dark saying something 'controversial.' Its like Newspeak in 1984, someone can call banal behaviour originality so long as we are all forced to read it and believe it is original because it is in an 'intellectual' newspaper.

Intellectualsim is brutal. Here one has 200 dead civilians in India. A Muslim terror attack that targeted westerners and Jews. And intellectualism speaks of 'obligatory' sorrow, as if the intellectual in his high mindedness would'nt naturally feel sorrow but is 'obligated' to. No one is obligating you Mr. Bourgouise. You don't have to shed fake tears for other humans, we know you are above humanity. But intellectuals have an odd way of interpreting things. The same people who always get whipped up into a frenzy about 'free speech' and yet here they are telling 'armchair' quarterbacks and former security officials to be quiet and wondering why the Indian government doesn't respond. Why would it respond to the opinions of civilians voiced on the Television of some small country, far away? Who is being arrogant in this equation, the leftist intellectual who believes that the Indian government should respond to one Israeli former security official who said something on TV in Israel in Hebrew, or the guy who just voiced his opinion? Who is being arrogant, the leftist intellectual who says that this criticism will ruin ties between India and Israel or the guy who simply said a few words about how the Indian operation could have been done better? Why do intellectuals, in one case say that the Chabad house might not have been a target, a ludicrous idea considering Mumbai has 23 million people. But the same intellectuals who blame their people for everything and believe their people are the most arrogant people in the world and react to terror in a foreign land by blaming their country and casting hate on their countrymen, they can't fathom that when their own people are clearly targeted that it might be on purpose. Such is how an intellectual thinks. Then the intellectual claims it is wrong for his own countrymen to care mostly for their own dead among the casualties. The same intellectual who was callous about the dead and said it was 'obligatory' to show fake sorrow claims it is wrong to mourn one's own people who were targeted by Muslims in a far off land. If Indian Hindus were one of many targets of terror in Tel Aviv and India focused on them would there be any reason to expect something different? And why does the intellectual think it is positive that Ehud Olmert did not immediately call his counterpart to express sorrow and support? The same intellectuals who claim some TV interviews will ruin relations between two nations celebrates when a prime minister, an actual representative of the government, does nothing.

There is something perverted and odd about intellectuals. Their reaction is always self hate. But what we usually refer to as 'self hate' is not actually correct. Its not that they hate themselves. They love themselves because among eachother they all agree. At their garden parties they sip wine and they all agree that they hate the country they live in, they hate the culture of the people in the country they live, they hate their heritage and their birthplace and everything about the country to which they are citizens. They don't hate themselves, their self is not part of the larger self of the nation. The nation is the other to their selves. Intellectuals consider themselves 'citizens of humanity' and it is thus. They are not part of countries and yet they enjoy the freedoms given them by their democracies, they enjoy the money they receive from the newspaper who can only exist due to the free press. They enjoy the infrastructure provided by the taxpayers among the countrymen they hate. Its not self hate or self-critique, they never criticize themselves or hate their own caste. They love themselves and worship their group. They simply hate that which feeds them.

Intellectuals hate us, they hate society, they make fun of dead murdered people, they obscure those who murdered them by never naming the group to which the killers belong and they only show 'obligatory' sorrow, not genuine sorrow, they have no feelings or emotions or humanity, they are not, in truth, human in any sense of the word, and their callousness in the face of death is worse than the Muslim terrorists for the Muslim terrorists know they are killing, they just say it is in the name of god, whereas the intellectual denies the very existence of the murdered person by having no genuine sympathy and denying him his justice by obscuring his attacker. The reaction of the intellectual is always to heap hatred and scorn on his own country and its people. There will be a time in the future, when Islam has conquered the world, where intellectuals will no longer exist. We will be rid of them once and for all. For this we can say that Islam will bring a lasting decency to this world for it will rid of us this class that sits around our necks like an albatross and from which we in a secular democracy cannot free ourselves because they are products of secularism and democracy guarantees them freedom and life. But Islam does not and in Muslim societies there are no intellectuals. That can, at least, be applauded.

One by one: the fate of minorities in the East and the media in the West
December 15th, 2008
Seth J. Frantzman

Another day, another dead minority in a Muslim country. Today it was seven Yazidis, a father, mother and four children shot to dead in their home by the religion of tolerance and peace. Islam came for these seven Yazidis, just as it comes everyday for some lonely minority in some Muslim country. In early December of 2008 a man shot a Yemenite Jew, one of only 400 in the country, after demanding he convert to Islam.

Everyday that the religion of tolerance exists, in whatever country it exists in, people must die because of it. There is not a day that a non-Muslim is not murdered by Muslims somewhere in the Muslim world or in countries where Muslims live. This is the slow 'one by one drip drip' of how Islam works and why minorities slowly vanish from Muslim countries. We see it in countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Iran and Iraq. One by one the minorities are killed, raped or forced to flee. We watch it in Gaza with the remaining Christians. One day a church is bombed, then a school, then a bookstore, then a restaurant. We see it in Lebanon where every bombing has been directed at Christians in a Christian neighbourhood. One by one, day by day.

But there is a collaborator in all this and it is the Western media. The Western media aids and abets he murder, the genocide, he ethnic-cleansing and the terrorism by either ignoring the killings or by providing 'explanations' for them. In the article published on December 15th, describing the murder of the Yazidis the BBC reports that "some Muslims have accused them of being devil-worshippers, since they revere an angel in the form of a blue peacock. It is a charge the Yazidis reject.
A number of attacks against Yazidis in recent years have been blamed on al-Qaeda in Iraq which views them as infidels." Read this again. The BBC tries to pretend that it is only 'explaining' what Muslims think about Yazidis. But it uses the word 'devil-worshiper' and 'infidel' and it then makes fun of he Yazidis by repeating the myth that they worship a peacock.

We take this kind of reporting for granted today because we have been brainwashed in the West to believe that the role of the media is not to report what happens but to report 'both sides'. Let us imagine that such a media existed during the Holocaust. Then the BBC would report "Six million Jews have died in the last four years in Germany. Germans believe Jews are sub-human and that they caused the Great depression and that Jews are responsible for all wars. Jews deny this charge. A number of the killings of Jews have been blamed on Nazis who view them as deserving to be extinct." This would be the BBC's reporting of the Holocaust. But we can imagine how the BBC might report a lynching in the American south "a number of black men have been found hung from trees lately. Some whites believe these blacks were uppity negroes and Communist agitators and are thus putting them in their place. It is a charge the blacks reject. The KKK has been blamed for some attacks on blacks recently, who they view as sub-human."

Terrrorism and genocide exist in this world but they exist alongside a Western media that supports them and aids and abets them. The Western media in the form of the BBC aids racism and the extermination of minorities.

It is important, the next time that terrorism strikes a European city, that we remember how the BBC reported the deaths of these Yazidis. Remember it and when terrorists blow up some British people we can say "some British people died today. Some Muslims believe the British are immoral people who have no faith. It is a charge the British reject. Al Quaeda has been blamed for attacks on the British who they view as infidels." That is right. If the Yazidis deserve death at the hands of Islam and deserve to have it covered up by the European media than we cannot say that we will have any sympathy when terrorism comes to Europe, because Europeans have classified weak and marginal minorities as 'devil worshipers' and 'infidels' and repeated slander against them.

The European media is the primary voice of terrorism in the world, the greatest collaborator with it, even more so than any Muslim media outlet. When the media encourages the terrorist by reporting his 'allegations' and excusing his murder then it is as if he media is a terrorist organization, a terrorist of he mind, polluting our language and brainwashing us. Drip drip drip, the minorities disappear and the media leads them to their deaths and disappears their history. It is no surprise that Europe is the same continent where they soon will no longer teach the Holocaust, lest it offend their Muslim minority. That is fine. Maybe they should report the 'two sides' to the Holocaust. Who cares? Europe digs its own grave and it must lie down in it.

Shoe throwing and hypocrisy
December 16th, 2008
Seth J. Frantzman

The incident in Iraq where an Iraqi journalist, Muntader al-Zaidi, threw a shoe at President Bush is being celebrated throughout the Arab world, and probably in many other countries such as Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela. The New York Times deemed it an "act of defiance" even though they explained its 'context' by noting that it runs counter to "Arab traditions of hospitality" and that "hitting someone with a shoe is a deep insult…signifying the person is as low as dirt…calling someone a dog is universally harsh, among Arabs, who traditionally consider dogs unclean."
The television station that employs Mr. al-Zaidi has claimed that he was exercising his 'free speech' and practicing the 'democracy' that Bush had brought to Iraq. But the shoe throwing and the claims that it is part of 'free speech' say much about the way in which 'democracy' is perceived today by the world and says much about another Arab tradition; hypocrisy.
There is a new belief in the West that everything is free speech and that especially offensive speech is not only free but to critique such speech is unacceptable. Furthermore the idea of free speech has suffered from a degree of 'mission creep' as it has come to mean that people cannot be censured for outlandish speech by their employers, such as Universities, governments or NGOs. Think of the paper presented in the Shane Working papers of Hebrew University that claimed that Israeli soldiers don't rape Palestinian women because they are racist, implying that if they had been good tolerance lovers like the Nazis who raped Jewish women that would be more positive. Any critique of the Sociology department for awarding the writer of the paper was dismissed as being 'anti-free speech'. When the Oxford union invited David Irving, the holocaust denier, and when Columbia invited Ahmadinjed, any who critiqued them were said to be 'anti-free speech'. When Joel Kovel was denied a publishing contract for his extremist book 'confronting Zionism' he claimed his 'free speech' was violated. When a writer who serves on the governing board of the JDC supported the Thai government's decision to execute two Jews based on drug trafficking charges, a complaint directed at the organization resulted in a response that in "Israel there is free speech." Free speech is the lie of modernity. It is the lie that says people have a right to say whatever they want and never suffer economic consequences for it, it is the lie that says dictators have a 'right' to speak at Columbia and hate mongers have a 'right' to be published. So too, apparently, the Arabs have learned that free speech has no bounds, so when a journalist throws a shoe at a head of state his employer refuses to apologize saying the journalist has 'free speech'.
The second issue raised by the behavior of al-Zaidi is the way in which dictatorship works to undermine democracy and the way in which it exploits the freedom of other societies through its hypocrisy. No Cuban would dare throw a shoe at Castro. No Egyptian can throw a shoe at Mubarek. No Syrian can throw a shoe at Asad. But in all these countries the people celebrate that a man threw a shoe at President Bush. Would any American celebrate if a reporter from the New York Times threw a shoe at King Hussein or Ahmadinjed? It is part of the lie that is hypocrisy.
Liberals speak of 'Arab hospitality' but one has seen the real hospitality of these countries displayed in their reactions to this insult. One has seen how the dictatorships celebrate this act by putting the journalists face and television and describing him as a hero for his 'defiance'. The same 'defiance' of the Egyptian regime by bloggers results in prison sentences. It is interesting how the rhetoric and lies of defiance reverberates throughout the world. We see it in Cuba and all the rest of the Communist regimes that have resurrected succession by patriarchal lineage. That’s right, good liberal progressive communism, has son succeed father and brother succeed brother. It’s a family affair under Communism. And Communism is the regime that my hippie liberal secular teachers in high school told us was so romantic and Cuba was a 'utopia' where "there is no Aids and health care is better than America." There is no Aids because Aids patients were rounded up and put in leper colonies. That’s the liberal way, just like having a brother take over power from his brother is the liberal way. Just like dictatorship for 50 years in Cuba is he 'progressive' way. Its very progressive, dictatorship, because it is the future of the world. Because our media terms it 'defiance' to throw shoes at people and because under the dictatorship the people support such 'defiance' even if they would never do it to their own regime.
Dictatorship and democracy cannot coexist because the one uses the other's freedom to undermine it. In the dictatorship everyone loves the dictator. In the democracy some of the people love the dictatorship next door and because the dictatorship has no freedom of speech the liberal people in the democracy, the intellectuals and educated people, believe the propaganda of the dictatorship about its 'free health care' and 'lack of AIDs'. Thus the best and brightest people in the democracy come to hate their own democracy and worship the other. When there is dictatorship next to democracy the dictatorship shall always win. Democracy and is success in the world is a myth. It is not a successful system and it is one that is prone to accept that 'free speech' means requiring people to listen to hate speech and the speech of dictators.